Belmont House

Belmont House is a substantial country house built of Bath stone and sandstone with limestone dressings and a plain tile roof. The core of the building dates from the 18th century, but it underwent significant remodelling in the late 18th century by James Wyatt and further major additions in the 1860s that clothed much of the original structure in a Gothic Revival style.

The 18th-century plan provided six principal rooms on the ground floor. The 1860s western extension added two large interconnecting reception rooms arranged in an L-shape, along with a service entrance and staircase. Further west still, a lower block contains a chapel at mezzanine level with a sacristy and service rooms below.

Exterior

The southern entrance front presents a picturesque Gothic composition. The right-hand section has five bays arranged almost symmetrically, with the outer bays being wider and projecting slightly. The three central bays are closely spaced and sheltered by a deep porte cochère with granite columns and stilted arches. The column capitals here and elsewhere on this front remain uncarved. The porte cochère originally had a parapet with openwork panels, which has been removed and stored. To the right at ground floor level is a three-light mullioned and transomed window beneath a broad relieving arch. The staircase hall window on the left combines four small lights serving ground-floor service rooms with a tall two-light window extending upwards through two storeys, featuring cusped heads to the lights and a carved hexafoil at the top of the pointed relieving arch. Other windows on this front are single or paired lancets. A corbel table at the top of the wall supports a running pattern of miniature cusped arches forming a decorative cornice. The attic level has four gabled dormers with steeply pitched roofs, bargeboards and iron finials. Two large chimney stacks with moulded caps rise at either side of the hipped roof, one of which has been truncated.

Recessed to the left is a semi-glazed doorway, apparently a luggage entrance, with paired lancets to the two floors above. Further left and projecting is a gabled wing with two two-light windows at ground floor level separated by a column that rises to support ribs beneath a canted oriel window at first floor. This oriel has two-light windows with hexafoils to the heads of their relieving arches, panels of quatrefoils below the sills, and a parapet with trefoil openings. Above this is a two-light casement rising into the gable. The low, recessed service wing to the left has a doorway at the right and a large gable at the left containing two two-light windows with cusped heads and quatrefoils to their tops. On the ridge above these windows is a gabled timber bellcote.

The east front has a central glazed porch at ground floor level with doors to the north and south sides and a mullioned and transomed window facing east with foiled heads to the four lights. To the right of this is a window with mullion and transom and an arched head, while the first and second floors have paired lancets with shared hoodmoulds. The corbel table and cornice continue around this front, and there are three gabled dormers matching those on the south front.

The north front, facing towards the river, presents a striking contrast between architectural styles. On the left is the classical front designed by James Wyatt in the late 18th century. The added thickness of the external walls resulting from the 1860s remodelling is revealed at the extreme left, where the walling from the east front wraps around to join this front and retains a small portion of the corbelled cornice at the top. The Wyatt front has five bays with three bays clustered in a segmental bay projecting at the centre. At either side are tripartite windows with French windows to their centre allowing access to the terrace, beneath segmental relieving arches with recessed segmental tympana. There is a band between the ground and first floors and another at first-floor window sill level, providing strong horizontal emphasis. First-floor windows are sashes of three by four panes and those to the second floor are three by two panes, except for the right-hand window which has been replaced by two casement lights. A deep cornice runs along the top of the wall. The attic has five gabled dormers dating from the 1860s, and the apex of the conical roof above the bow has an iron finial.

To the right of the Wyatt front, the Gothic addition of the 1860s extends for three bays. The basement storey is exposed with a doorway at left and paired sashes to the right. At ground-floor level are mullioned and transomed lights with cusped heads to the lights and relieving arches with carved quatrefoil panels to the tympana. First-floor level has paired lancets at either side and a single lancet to the centre. The attic floor has a small central window with a catslide roof, flanked by projecting gabled dormers each supported by a row of heavy corbels. Further right and lower is the canted apse of the chapel. The chapel windows are each of two lights with cusped heads and a quatrefoil to the apex. The top of the wall features the corbel table and row of miniature arches seen elsewhere, and the apex of the hipped roof has an iron finial in the form of a cross. To the right again is the service wing of two low storeys with random fenestration.

Interior

The Entrance Hall combines Gothic and classical elements. It has Gothic windows and a panelled door on the southern side, which unlike the other three sides is bare stone rather than plastered. Throughout the house, the added thickness of the external walls created by clothing the building with a Gothic skin has allowed for deep, moulded window surrounds on the inner face with colonettes to either side and roll mouldings to the cusped heads. The panelled oak door has cusped panels to the top and cusped tracery to the fanlight. The fireplace is classical with deep mouldings of fasces to the uprights and a sword and fascis crossed in the frieze panel, flanked by oval wreaths of oak leaves, apparently dating from the early 19th century. The cornice running around all sides of the room is also classical and appears to date from Wyatt's late 18th-century scheme of decoration.

Other ground-floor rooms continue this mixture of Gothic and classical motifs. Original doors and shutters have mostly been replaced with a large-scale linen-fold pattern, though 18th-century cornices have been retained in most rooms. The drawing room has a marble fire surround of white and variegated marble with carved drapes. The central room on the north side has a fireplace with carved vine scrolls and thyrsae (Bacchus' stave) to the uprights and retains its dado rail. The south-eastern room is connected to the drawing room by a pair of Victorian sliding doors and has a white marble fireplace of French style, suggesting the room may have been intended as a boudoir.

The pair of reception rooms added in the 1860s is fitted out with doors and shutters of similar patterns and cornices of the same dimensions as those in the 18th-century part of the house. Fireplaces are of variegated marble with segmental arches, and the flooring through these rooms and the staircase hall is parquetry.

The two-storey staircase hall has an open-well stair running around the room with a half-landing to the south side and landing to the north. The balusters are of turned bobbin style with dado panelling to the wall. The fire surround on the east wall has a plain surround of variegated marble and the ceiling is panelled.

The chapel is approached from a passageway entered either from an external doorway or from a door in the L-shaped drawing room. A flight of steps leads up to a plank door with decorative iron hinges. The chapel walls are of bare cream limestone with bands of dark grey stone, and there are encaustic tiles and oak blocks to the floor and a panelled wooden ceiling. At the south end (ritual west) is a gallery and at the north is the altar raised by a step. The altar has a mensa of variegated marble supported by three columns of similar material with carved limestone capitals. There is a credence of the same marble behind the altar.

First and second-floor rooms echo the dimensions of those at ground floor level but have plainer decoration. Two exceptions are the room in the bow on the north side, which has a white marble fireplace with carved anthemia and a duck's nest grate, and the room behind the oriel on the south side, which has carved joinery to the interior of the window and a variegated marble fire surround.

The former service rooms at basement level have been converted to reception rooms, changing rooms and meeting rooms in connection with the golf club. A series of heavy stone arches crossing the central corridor of the Victorian block can still be seen, but other parts of the plan have been altered.