Listed Building: LEONARD WILLS FIELD CENTRE (1173856)

ST03NE NETTLECOMBE CP 5/33 Leonard Wills Field Centre (formerly listed as Nettlecombe Court) 22.5.69 GV I Shown on OS map as Nettlecombe Court (school). Manor house, now field studies centre. Late medieval hall, cross passage and wing, now kitchens and pantry, 1599 entrance front, porch, great hall and parlour, circa 1641 addition to rear of great hall, 1703-7 South West front extended and staircase added in angle, plasterwork on stair 1753, South West wing decorated 1787-8, house stuccoed and North East service range added early C19, stucco removed mid C20. Squared and coursed red sandstone, moulded plinth, coped parapets, finials, slate roofs, hipped right. Plan: hall and screens passage, to right "L"-shaped block of earlier house with later wing forming service, courtyard, left of hall South West wing, the garden front, staircase in angle. 2 and 3 storeys, 2:1:2:1:2:2 bays; 3 storey gabled porch fith bay right, 3 and a half storey left gable end 2 bays, openings blocked, first floor 3-light ovolo-moulded mullions, except 4 bays right, all 12 pane sash windows, third bay left under stone relieving arch 3 x 5 pane mullioned transomed oriel window two hall windows right 3 x 3 light, also under relieving arches, Tudor arch opening to porch set in square hood mould, date 1599 in spandrel. Left return, garden front brick faced, 2 storeys, central attic gabled window, 9 bays, C20 4 pane sash windows, central pedimented Ionic porch. Kitchen courtyard has late C17 leaded cruciform windows and reset moulded medieval doorcases in North East wing. Interior: fine strapwork moulded plaster ceiling with pendents in Great Hall, plaster work overmantel, early C18 bolection moulded panelling, decorated organ in gallery of 1666 by John Loosemore, repaired and enlarged C19; stair with turned balusters, inlaid landing floors, and delicate rococo plasterwork; heavy plasterwork decoration in small dining parlour behind great hall, dated 1641, similar in room above; circa 1700 plasterwork in office, similar in room above; Adam style decoration in South West wing under direction of Samuel Heal, ceiling and marble fireplace in drawing room, Ionic screen and plasterwork cornice to dining room. The house became a boys' preparatory school in 1963 and the Leonard Wills Field Centre in 1967. A fine collection of interiors, notable for having good examples of plasterwork for 5 different periods, only C19 examples are absent. (Photograph in NMR, VCH Somerset, vol 5 forthcoming; Bush and Corbett, Nettlecombe Court, Field studies 4, 1970; Country Life, I February 1908). Listing NGR: ST0564637755