Moat House

Moat House

Originally built in 1906 as the house of the remount depot Commandant, this building now serves as offices.

The house is constructed of red brick laid in English bond, with rubbed brick dressings, a tiled roof and brick chimney stacks. It is rectangular in plan with a projecting central bay on the symmetrical south-east elevation and a shallow single-storey service bay to the north-east. The building lies to the south of a scheduled medieval moated site. Internally, the ground and first floors are arranged with rooms on either side of a spinal corridor, while the attic rooms are situated on the northern side.

The building is three bays wide, two storeys tall with an attic storey. It features a chamfered brick plinth and a brick storey band, where the central course is laid on the diagonal to create a chevron effect and is interrupted by plain pilaster strips at the angles. A continuous deep cyma and dentil eaves cornice sits beneath a slightly flared hipped roof. The tall square chimney stacks have moulded brick caps.

The main entrance is on the north-west elevation. It comprises a shallow broken-pedimented brick doorcase with a rubbed brick four-centre arch with a tall voussoir, flanked by narrow windows. Above is a three-light window within a flared eared architrave on a tall base, flanked by shallow scrolled brackets. The door itself consists of three fielded panels beneath a broken pediment, with brick mounting blocks on either side. At first floor level to the right is a recessed moulded panel dated 1906. Windows throughout are fitted with rectangular leaded lights in ovolo moulded timber mullioned and transomed casements ranging from two to six lights, set in plain brick openings with quarter-moulded brick cills. There is a centrally-placed three-light flat-roofed dormer with tile-hung cheeks, apparently original.

The garden elevation is symmetrical, featuring a projecting central bay beneath a shaped Dutch gable with windows that diminish in size per storey in Jacobean manner: a three-light window on the ground floor, a two-light window on the first floor and a narrow window in the gable head. The flanking bays have two-light windows to the ground floor and pairs of single lights to the first floor. Two flat-roofed two-light dormers with tile-hung cheeks serve the attic. A doorway concealed in the return of the projection provides access to the former dining room.

The main entrance leads into a stair hall dominated by an oak screen in Jacobean manner. The staircase is of open-well, closed-string type with turned balusters, a heavy moulded rail and square newels with ball finials on tall tapering shafts. The shape of these tapering shafts is replicated in the finials to the stair newels. Doorcases are moulded, and surviving doors have six moulded panels. Rooms on the ground and first floors retain picture rails, deep skirtings and moulded cornices. Fireplaces have been replaced and date from the mid-20th century. Windows, including those in the attic, have iron stays and pigtail catches; some have been replaced.