THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. 315 mains, and is an octagonal shaft battlemented. The original entrance to the solar is by an external covered staircase, opposite to a door at the north-east angle of the hall : the roof is exactly similar to the one at Charney, excepting that the monldings of the capital are of later character, being here of decided Dc^corated work and not very early in the style. The building is of stone with the exception of the upper part of the east wing, which is of wood. The windows iDotli of the hall and of the solar are widely splayed, and have a hollow moukling running round the angle of the splay. The north wing does not extend backwards beyond the width of the hall. There arc other buildings connected with this wing and forming part of the present mansion, but these are of subsequent periods : there are also offices to the east, com- ])leting the quadrangle, which appear to have been erected in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, when some other alterations were made in the buikling. At Charney the fire-place on the ground-floor is more per- fect, and evidcntlv ori2;inal, in both cases these rooms were probably the kitchens. In other instances the fire-places have generally been found in the upper rooms only, and not as in these cases on the ground-floor ; no instance has yet been noticed of a fire-place on the ground-floor in the twelfth cen- tury : the finding them in the thirteenth and fourteenth and not in the twelfth may possibly be a mark of the progress of civilization. This house at Sutton Courtenay is called by Lysons the rectory house, but this is a mistake ; there is another rectory house in the village, and this is not on the rectorial farm. In the Saxon period the whole manor belonged to the abbey of Abing- don, but it was exchanged with King Kenulf for other land on which was the site of an ancient royal palace at or near Abing- don, " where the king's hounds and hawks were kept to the great annoyance of the convent." After the exchange we may presume that these were removed to Sutton, and it re- mained in the royal possession until King Henry the Second gave it to Reginald Courtenay, ancestor of the earls of Devon. It remained in the possession of that fiimily until the attainder of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, in the time of Edward the Tourth. At the time this house was built, the manor was therefore in the possession of the Courtenay family, and there is httle doubt that they built it as their manor house, i.h.p.
