Exterior
Country house, High Victorian Gothic style, in brown local stone with dressings of yellow Doulting stone, and blue-grey tooled stone to quoins, relieving arches and chimneys, possibly Llanddewi Brefi. Slate roofs with fine tall chimneys, three on main ridge, one on W side wall and one on rear roof between gables of rear NE wing. Chimneys are chamfered at angles, with battered bases, moulded plinths and brattished caps in ashlar. House is L-plan with projected double gabled wing to rear NE, and asymmetrical 5-bay S front with double gable to the 2 bays to right and single gable to left bay. Gables are shouldered with copings and stone finials. Principal rooms are in first 3 bays from right with entrance in second bay, while narrow fourth bay has service entry and stair and left bay has service rooms with lower floor levels. Heavy machiolated eaves band over third and fourth bays, between gables, and over 3rd bay, a 2-light dormer with steep roof, ornate cusped bargeboards with collar, and Gothic 2-light window with pointed top lights. The windows are mostly plate-glass small sashes in square-headed ashlar surrounds, pointed larger windows in the gables. In the 3 right bays, the 2 right gables have 2-light windows under pointed arches with trefoil lights in heads and hoodmoulds, first floor has mullion windows with shouldered heads to lights and brattished dripmoulds above, 2-light to the flanking bays 1-2-1 lights to centre. Relieving arches over centre and right windows. Ground floor has massive 3-bay porch to centre, plate-traceried ashlar rose window to former library to right, with stone voussoirs to arched head and flat sill beneath, and segmental pointed 3-light to left, lighting former study, with hoodmould, stone voussoirs, transom and stepped cusped heads to lights. Iron casement windows. The porch is the dominant element of the front and is of singularly massive construction. The deeply-shouldered openings have lintels of massive single ashlar blocks, roll-moulded, while the shoulders have large-scale Gothic leaf-carving on the inner faces. Four Gothic columns with carved capitals, shaft rings and bases, the shafts of pink Shap granite. Interlaced roundels in pierced ashlar parapet, low relief foliage carving to the spandrels including around the corners, unusually varied naturalistic carving to the 'shoulders' of the openings and to the capitals including a fox with a bird, rabbits, squirrels and an eagle. The columns have high octagonal plinths; modern pavement. Coved and ribbed painted boarded ceiling. Within is trefoil-arched main doorway flanked by single-light windows with transoms. Panelled main door with 2 glazed panels and traceried overlight. At extreme right corner slate corner stone inscribed July 1870.
The narrow fourth bay, to left, has square-headed door and 2 stair-lights above joined vertically by a pierced ashlar panel, the top one with cusped pointed head. The fifth bay, to left, has ground floor flat-headed 3-light window, first floor 2-light, both with relieving arches but without the dripmoulds and shouldered heads of the similar windows on the main part of the house, and attic tall plate traceried pointed 2-light window with hoodmould, two plain pointed lights and roundel. The windows of the two upper floors here are set lower than those of the main apartments though the gable is of matching height. On W end is a big wall-face chimney over machicolated eaves, over a 2-storey projection twin-gabled to W with S side machicolated eaves (at first floor sill level to first bay of main range). The 2 W gables have first floor rectangular lights, 2 to left, a pair to right and ground floor hipped porch with shouldered-headed door to S side and ashlar chamfered eaves.
East garden front of 3 bays, 2 stone dormer gables, coped with finials and each with single pointed arched opening with trefoil over a transom and single square-headed sash. Machicolated eaves. Similar details to main front at first floor (mullion windows with brattished cornices), one to left, one to centre altered to a door, and a pair to right. Almost full width ashlar projection to ground floor with moulded cornice. To left an open 2-bay loggia with 2 broad shouldered openings similar to those on front porch, and pointed arch on S end. Sculpture detail of similarly fine quality (one of the best figures being an owl), and pavement of encaustic tiles by Maw and Co. Within, large French window with 2 lights and top lights and ring-shafted column between (capital below top lights). To right under same cornice is a big 3-light drawing-room window with similar ringed columns between French windows but with ashlar cusped pointed top-lights in square-headed openings.
Rear echoes front with projecting double gable to left and single gable to right. Higher rear wall to right as ground has been excavated for a full-height basement, formerly opening onto an enclosed courtyard. Twin gables to left have 2-light pointed attic windows with trefoils in heads, single and 2-light windows to first floor with shouldered heads, and ground floor 2-light window to left of dining room big splayed bay of 1-3-1 lights with lion and leopard gargoyles. Cusped pointed heads to lights in roll-moulded square-headed surrounds. Relieving arch over left window, parapet to dining-room bay with hipped roof behind. Timber attic dormer on the W return side. Small second floor oriel set diagonally in angle between NE wing and main rear range. Main rear wall has machicolated eaves, tall 2-light pointed stair window to left with transom, cusped heads to lights and quatrefoil above. Narrow single light each floor in next bay to right, the upper one with cusped head and panel between windows linked vertically, the lower one square-headed. The further gable to right has pointed plate-traceried 2-light to attic with big roundel in head, two-light to first floor and 3-light to ground floor, with relieving arches. Basement under this range has cambered heads to openings in grey stone.
Some good surviving cast-iron rainwater heads and downpipes.