Manor House

The building was erected close to the site of the medieval manor house burned by Prince Rupert’s men in 1643 during the siege of Bristol. Purchased by the Society of Merchant Venturers in the late 17th century the site remained ruinous for many years. In 1701 a lease for five lives was granted to Whitchurch Phippen "of the site or ruins of the Great House at Clifton heretofore burnt down, and since called the Old Castle, late in the holding of Mary Hodges". The new manor house was built in the early 18th century and extensively altered and extended in the mid-18th and 19th centuries. In the 19th century it was successively the home of the notable scientists Dr William Budd, FRS, who discovered the origins of typhoid, and Professor John Beddoes, FRS, the social anthropologist who wrote The Races of Man. In the 1890s the house became a school preparing young gentlemen for colonial civil service examinations and for the army and navy. The school closed in 1915, and the house became the home of The Red Maids' School, evacuated from Westbury while their buildings were used as a Red Cross Hospital during the Great War.