Thorneycroft

Thorneycroft is a house, now used as a school, built around 1877. It features coursed and squared rusticated rubble with a graded slate roof that has cresting, designed in the Gothic style. The building is two storeys tall with an attic and has a square plan, although it is asymmetrically detailed. The entrance front includes a central entrance within a gabled porch, which has stilted arches leading to both the porch and the inner doorway made of banded brick and stone. The arches are adorned with foliate hoodmoulds and capitals. This central bay is highlighted by a steep hipped roof with wrought-iron brattishing. There are stair windows on either side, featuring moulded arched lights and quatrefoils above the upper windows. A two-light window is positioned above the doorway and in the right-hand bay. To the right, there is a projecting octagonal scullery or wash-house topped with a pyramidal roof. The left-hand return elevation displays a three-window range with a central gabled bay and two-pane sash windows. The garden front showcases a canted bay window with marble shafts and an ornamental parapet in the right-hand bay, and above it, there is a three-light mullioned and transomed window with blind segmental arches beneath a steep coped gable that has a trefoiled panel and finial. To the left, there is a four-light mullioned and transomed window alongside a three-light window with blind arched heads above, set in an advanced gable supported by corbels. The service bay beyond has narrower windows and a lower roof.

Inside, many original features have been preserved, including the tiled floors in the entrance porch, plaster ceilings and friezes, and most of the interior carpentry. The central stair hall boasts an ornate Gothic-style staircase and a richly detailed marble fireplace. A flat stained-glass lantern light illuminates the roof of the hall, and there is a coffered painted ceiling above the stairs, with a stained glass window providing light to the staircase.