Backwood Hall

Backwood Hall is a small mansion dating from the mid-19th century, built for the Glegg family. It is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with a slate roof, and designed in a Jacobean style. The building is two storeys and a basement, with five bays. The garden front features a central entrance approached by five steps to a patio, with a further four steps leading to a pair of four-panel, bolection-moulded oak doors. These are under a fanlight and flanked by pairs of Tuscan engaged columns, divided vertically into three by a classical Tuscan entablature that supports a strapwork balustrade. A late 19th-century single-storey projecting porch contrasts with the earlier facade. The three centre bays project forward, giving the appearance of pavilions to the end bays. Windows are sash windows with single vertical glazing bars, stone surrounds (moulded as architraves on the ground floor with flat, projecting ogee-moulded sills supported by knuckle-shaped corbels), flat window hoods on consoles with strapwork cresting above the door, and flat eaves to bays two and four. The central window is semicircular-headed, with massive consoles flanking the archivolt and strapwork cresting to the hood. First-floor windows have plain surrounds and a projecting sill band. Windows in the first, centre, and fifth bays are set under shaped gables with moulded kneelers and ball finials; the central gable displays the arms of the Glegg family and is flanked by a strapwork balustrade interspersed with piers and ball finials. At the rear, a square tower with a pyramidal roof and weather vane rises to an extra storey, with sash windows lacking glazing bars under wedge lintels. A two-storey canted bay faces north. Chimney stacks flank the centre bay projection and the gables of the wings, with divided flues above string courses and connected by a heavy, overhanging cornice cap. Inside, there are four-panel and six-panel doors, a pine dog-legged staircase with turned balusters, and oak panelling to plate rail level in the original entrance hall (now the inner hall). The entrance hall also features a marble mantelpiece, leaded half-glazed doors at both ends, and ceiling cornices based on rosettes and foliage.