Exterior
Country house, rock-faced squared rubble stone with Bath stone dressings and steep slate roofs with deep eaves and bargeboards. Numerous large quoined chimneys with ashlar string courses, cornices and heavy chamfered caps. Victorian domestic C16-17 style with big mullion windows, almost all with transoms, the mullions and transoms mostly of painted timber, in ashlar chamfered frames. Ashlar quoins, plinth, string course common to whole building. Cast-iron verandas on S and E sides, another removed on N side.
Complex plan with very complex roofscape, the original house essentially a gabled composition with short pyramid-roofed stair tower, now dominated by the massive square NW corner addition of the 1880s with its flat-capped hipped roof.
S entrance front is stepped back in 3 steps, crosswing to left, forward of 2-bay entrance range hipped at SE, forward of one-bay service range, with a lower (possibly 1880s) range at right angles across the E end. Gabled crosswing to left has deep verges, small hoodmoulded square attic light with Gothic glazing bars, first floor big 3-light with relieving arch and ground floor similar larger 3-light and relieving arch. Entrance range set back to right has roof hipped at angle to right and chimney on ridge to left. Two-light and 3-light window to first floor with mid-transom, door and floor-length 3-light below in 3-bay cast-iron veranda. Door has overlight with etched and coloured margins over segmental- arched doorhead with shields in spandrels, and half-glazed 6-panel door. Veranda has thin fluted columns carrying cast-iron tracery of broad shallow arches, the left 2 bays open, the right one and end bay infilled with glass and iron glazing bars.
Right return has 2-light each floor in angle to service range and a chimney on ridge running back from hipped angle. One-bay service range has 2 close-spaced chimneys, on ridge and right end, and 3-light each floor. For attached E range see below.
W garden front is equally stepped in plan with side of the crosswing to right, then slightly projected pyramid roofed stair tower and then far-projecting added NW corner block. Side of crosswing has a bargeboarded gable over 3-light with relieving arch and big ground floor 1-3-1-light canted bay window with painted stone mullions, coved cornice and tarred canted hipped roof, the string course stepped over. Roof of cross-wing is hipped steeply to left, leaving valley before steep pyramid roof of stair tower to left. Roof is not quite a pyramid as with short ridge and two Gothic wrought iron finials one behind the other. Wall face projects slightly and deep eaves are at slightly higher level than range to left but equal to eaves of NW addition. Eaves have unusual ashlar rounded block brackets. Ashlar quoins and mid-height cambered-headed stairlight with flat hoodmould stepped up from main string course. Shield plaque inscribed 'CB fecit 1871' above and relieving arch. Window is 3-light with sunk spandrels. To left, set slightly back in narrow space between stair and NW wing is first floor narrow single light.
NW corner block added in 1880s is massive, near-square with steep hipped roof crowned with cast-iron Gothic ridge cresting on all 4 ridges with iron finials at angles. Timber Gothic dormers with deep verges and 2-light windows with cusped heads and quatrefoils, with iron casements, one each on S, W and N sides. Deep eaves with ashlar brackets as on stair tower, quoins, plinth and stringcourse as elsewhere. S return has first floor big 3-light, W end has similar 3-light over floor-length 3-light with relieving arch, the centre light a door reached up 6 stone steps. The N side has high plinth, big 2-storey square bay, in ashlar apart from rubble stone below 4-light window each floor, single-light each side. Ashlar mullions and transoms. E side has chimney.
N front is in 2 halves, to right the N front of the big NW corner block wing (see above) with narrow deep recess to garden door between this and original house with crosswing gable to right of 2-bay service range. In the recess is narrow single light above a segmental-pointed headed with relieving arch. Half-glazed door, the recess glazed with lean-to glass roof on cast-iron pierced beam on 2 sunburst-pattern brackets. Crosswing has bargeboards, chimney on left roof slope, hoodmoulded blank ashlar plaque in gable over 3-light at first floor and floor length 3-light below, the centre light opening onto terrace. Service range to right has the 2 close-spaced stacks (cf entrance front) and 4-light and 2-light each floor, all with a mid transom, the lower windows larger. One Gothic dormer like those on NW corner block. The terrace in front has iron railings and a door beneath at right end leading into cellar beneath NW corner block.
Attached across E end is lower range possibly added in 1880s to similar design, one and a half storeys with steep hipped roof to E front and gables on S and N ends set one-bay back from hipped corners. The gables have bargeboards, unusual first floor cambered-headed 3-light windows without transoms but with a small square light over the centre light. Relieving arch over window, string course below and ground floor large window, 4-light to S end, 3-light to N, N gable projects beyond bay to left, whereas S one is flush but S end steps forward from service range to left with 2-light stair window in W return. N gable has also a little Gothic lancet in apex. To right of S gable and to left of N gable a ground floor 2-light with relieving arch. Axial ridge stack just in from S gable. E front is characterful: a steep hipped roof with 2 steeply-gabled tiny dormers set high each side of centre one of 3 bargeboarded gables. The centre gable is larger and the 2-light window taller with transom which the other 2 lack. Ground floor is within another cast-iron veranda, of 4 bays, like that on S front but with different design to columns, cast-iron glazing bars to glazed end bays. Ground floor has off-centre half-glazed door between 2 small rectangular windows, with relieving arches.