Rudhall House (That Part In Brampton Abbotts Civil Parish

Rudhall House is a manor house with a 14th-century core that has been extensively remodelled and altered over several centuries. The building features a timber-framed core with a sandstone rubble plinth, largely refaced in sandstone rubble and brick with partial rendering. The roofs are tiled throughout.

The original structure consisted of a former hall and cross-wing aligned north-south, with the cross-wing at the south end now obscured by later additions. The building was extended westward at the south end during the 16th century, with further additions to the north and west of the hall range added in the 17th century, and additional extensions to the east of the north end. The house suffered fire damage in the 17th century and underwent subsequent rebuilding. Further alterations were made in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with 20th-century restoration works.

The west front of the hall range is the principal elevation. It displays two storeys with attics and features three gables with decorative bargeboards and finials topped with three-light casement windows. The left section contains two glazing bar sash windows and a Venetian window at ground floor level. An early 17th-century stone porch projects forward at the centre, with paired Ionic pilasters and entablature to both storeys, capped by the Rudhall crest flanked by strapwork and finials. The porch has a three-light window to the upper floor and an elliptical headed doorway. A small stone turret of three stages with string courses and parapet projects slightly at the north-west corner of the hall range. The forward projecting wing to the right has a jettied upper floor with three gables featuring decorative bargeboards, finials and decorative tie-beams. Three glazing bar sash windows sit beneath the gables, each flanked by semi-circular headed niches. Four closely set mullioned and three-light windows are positioned across this elevation, arranged in groups of four-light and three-light windows. Close-studded timber framing is revealed on the north front of the west wing and to the east gable end, with decorative members visible on the north front of the west wing. The framing of the east gable end reveals the differing stages of the roof-line.

The interior retains the smoke-blackened 14th-century roof of the earlier hall, largely intact and possibly of three bays, with pairs of cusped wind-braces and curved braces to collar. The 16th-century roof of the west wing features chamfered members and swept wind-braces. The interior preserves many late 16th and 17th-century features, including an inserted ceiling in the former hall with decorative ribbing and pendants, linenfold type panelling to the north side, 17th-century panelling to the south, and a main staircase with robust turned balusters and square newels, altered on return to the landing on the upper floor. One central room of the west wing retains 17th-century panelling with dolphin frieze and an elaborate overmantel to the fireplace, featuring two stages of three semi-circular headed enriched arches. Other rooms retain fittings including chamfered and moulded ceiling beams and fragments of panelling. There was probably originally a chapel at the west end of the west wing; ceiling beams and the roof truss in this section reveal that the building originally extended further in this direction, though a slender 19th-century shaft supporting the higher part of the ceiling in the ground floor room is likely of that period.

The house is situated at the crossing point of three parishes: Brampton Abbotts, Weston under Penyard and Ross-on-Wye.