Its site, closely adjoining the parish church, was doubtless that of the former manor-house. The principal entrance is on the east, through a three-gabled gate-house, two storeys high, standing back from the public road. Coped walls of brick connect this gate-house with the Hall itself, and enclose a quadrangle, which appears in 1700 as an open grassy court, but is now well-nigh filled by four stately cedars of Lebanon. A similarly walled quadrangle on the west is laid out as a flower garden. Between these courts is placed the house itself, facing east and west, and rising in three storeys to the height of 52 feet, surmounted by a plain parapet and flat roof of lead, from which rise three octagonal turrets of brick, capped with leaden cupolas. Roughly speaking, its ground plan is of that E-shape, fancifully said to represent the initial letter of the great Queen’s name, with projecting wings at either end, and a smaller projection in the centre, the lowest storey of which forms an entrance porch on either side. Its extreme length from north to south is 160 feet, and its greatest breadth at the wings is 75 feet. The house, as well as the gate-house and connecting walls, is built of brick, with stone groins, string-courses and coping, and has large square, stone-mullioned windows. Many of the small-sized bricks, made in fields close by, and of unsifted clay, are over-burnt and black; these are built in alternately with the others, or in parts are arranged so as to form a diamond pattern. We may be permitted here to quote the description of the house as given by such an authority on the architecture of the period as Mr. Gotch. “Twelve years later,” he says, than Barlborough in Derbyshire, “we get Doddington in Lincolnshire (1595), a plan which reverts to the type of Montacute. It has the usual characteristics of the simplest kind—wings one room thick—the entrance at the end of the hall, leading on the left to the buttery, pantry, and kitchens; the parlour at the head of the hall, and the principal staircase adjacent. Here, however, as at Montacute, the hall is only one storey in height; it has a room above it, the great chamber, and on the top floor the gallery extends over the whole central part from wing to wing.