Sugwas Court And Adjoining Stables

Sugwas Court is a country house with adjoining stables, dating from 1792, with later additions and alterations. The site incorporates the location of the former palace of the Bishops of Hereford. A late 12th-century doorway is incorporated into the stable block. The house is constructed mainly of brick with sandstone rubble to the rear, and has a hipped Welsh slate roof. The stables are a mix of sandstone rubble and brick with Welsh slate roofs. The house has an irregular plan, generally rectangular, with two parallel ranges aligned north/south. The main entrance is on the west front. Wings extend to the east at the rear, partially enclosing an inner courtyard, and a southern wing abuts the stable block. An earlier wing is aligned east/west and was extended further north and west in the mid-19th century to enclose a stable yard.

The west front of the house is two and three storeys high with cellars, and has five windows: two tripartite glazing bar sash windows with segmental heads flank a central semi-circular headed window with decorative glazing bars. On the ground floor, a tripartite glazing bar sash window and a Jacobean-style canted bow window are on either side of a semi-circular headed doorway with a decorative fanlight and a six-panelled door. The south front of the house has two-storey sections flanking a central, slightly projecting three-storey section with a pedimented detail and dentilled eaves cornice, and a string course at the second floor. This section has 2:1:2 glazing bar sash windows with rubbed brick flat arched heads, while the central section has tripartite glazing bar sash windows with segmental heads.

The earlier section of the stable block is two storeys high and incorporates a semi-circular headed doorway from the late 12th century, much of the chamfered label of which is obscured by the later brick stable block extending to the north. The north front of the earlier block has two segmental-headed coach openings and square-headed openings to the upper floor. A later addition features decorative lozenge pattern brickwork and three square-headed openings. The interior of the later addition reveals a doorway in the north face of the earlier block, demonstrating the original structure’s position.