Reading the windows of the Manor House Inn

A pub sign tells you what a building is called today. At the Manor House Inn in Ditcheat, the windows can tell you something the sign cannot. Find the photograph of the inn and church tower in the archive, taken from Wraxall Road in August 2023. Follow the wall along the front of the pub. You are looking at two different ideas about how an English village inn ought to look.

Start with the points

The first clue is the shape above the glass. One set of windows rises to a point in the middle. The little panes beneath form a square grid, so the eye travels upwards from a pattern of straight lines into an arch. Historic England uses the word Gothick for this part of the building. That final “k” is worth noticing. The term describes a later taste for medieval shapes. It helps explain why a pub window might remind you of the church down the road.

Look for the door nearby. Its pointed head repeats the shape of the windows, taking the pattern right down to street level. A photograph can make the arches look like decoration laid across a flat wall. The corner view in the archive gives you a better sense of depth. There is a shallow projecting bay on the return, tall enough to tie the two floors together.

Follow the stone across the glass

The other windows have a different rhythm. Here the strongest lines run straight up between the panes. These uprights are mullions, lengths of stone that divide a window into separate openings. Notice how the shadows emphasise their depth. Above them, a raised strip runs across the head. Stand back from the photograph for a moment and those level lines make this end of the building read quite differently from the pointed windows beside it.

The official listing dates the earlier work to the late eighteenth century and the Tudor-style addition to the middle of the nineteenth. The operator describes a pub with roots in the seventeenth century. Those dates answer different questions. The listing records the age and character of the fabric it describes. Establishing when somebody first served drink on this site would take another kind of record altogether.

Compare two moments on the same road

Open the March 2007 photograph alongside the summer view from 2021. With less foliage in March, the outline of the bay is easier to pick out. In summer the greenery draws more attention to the wall and lawn. Use the fixed points of the building, especially the heads of the windows, to match one view to the other.

Both photographs predate the closure in 2023 and the reopening under Chickpea Group in February 2025. They make a useful companion to a visit today. A new sign, a table moved into the sun or a change of paint can alter your first impression in seconds. Once you have found the two sets of windows, you have something you can recognise across the years. The dated gallery brings the views together, with the photographer and original source beside each one.