Kyre Park

Description

Country house in landscaped park, now care home. Fourteenth-century origins; repaired and extended circa 1600 for Sir Edward Pytts by John Chaune of Bromsgrove; remodelled for Sir Edmund Pytts by W and D Hiorne, 1753-6; restored and extended c1880 with further major alterations circa 1940. Some original sandstone rubble walling survives. Mainly brick, rendered to south-west, with ashlar plinth and dressings. Slate roofs, partly hipped behind plain parapets with ball finials (these survive only at eastern corners) and brick stacks with moulded ashlar caps. Roughly T-shaped plan. Original part lies to west and was probably a fortified house. Circa 1600 a hall was added to the north-east. In the mid-eighteenth century a new south front was added and the west range was remodelled. The building was extended to the east in the late nineteenth century and in the twentieth century the sixteenth-century hall was demolished, a new north front built and further alterations made to the south and east fronts. (Listed Building Report)

The house in its present state is L-shaped on plan, the foot of the L being formed by a thick-walled building, the walls of which are probably those of a fortified house of the 14th century, and the main limb by a hall of about 1600 with 18th-century additions on the south and east. The earliest portion of the house appears to have been for some time in a ruinous condition, when it was bought from Lord Compton in 1575 by Sir Edward Pytts, who undertook to repair and add to the building. The work was continued by his son Sir James Pytts, who succeeded to the estate in 1618. (VCH)

Comments

Kyre Park does seem to contain an earlier building, probably of C14 date, but the form of this building is not really known and the suggestion it was fortified may be open to some question.