History

Said to be late C18 and the work of Italian craftsmen. The present L-shaped service range was built in the late C19 replacing an earlier service range shown on the 1844 Tithe and 1880 Ordnance Surveys. The house was a private college 1948-59, then a country club and subsequently an hotel.

Exterior

A Georgian villa of 2 storeys and 3 bays, with stuccoed walls retaining traces of scribing, and projecting eaves under a hipped slate roof (the stacks have been taken down). The symmetrical front has a central portico with Greek Doric columns in antis, a simple entablature with frieze of wreaths, and a doorway with moulded architrave, plain semi-circular overlight and replaced door. The windows are 12-pane hornless sashes. In the lower storey the windows of the outer bays have shallow rusticated aedicules, the shallow projection carried up above a sill band in the upper storey to frame the windows in the outer bays of the upper storey. The upper storey windows have thin moulded architraves.
In the L side wall are 2 full-height canted bays and a moulded sill band to the upper storey. The upper storey has 3 hornless sashes in architraves; in the lower storey are French doors in the canted bays, on the L side with steps leading to a basement door. A full-width verandah with shallow projections respecting the canted bays has polygonal wooden posts, an open meander and palmette frieze, and a swept roof with fishscale slates. The 3-bay rear wall is cement-rendered and has French doors in architraves to the lower storey. In the upper storey are 12-pane hornless sashes in the outer bays with architraves and a sill band. The central window is cut down to make an escape stair.
On the R (W) side of the front is a lower L-shaped 2-storey service range. The oldest part, attached to the main house, has a hipped slate roof and 2 hornless sashes in the upper storey with a later lean-to below.

Interior

An entrance vestibule has a plaster vault and leads to the stair hall. The geometrical stair has a wreathed handrail, scrolled iron balusters and moulded string. At the top is a gallery with a plaster vault. In the stair hall are round-headed alcoves. The principal interior room is to the L and is now a restaurant. It has 2 arched, moulded recesses, and a cornice of acanthus leaves. Other rooms have classicising plaster cornices.

Reasons for Listing

Listed as a Georgian villa retaining its original character, of a type once familiar in the district.

External Links

• Cadwr Listing
• Wikidata Q29489962

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Farrow & Ball How to Decorate: Transform your home with paint & paper
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  The green guide for historic buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2