The Manor House
The Manor House originally belonged to Evesham Abbey and was founded in 709. As this was probably a wooden building, no archaeological evidence has been found of its existence. The Domesday book mentions the land, but not the building. The first reference to a building was in 1316 when Abbot William de Chiriton ordered stone for buildings in Badsey. It is assumed that this is when the stone part of the present building was erected as it stands in an exact east/west orientation as do most ecclesiastical buildings.
At least four different activities for the monks are recorded at Badsey: Monks and lay-brothers worked the land providing food and an income for the abbey, there was a kitchen providing food equivalent to that in the abbey, it cared for sick monks and the monks were bled here. After being bled they were allowed to rest in a warm room for several days, have special food and be excused their normal monastic duties. The bled monks were called Minuti, the reduced ones and this building became called the Seyne House from and the old French words seyne, or seigne meaning bled.
After the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII gave the manor to Philip Hoby, one of his ambassadors, along with much of the land surrounding Badsey. It remained in the possession of the Hoby family until the 17th century. After the Civil War the Manor passed into the hands of the Wilson family who remained owners until 1908, when the house was sold to Edward Wilson’s sister Matilda Osborne Wingfield and her son John. John renovated the house in the Arts and Crafts style. He sold it in 1913, and for a few years it was a home for boys from Birmingham before being taken over by the Government and used as a hostel for 100 German prisoners of war. When they were repatriated in 1919 the house remained largely empty until the end of the Second World War when families of Dunkirk evacuees lived there. After the war the Robinson family from Lancashire bought the house, restored it and divided it into the two dwellings you see today.