Qualla: Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint

Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit WFan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Behind a brick Georgian facade on the High Street of a West Sussex village, a Tudor timber frame is still doing the work it was built for. The Mansion House at Hurstpierpoint started life as a single-storey hall house in the second half of the 16th century - a building of some pretension, with under-plastered ceilings in unexpected places and a kitchen wing attached to the rear. Then the 17th century gave it a principal staircase. The Georgians rebuilt the west wing and the front facade. The Victorians added glazed extensions. The 1950s converted it into flats; the 21st century reunited it back into a single home. Read the building from the outside and you see a Georgian gentleman's house. Read it from the inside and you see a medieval one, with 450 years of additions stacked on like sweaters.

Image: WFan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint: A House for Someone Who Mattered

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charlesdrakew at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The earliest surviving fabric in the building dates to the mid-to-late 16th century. Whoever built it was wealthy. The high-end features - the under-plastered ceilings, the size of the rooms, the relationship between the house and its grounds - all point to someone of substantial...

Image: Charlesdrakew at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint: The Beard Family Century and a Half

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Toby Lott, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first identifiable resident, mentioned in a 1636 boundary document, was William Jordan. He was gone by 1642, when the Beard family appears in the records and stays for the next 150 years. Ralph Beard - a barrister at the Inner Temple in London and lawyer to Lord Goring of the...

Image: Toby Lott | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint: The Doctors of Hurstpierpoint

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J.Smith, Public domain. By the end of the 18th century the Beard line had ended at the Mansion House. The Weekes family - a dynasty of doctors and apothecaries with substantial property in Sussex - took over. Richard Weekes wrote in October 1801 about repairs to "Mrs Beard's house": new sashes, two wind...

Image: J.Smith | Public domain

Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint: A School and a Brief Interlude

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Recent Runes, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 1850 and 1853 the Mansion House was not a home at all. It was a school. After Dick Weekes died in 1847, his widow leased the house to the newly formed Hurst College, which moved in on 28 January 1850 from temporary premises in Shoreham. The top floor accommodated servants...

Image: Recent Runes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint: Flats, Then Whole Again

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Toby Lott, CC BY-SA 3.0. Dr Esmond Millington bought the property in 1947 for £10,000. He kept it as a single home for a few years and then, in 1958, broke it up - subdividing the building through Millington Properties Limited into two principal flats and a service flat, with separation walls and a Jacob...

Image: Toby Lott | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mansion House, Hurstpierpoint: Listed and Layered

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Carey, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Mansion House was Grade II* listed on 28 October 1957, the same date as the adjacent Mansion House Cottage. The boundary walls to the south and northwest are listed separately, as is the round Tower House in the garden - a 19th-century folly added between 1841 and 1874. A his...

Image: Simon Carey | CC BY-SA 2.0