Building record LWT 936 - Outbuilding at Manor House

Manor House lies to the south-east of the conurbation of Lowestoft on the northern side of Pakefield Street which forms the boundary between the historic parishes of Kirkley and Pakefield. At the time of its construction in the early-19th century the red-brick building was a relatively isolated rural gentry residence and was known as Marine Villa before borrowing the name of a nearby property lost to coastal erosion in or about the 1880s. It was probably built by Abraham Scales, a wealthy grocer and Quaker who owned a second substantial house of much the same date on the same plot of land that was bisected in circa 1830 by the new turnpike road to the north. This second property is currently called Walmer House on London Road South, and may have been occupied by Abraham’s widowed mother and sister – or vice versa. Both houses retain strikingly similar outbuildings of pantiled flint-rubble, and the example at Manor House was built in two distinct phases. The first contains a stable and hay loft linked by a wall to the house which shares the same listing entry, while the slightly later extension to the north was divided into a vehicle shed and tack room to form a standard coach house. The stable was largely rebuilt and raised in height during the late-19th century and unusually the tack room was provided with a fireplace and a domestic staircase in an apparent attempt to create a semi-independent dwelling perhaps for a groom – although there is no obvious candidate in the census returns. In the mid-20th century it was used as a bookshop and possibly the premises of Lowestoft’s Scorpion Press which published some 50 literary titles (S1).