Castle House

Castle House is a town house with a mid-18th century front and staircase, built around a late 16th century core. The front is constructed of Flemish bond brown brick, with grey slate roofs; the main roof slopes away from the facade, and there is a lower, long rear wing with a ridge running at a right angle to the front. It has two storeys and four windows. The house has a sandstone plinth and a stone step leading to a front door consisting of two short panels, two long panels, two long panels and two short panels, all fielded, within an eared architrave with a frieze and moulded cornice. The quoins are banded and made of stones of the same width. A stone floor band sits below a brick parapet with a coved stone cornice. The rear wing is rendered and has renewed windows.

The cellar has a barrel-vault, likely dating to the early 18th century, constructed with small bricks on sandstone walls to the front and sides; a rear extension is blocked. The front door has HL hinges, and a four-panelled door leads to the rear wing. Features include lambs-tongue-stopped chamfered cross-beams. The front west room has panelled embrasures with benches. The first room of the rear wing has two oak cross-beams carrying stop-chamfered joists, with cross-beams also visible in the passage. A large oak cross-beam is present in the rear room. A fine open-well oak staircase with a curtail, rose, and three spiral-moulded column-on-vase balusters per step rises over three flights. The front room on the second storey contains part of a 15th or earlier timber truss, featuring a post, tie-beam, arched brace, cambered collar, and wattle-and-daub panels between light posts. In the west bedroom are panelled embrasures; the adjacent room has a probable Elizabethan stone fireplace with a frieze bearing three heraldic shields, two Tudor roses, and three lozenge-shaped flowers. The plaster overmantel is divided into three panels and displays the royal arms from the period 1400-1603, likely dating to the Elizabethan era. One ceiling panel has reeded edges, and some timber framing is visible throughout. The middle bedroom has purlins with angled wind braces.