page_title: Princes Risborough
section_title: Modern
hierarchical_section_title: Princes Risborough / Manor House / Modern
caption_attribution_description: English: Brook House now the Manor House, Princes Risborough in the 1840s
context_page_description: Princes Risborough is a small town in Buckinghamshire, England, about 9 miles south of Aylesbury and 8 miles north west of High Wycombe. Bledlow lies to the west and Monks Risborough to the east. It lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, at the north end of a gap or pass through the Chilterns, the south end of which is at West Wycombe. The A4010 road follows this route from West Wycombe through the town and then on to Aylesbury.
  Historically it was both a manor and an ecclesiastical parish, of the same extent as the manor, which comprised the present ecclesiastical parish of Princes Risborough and also the present ecclesiastical parish of Lacey Green, which became a separate parish in the 19th century. It was long and narrow, taking in land below the Chiltern scarp, the slope of the scarp itself and also land above the scarp extending into the Chiltern hills. The manor and the parish extended from Longwick in the north through Alscot, the town of Princes Risborough, Loosley Row and Lacey Green to Speen and Walters Ash in the south.
context_section_description: The house now known as the Manor House stands opposite the east end of the church. It was formerly known as Brook or Brooke House and the name was only changed in the late 19th century
  The house is first mentioned (as Broke House) in the reign of Elizabeth I in a grant dated 1589, but this was an earlier building, though some parts of it are incorporated in the present house. Arthur Oswald thought that the interior wall parallel to the front outside wall and fireplaces in two of the bedrooms may come from the Elizabethan house. The house was substantially enlarged and rebuilt in the mid-17th century.
  Inigo Jones had brought the classical renaissance style to England in the early 17th century. His followers took the new classical style into the country, characterised by its symmetry and proportion and such classical elements as pilasters, while wide eaves took the place of a cornice. Often a bricklayer would also be the principal contractor, controlling the other trades, and he could avoid the necessity to employ a mason for stonework if he could produce the classical elements in brick. So in this house we have brick pilasters, one above the other, with capitals and bases shaped in brickwork. The rebuilding seems to have been carried out in two stages, though without a long gap between them. There is a straight joint in the brickwork to the left of the second pilaster on the north side. In front of this the bricks are laid in English bond, but Flemish bond is used towards the back, indicating that this part was built a little later.
  The house is built of red brick with two storeys and an attic. The frontage has five windows, widely spaced and separated by brick pilasters in two orders corresponding to the ground and first floors. Originally there was a large central attic window of 'Dutch' type (as can be seen in the woodcut from Lipscomb's History of the County of Buckingham (1847)). This was replaced by three dormer windows in the late 19th century.
  Inside the house the staircase and some of the panelling and fireplaces in the hall and drawing room date from the 17th-century re-building. The oak staircase opens at the back of the hall through a 17th-century arch and ascends two storeys round a square well. Arthur Oswald describes it as of Jacobean type but likely to have been made by a country joiner at the time of the Commonwealth or Charles II. Pevsner & Williamson, who call it "spectacular", describe it as made in the mid-17th century but in the strapwork tradition.
  Arthur Oswald thought that the entrance doorway and sash windows were probably 18th-century alterations made in Georgian times, but Pevsner and Williamson think they might be part of Lord Rothschild's alterations in 1886.
  By the mid-19th century the house was very dilapidated and part was being used for storing grain. Lord Rothschild bought it in the 1880s and arranged for it to be renovated and put into repair. This work started in 1886, but there is no record of exactly what was done. It was probably after the completion of this work that the name was changed to the Manor House. In 1926 later members of the Rothschild family gave the house to the National Trust and it was then further modernised under the direction of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. It is usually let to a tenant and some rooms can be seen by prior appointment.
caption: The Manor House (then Brook House) in the 1840s from Lipscomb's History of the County of Buckingham (1847)
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