Cranbury House

Cranbury House is a large country house built in the 1790s by G Dance Jnr. for Lady Dance-Holland. It was altered internally in 1830 by J B Papworth, extended in the mid-19th century, and reduced in size in 1960. The house is constructed of red brick with stone and stucco dressings, and has a slate roof hidden behind a parapet. It is L-shaped, with a courtyard created between the wings by service buildings.

The south entrance front is two stories high with seven bays, a three-bay centre, and a deep Corinthian porte-cochère added in the mid-19th century. The doorway is within a stone architrave with a wreathed frieze and pediment. Flanking bays have large, arched openings with rusticated heads and solid tympanums. Within these tympanums and high in the centre are relief roundels of sculptures. Below are large 12-pane sash windows, with columns set each side of the openings. Giant pilasters flank these bays and divide the outer bays, which feature Venetian windows. Above the cornice, in the centre, is a raised panel with a balustraded parapet on each side, topped with urns. Urns also sit on the plinths and outside a balustraded parapet borders the outer bays.

The east front is three stories high with thirteen bays, featuring similar giant pilasters, sash windows in rendered architraves, and a balustraded parapet. The interior of the house is decorated in the exuberant style of Dance, with later additions by Papworth. Behind the front door is a small lobby leading to a grand hall that rises to full height with coffered tunnel vaults. At the far end of the hall are two pairs of scagliola columns arranged lengthways, corresponding to the columns in the window openings on the exterior. Behind the columns is an exedra lit by a circular skylight, to the right of which is a staircase. To the left is a passage, with a 20th-century tented china closet, leading to another exedra with a circular skylight and columns at each corner, plus apses on each side. Behind this is a recess containing an 18th-century organ housed within a Chippendale casing. The ballroom lies at the front of the house and its scagliola columns align with those in the windows; it has its own large exedras to the left and right and a groin vault in the central square area. To the right of the exedra, off the entrance hall, is a staircase hall from around 1860, alongside a library from the 1850s by Papworth, located in the centre of the east facade and behind a dining room from the 1860s at the far end of the same facade. In the corner between the two facades, off the library, is a Tent Boom from around 1830 by Papworth, featuring a tented silk ceiling in the French Empire style. Between this room and the entrance hall is a Drawing Boom with Dance decoration.