Ridgemont

House. Built 1824-5 for William Stickney and the Constable Estate. Renovations carried out around 1983. Red-brown brick to the front, yellow brick to the plinth, sides and rear in Flemish bond. Slate roof. Approximately square on plan with a 2-room central entrance hall to the south front, 3 rooms deep. 2 storeys, 5 bays; symmetrical. The plinth has a 1740 datestone reset at the left angle. The entrance has a projecting Tuscan porch with columns carrying a plain entablature and flat hood. Pilasters flank a 2-fold, 6-fielded-panel door beneath a moulded cornice and radial overlight in a fielded-panel reveal with architrave. Ground-floor windows are 24-pane sashes with heavy central vertical glazing bars, set in reveals with ashlar sills and stucco arches with projecting hoods. Similar but smaller unequal 20-pane sashes light the first floor, with sills and cambered stucco arches. Plain wooden eaves board and ornate cast-iron brackets carry the gutter. The roof is hipped with a double span to the rear. Corniced yellow brick stacks have square pots. The right return has a blind window to the ground floor left, a tripartite sash with glazing bars, and a 20th-century porch to the right over a door with cambered arch. Three first-floor 16-pane sashes to the right and a similar blind window to the left feature sills and cambered brick arches. The left return has a blind window, a 16-pane sash and two 20th-century French windows in lengthened original openings to the ground floor, with similar sashes and a blind window to the right, all windows here beneath segmental arches. The rear has a 6-panel door and overlight, four 2-light windows with glazing bars beneath segmental arches.

Interior. The stairhall contains a good profiled cantilevered stone staircase with moulded nosing, ramped and wreathed corniced mahogany handrail, and a wrought-iron balustrade with alternating pairs of column balusters and scrolled interlaced panels with rosette ornament and column-on-vase newel. Moulded plaster cornice surrounds a tall stairwell to the rear with elliptical-arched openings to the first-floor passage and boldly-moulded cornice. The drawing room on the ground floor right contains a good grey and brown marble chimneypiece with tapered fluted pilasters carrying a panelled frieze with roundels to dosserets and fluted insets to the frieze, ornate moulded cornice with ribbed frieze. The dining room on the ground floor left has a pilastered grey marble chimneypiece and moulded cornice with open-work grapevine motif and ribbed frieze. The study to the rear left has a ribbed cornice. A secondary staircase to the rear has a moulded handrail, column newels and ribbed stick balusters. First-floor rooms have moulded cornices and a series of chimneypieces with panelled and ribbed pilasters, panelled and pulvinated friezes, and original ornate cast-iron grates. Elliptical-arched alcoves light the front bedrooms. 6-fielded-panel doors in architraves are found throughout. Fielded-panel window shutters and window seats to the main rooms are original. Dado rail and panelling to front rooms are 20th-century. A 19th-century photograph shows consoles to the front windows. In 1833 Ridgemont was noted for its progressive farm and labourer's cottages, none of which survive.