2372

 

II  

Designated  

17/11/1954  

19/03/2001  

Rockfield Park  

 

Monmouthshire  

Whitecastle  

 

 

348761  

215504  

E  

Standing in its own grounds on an elevated site SE of a long bend in the River Monnow, and approached by a drive running approximately 800m NE from Rockfield Bridge.  

Domestic  

 

The present building appears to be the product of late C18 or early C19 enlargement and gentrification of a former farmhouse, itself probably consisting of at least two phases.  

The house has a striking and distinctive appearance: a symmetrical 3-window façade characteristic of late-Georgian design wearing a tall hipped roof which betrays its earlier origins. White-painted render (probably on sandstone rubble) with blue slate roofs and rendered chimneys. It has an approximately rectangular plan, on an E-W axis facing W, made up of a single-depth 3-bay front range with coupled rear wings more than doubling its area; plus a short C19 lean-to extension to the rear and C20 extension to the S side of the front range. The front range, 2½ storeys over a cellar, with a plinth, a 1st-floor band and oversailing modillioned eaves, has a central doorway with a panelled door and rectangular side windows (now framed by a 3-bay Ionic-style porch added in the C20) flanked by large tripartite hornless sash windows with slender glazing bars; three 12-pane hornless sash windows at 1st floor; and a tall hipped roof slightly swept over the eaves, with 3 flat-roofed dormers which have 6-pane sashes. Two wide 4-flue chimney stacks rise from the bottom of the rear slope of the roof. Attached to the right-hand (S) end of the façade is a square, single-storey, flat-roofed C20 extension which has a 12-pane sashed window. On the N side, the front range has only a doorway to the cellar; the N rear wing has a pair of tall 12-pane sashes at ground floor and a rectangular oriel window above these with small-pane glazing in the top lights only (Edwardian style). On the S side the S rear wing, which is 3-storeyed to the same height, has 2 windows and a doorway at ground floor and 3 windows above these, all these openings segmental-headed, the windows 12-pane hornless sashes and the door part-glazed door with matching glazing bars; and at 2nd floor a single small 6-pane sash window above the first of the windows on the main floors.  

At the rear of a wide entrance hallway is a dog-legged staircase with stick balusters and a ramped mahogany handrail, the flight to 1st-floor level with cut string and a c.1900-style newel post at the foot, and the flight to attic level with closed string. At ground floor of the N wing is a dining room accessed by 2 doors from the central service passage, with a classical-style screen at its E end. The S rear wing contains a servants' staircase. Exposed below ceiling level in the attic of the front range are the lower halves of 2 principal-rafter roof trusses (the principals to the front passing up across the openings to 1st and 3rd dormers), the feet mounted on the tops of vertical wall-posts approximately 1m high , and the raked principal rafters of the hip at each end, with one set of trenched purlins running round the whole just below ceiling level. This roof structure appears to date from the early-mid C18.  

Included as an interesting late-Georgian remodelling of an earlier house.