The Lyth

ELLESMERE RURAL

1585/9/84 A 528 27-MAY-53 (West side) THE LYTH

II* Small country house. 1819 with minor later additions and alterations. Painted brick; low-pitched hipped slate roof with deep eaves, central open-well and stacks to either side of centre projection and to rear. 2 storeys with continuous first-floor stone cill band. 1:1:1 bays, centre section projecting; glazing bar sashes, tripartite to centre on first floor, dummies to upper left and on either side to ground floor, latter 15-paned. Central entrance; wide half-glazed double doors with flanking vertical lights and rectangular overlight. Cast-iron verandah with trellised supports continued to left and right returns, former in 1:2:1 bays. Glazing bar sashes, 15-paned to centre on ground floor and tripartite to left and right. Right return has 4 widely spaced glazing bar sashes to each floor. Contemporary lower hip-roofed service ranges attached to rear grouped around square courtyard. Interior. Wood open-well staircase in central hall,top-lit by circular lantern, has 2 slender wrought-iron balusters to each tread. Several contemporary fireplaces and plaster cornices to ground-floor rooms, several of which have panelled window shutters. Morning room (to left of entrance) has Dufour wallpaper of c.1815-20 portraying journeys of Antenor, original to house. Also in house since its construction are tapestries by John Vanderbank of Soho, c.1730. These are fixed within frames in the dining room (to right of entrance) which appears to have been designed to accommodate them. 2 large scenes on end walls with smaller scene above fireplace and entre-fenêtre opposite. These depict 'The Return from Harvest' and 'The Gipsies Fortune-Telling' with 'Backgammon Players' attached (large scenes); 'The Scene outside an Ale-house' (above fireplace) and a boy with feathered hat and stick facing, to his right, a man driving 2 cows (entre-fenêtre). The tapestries have a narrow grey rope border and there is a tradition that they may have come from Windsor Castle, though no documentary evidence for this statement exists. B.O.E. p. 128; H.C. Marillier, Handbook to the Teniers Tapestries (1932), p. 108; CL (Feb. 3rd, 1977), pp. 252-3; information from owner, L.R. Jebb, Esq. (February 1987).