Main House At Rossway

House. Commissioned in 1864-5 and completed in 1867. Designed by Robert Evans of Hine and Evans, architects of Nottingham, with Robert Young of Lincoln as builder. Alterations were made in 1889, also designed by Evans. The house is constructed of Luton blue brick with stone surrounds to openings and a slate roof.

The building comprises two main floors with a partial cellar at the east end. The plan features a projecting central entrance on the main north facade, leading to a large hall with stairs to the west and main rooms to the east and south. A projecting wing occupies the west side of the north front, with service rooms at the west end. The south elevation includes a row of bedrooms at first-floor level and rooms with large windows overlooking the garden.

The main north facade is dominated by a central projecting entrance bay with its own shallow hipped roof. A stone portico projects at ground-floor level, arranged in Palladian style with a round-headed door surround flanked by slender columns with foliated capitals. Recessed rectangular windows and porthole windows to both top corners flank the doorway, with boot scrapers to both sides. The roll moulding on either side of the portico is topped by a humorous and foliated carved face. The first-floor room within this entrance bay contains a matching Venetian window with stone surrounds. The five-window bays of the main facade block contain various windows: paired rectangular sashes at ground and first floors with eared architrave stone surrounds, round-headed windows, and smaller paired round-headed windows within single surrounds. A stone belt-course and wooden cornice with alternating brackets and square cut-outs run across the facade. Chimneys are positioned at both front and back on the east side of this block.

The west end of the main north elevation consists of a two-storey projecting wing with a hipped roof, central chimney, and three window bays of tall sashes at ground and first floors, with a plain belt-course and cornice.

The east elevation continues the belt-course and bracketed cornice, with three rectangular sashes and a two-storey, three-sided projecting bay. The ground floor of this bay features full-height round-headed windows flanked by slender columns with foliated capitals.

The south garden elevation extends across the full width of the house with seven rectangular sash windows at first-floor level. The ground floor contains a row of four full-height round-headed windows within one stone surround with eared architrave, a later 19th-century flat-roofed entrance porch, and a large polygonal bay with a flat roof serving the sitting room. A lower two-storey wing at the west end of this elevation contains four sashes in matching surrounds.

The west elevation accommodates the service end of the house, with some lower additions of later date. It features plain cornices and simple brick lintels with stone cills to windows, and a pair of round-headed windows at the central, most recessed section.

The entrance hall contains a double stone arcade of four marble columns with elaborate foliated capitals, and a stone foliated cornice. A large re-used wooden chimney-piece with 17th-century elements is positioned within it, and the floor is tiled. The staircase is ornamented with three marble columns of decreasing height as they ascend, featuring the same foliated capitals. A service bell system is fitted throughout. A water closet with panelled mahogany surround and a hot press are present. The workshop contains Victorian porcelain sinks. The house displays good-quality joinery throughout, including a staircase with a punched quatrefoil motif. Several rooms contain elaborate marble chimney-pieces and re-used wooden chimney-pieces from the earlier house on the site. Multiple rooms feature foliated cornices. Extensive brick barrel-vaulted cellar rooms extend beneath the house.

The present house was built by Charles Stanton Hadden, a Ceylon coffee planter, who demolished most of the earlier house that stood on this 17th-century estate. This is a fine Italianate-style Victorian country house of the 1860s with well-preserved interiors.