Cave Castle

Cave Castle is a house dating from 1804, designed by Henry Hakewill for Henry Boldero Barnard. It was extensively remodelled around 1872 for Charles Boldero Barnard. Domestic ranges were demolished around 1938. The house is constructed of white brick with stone dressings and has a graduated slate roof. It is built in the Gothick Revival style, with a square plan and polygonal angle turrets.

The entrance front is three storeys high with four bays, featuring a central, three-storey projecting porch. It has diagonal buttresses with offsets flanking a pointed doorway in the Perpendicular style, composed of three moulded orders on nook-shafts with ornate roundels to the spandrels, set within a flat-headed surround. A canted oriel window with single lights and transoms sits above the doorway on the first floor, with a similar window on the second floor below a low crenellated parapet. A raised coped gable bears a cross finial and a coat of arms. Later 20th-century extensions of no particular architectural merit are located to the right and left of the porch at ground floor level. First floor windows have sill bands; a two-light cross-mullion window is to the right, and two similar windows to the left. A band of smaller windows runs along the second floor. The crenellated parapet tops the building, with grouped octagonal stacks rising from the hipped roof. The four-storey corner turrets have boarded doors in pointed openings and blocked lancets, all with sill bands. Gun-loops are located at eaves level, with a string course and crenellated parapets.

The garden front is two storeys high with a symmetrical five-bay elevation. A projecting canted bay window rises through two floors and has transomed windows and a crenellated parapet, flanked by buttresses with offsets that extend above the eaves and are capped with their own crenellations. A French window is located to the right, with all other windows being cross-mullioned. Those on the first floor have double transoms and hoodmoulds with foliage stops, with sills also featuring foliage stops. The windows throughout have 20th-century glazing. A crenellated parapet tops the front. A turret to the left has small four-centred windows in square openings with decorated spandrels, and a gun loop at eaves level, alongside a string course and crenellated parapet.

The interior has been considerably altered in the late 19th century. A cut-string staircase features scrolled tread-ends and an ornate wrought-iron balustrade with a moulded handrail. An oval cartouche above the stair displays a sculptural group in high relief depicting Neptune in his chariot, with smaller classical roundels on either side. A suite of rooms on the first floor, originally a single room, boasts a series of fine and elaborate classical plaster ceilings.