Compton Undermount

Undermount was originally a farmhouse of 17th and 18th-century origin, which was recased as a "cottage orné" around 1820-30 with subsequent alterations. Compton, an addition of 1857, is now a separate property. Together they form a picturesque composition with Gothic and Jacobean details.

Undermount is a two-storey building of stone rubble with a stucco-faced south front. It features paired and single gables with cusped open work bargeboards above first-floor casements. A large, shallow stone mullioned oriel sits to the right of a three-centred arched doorway with carved spandrels and dripmould extended over side lights.

Compton, the 1857 extension, is two taller storeys with an attic, built in stone rubble with ashlar dressings. It has Dutch gables and external stacks with paired Tudor chimneys, weathered strings and copings to the gables, and stone mullioned windows. Part of this extension abuts Undermount and is linked to the main block by a glazed and rendered section with buttresses.

The west front is largely occupied by one end of a conservatory-winter garden, dating to around 1857, with closely set panes, a raised ridge, and a canted west end. Inside the conservatory, a staircase with a Tudor style balustrade leads down to a terrace and a large three-light stone mullioned-transomed French window with dripmould above.

The south garden front of Compton features a Dutch gable and a tall two-storey canted stone mullioned bay window. Undermount on this front has three irregular stepped gables, a rendered front with small oriel windows to the attic, and later rectangular bay windows with mullioned Tudor arched lights.

The properties are reached through a tunnelled drive cut through a rock outcrop of the Undercliff. This tunnel and the Compton wing were constructed by the then-owners of Undermount, Sir John and Lady Pringle, to receive Queen Victoria. Lady Pringle was a friend of the Queen and had been one of her bridesmaids. The wing contains a vast music room with an elaborate ceiling decorated in the Italian manner, featuring a circular Wedgewood plaque at its centre (the only other example of this plaque is at Windsor). Above the music room, two bedrooms were provided for the Queen and her Lady-in-Waiting.