Shoreston House

Shoreston House is a house dating from 1913, designed by Robert Mauchlen for Sir Stephen Runciman. It is constructed of random rubble with a finely dressed front face, and has a pantiled roof. The house is in an Arts and Crafts style. It is two storeys high, with a three-bay main block and attached granary, garage, and dovecote to the right. The left two bays project. A boarded and battened door with a twelve-pane casement window is located in the cross-gabled second bay, with a three-light casement window above. The single-storey left bay has a twelve-pane casement window under a catslide roof. The right bay has two casements on the ground floor and one large casement above. To the right of this is a projecting garage with a cross-gabled roof, the left pitch of which is longer and has swept eaves. A dovecote is set within the gable, containing ten pigeon holes and four alighting ledges, and a boarded garage door is on the right return. To the right of the garage and behind it is an outhouse, under the same roof as the main house, featuring a half-glazed door and flanking six-pane casement windows on the ground floor. Four ventilation slits are set into the granary above. The roof is gabled with a corniced stack at the left end and a ridge stack. A former archway, made into a doorway in the mid 20th century, is attached to the left. The archway rises from moulded corbels and has a pantiled roof, and it links to Shoreston Cottage and Midcote. The house forms a picturesque group with neighbouring houses and was featured in "Before the Mast and After", a publication by Sir Stephen Runciman, published in Newcastle in 1924.