Wyastone Leys

Wyastone Leys is a former country house built in the late 18th century and rebuilt between 1861 and 1862 for John Bannerman, designed by William Burn. The building features ashlar stonework and slate roofs, with an ogee-shaped leaded capping on the block tower and turrets. It has a double depth plan aligned north to south, facing west, with a forward projecting service wing at the north end and a clock tower at the angle.

The house is designed in the Jacobean style, comprising a four-storey clock tower, a three-storey main house, and a two-storey service wing. It has a plain plinth string course at the first floor level, a moulded cornice with a parapet and shaped gables, rusticated quoins, pronounced architraves around the windows, and decorative jewelled motifs flanked by scrolls on the lintels of the first-floor windows. The main range has six windows, with single vertical glazing bar sash windows on the first and second floors and plain sash windows on the ground floor. The right end bay features shaped gables, with a smaller shaped gable above the entrance bay that displays the Bannerman arms. There is a lateral stack with a decorative octagonal shaft to the left of the left gable.

A Tuscan porch with antae and a parapet, flanked by two finials, features a central raised shaped panel also bearing the Bannerman arms, with steps leading up to a partly glazed door. To the left of the porch, there is a single range of narrow sash windows in the clock tower, which has clock faces on three sides on the fourth storey. The ogee capping includes lucarnes and a finial with a weather vane. The service wing to the left has a single window range on the gable end and a glazed second door on the ground floor.

The right return garden elevation includes a two-storey canted bay to the left and turrets flanking a single-storey canted bay to the right, with similar shaped gables and a smaller gable over the central window range. The canted bays have pierced parapets, and the rear elevation mirrors this arrangement, featuring a louvred lantern on the canted rear of the service wing. The interior has been largely altered for business and domestic uses, but the long drawing room at the rear of the ground floor retains some fine restored stucco ceiling ornament.