Historical pictures
Historical pictures taken of the manor facade over the decades show that the door has been in this position for a long time, although for a period it appears to have been moved to the left, only subsequently to be moved back again.
Today the door, when viewed from a distance, appears in a central position, with four windows to each side, when the two-bay east wing is taken into account, but it is not underneath the bell which is in the centre of the roofline and above the central windows of the main building.
As the pictures below show, the door was in the 'wrong place' when a watercolour painting was made. This painting is believed to be over 200 years old and date from the late 18th century.
When the manor was enlarged and the pseudo-Gothic battlement extended in the early 19th century, the door remained off centre. However, the photograph of men working in the grounds in front of the manor show clearly that the door has moved to the centre and is covered with a stone porch.
The date of this photograph is not known. It was used in the Jersey Evening Post in 2011 to accompany an article about the rebuilding of the manor a century earlier by Athelston Riley. However, it seems unlikely that it was taken around 1911, and it is probably many years earlier. Other pictures showing the work undertaken from 1909 to 1911 show the new roof being built and the doorway moved back to its orginal position one bay to the right of centre.
And there it was when the restoration was complete and Athelston Riley wrote about it in the 1922 Annual Bulletin of La Société Jersiaise and there it remains today.
A watercolour from the late 18th century.
The manor before it was restored and extended.
Work on constructing the gardens at an unknown date with the door clearly moved one bay to the left
The new roof is constructed and the door has moved back again
The Manor rebuilt. Although the door is in the centre of the extended frontage, it still looks out of place in relation to the tall roof
