Wateringbury Place

Wateringbury Place is a large, sober Baroque house built around 1707 for Sir Thomas Style. It is constructed of red brick with red dressings on a stone plinth, with slate roofs concealed behind a parapet. The house has three storeys and was originally designed with a seven-bay east front, which now functions as the garden facade, featuring a central three-bay projection. The west front, now the entrance front, has six bays with a central projection, and the south return front presents five bays.

A rendered plat band and a rendered band run below the parapet. Above the moulded cornice is an attic and a parapet with sunk panels. Glazing bar sash windows are found throughout the building. The east front features Ionic pilaster quoins, with volute brackets in the frieze of the entablature, grouped in threes. Rendered panels are sunk below the first-floor windows. The central ground-floor doorway is framed by a panelled and glazed door with an overlight, set within a surround of panelled pilasters supporting volute brackets and a flat, modillioned hood. On the south front, recesses are present between windows on the first and second floors, and below each window on the first floor. Rendered niches are positioned either side of the central ground-floor window. The west front’s first-floor windows are recessed and arched, with keystones and panels above. A modern, single-storey, two-window porch sits in a recess with shallow arched windows.

A service wing, dating from around 1870, is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and quoins, and features plat bands between the ground and first floors, a bracketed eaves cornice to the slate hipped roof, a doorway inset to the right with a bracketed flat hood, a four-bay, two-storey wing to the right and a two-bay projecting balustraded wing in front. The final wing has a pediment-gabled east end and a Venetian window below. A clock tower features a cornice pyramidal roof with fish-scale tiling and a finial with a weather-vane. The clock itself was made by Henessy of Swansea around 1870, and the bell dates from around 1782.

Internally, little remains of the original decorative scheme. The entrance hall contains black and white marble panelling, likely from around 1870, and a clockwise open-well staircase with three “salamonic” balusters per tread. The large drawing room retains a moulded cornice, probably dating from the mid-18th century, and a chimney piece of a similar date. Old floral wallpaper, possibly from around 1800, is also visible. A smaller drawing room features matching cornices and a fireplace. A dining room has a colonnade of composite marble columns from around 1870, as well as a two-storey caryatid fireplace and a volute-bracketed cornice. An upstairs saloon displays wallpaper from around 1800, depicting antique scenes, along with a late 18th century chimney piece. A small lounge also has a late 18th century chimney piece and the library features a modillion cornice and a mid-18th century chimney piece.