North Frith House

North Frith House

A large house built in 1889 by local architect George Friend for Thomas Boyd, a Chicago businessman known as the "Bacon King". The building was later converted into a training centre. A Winter Garden with gazebo above was added before 1897, either by Friend or another architect. The Vinery, which was part of the original 1889 design, was drastically altered for conference facilities in the late twentieth century, retaining only internal brick and stone piers.

The house is built in Vernacular Revival style of red brick with sandstone dressings, decorated with timber-framing, tile-hanging and terracotta plaques to the gables. It has a clay tiled roof with clustered brick chimneystacks. The building is asymmetrical, two storeys with attics, and has an L-shaped plan. Windows throughout are mullioned and transomed casements.

The north or entrance front contains the principal rooms to the right and a service wing to the left. A projecting one-storey entrance porch with crenellated parapet is ramped up over an arch and bears a plaque with the entwined initials of the owner. A large gable with diagonal timber-framing stands set back behind, with a projecting gable to the right side. The roof features a central octagonal cupola with tiled base, wooden arches and ogee-shaped lead roof with metal finial. The service wing has a set back gable with fishscale tiles and terminates to the left in a single storey L-shaped block with pitched roof and tall chimneystack.

The south or garden elevation is more elaborate. The original part has six projecting bays serving the principal rooms. To the left stands an octagonal corner turret with terracotta plaques above first floor windows and an elaborate iron weathervane. Three bays to the right feature a central projecting large gable flanked by smaller curved gables with wooden balustrading. A recessed French window stands to the right. Adjoining to the right is a projecting three-storey gable with timber-framing to the upper part and a date-plaque of 1889. The return has an elaborate external stack, crenellated above ground floor, attached to a four-storey tower with crenellated parapet. A set back one and two-storey service wing has a gabled timber-framed shelter terminating in a square probable former game larder with pyramidal roof and metal finial, with a crenellated larder.

The Winter Garden, erected prior to 1897, fills an L-shaped angle to the left of the octagonal tower. It is one storey in red brick with a parapet of brick and pierced stone panels with ball finials. All windows are three-tier stone mullioned casements. At the corner is an unusual first floor large gazebo in Mughal style with wooden mullioned windows featuring floral stained glass to the upper parts and a lead ogee-shaped dome with elaborate finial.

The interior contains a complete period scheme of principal rooms. The Staircase Hall rises through two floors, lit by a large window with leaded lights. An oak well staircase with carved wooden newel post and balusters rises to a galleried landing. Fielded panelling rises to two-storey height. A heavily carved Tudor-bethan style wooden overmantel with stone and brick fire surround holds a nineteenth-century painting of a religious subject after Correggio, signed M Mangepay. Ceiling panels above the staircase are painted with a decorative border of swags and festoons, probably the work of trade decorators around 1890. Three central panels with classical figures, probably representing "Night" and "Day", may be amateur work of slightly later date and are signed Coe.

The Gun Room to the left of the Lobby contains an eighteenth-century red marble bolection-moulded fireplace installed by 1914 and an original cast iron safe. The adjoining Smoking Room has two segmental arched recesses flanking a massive carved oak Tudor-bethan style fireplace with pilasters, scrolling foliage and birds. The Dining Room and Ante-Chamber has a massively carved overmantel set with a painted highland scene signed AB '67, a recessed buffet bay and recessed fireplace with a massively carved overmantel bearing twin shields with the entwined initials ETBL and an inset earlier rectangular panel carved with cornucopia and grotesquerie. Windows contain nineteenth-century stained glass panels with flower motifs. The Drawing Room has a geometric pattern plaster ceiling and massive baronial-style fireplace with carved paired pilasters and an acanthus frieze, with stained glass panels of floral motifs of around 1890. The Billiard Room had its windows blocked when the Winter Garden was added, but on the Winter Garden side are six late nineteenth-century stained glass panels illustrating sporting pursuits. An original back door survives behind the Winter Garden with geometrical stained glass. The Winter Garden and gazebo above have upper lights with floral stained glass panels.

A first floor bedroom over the Dining Room Ante-chamber has a painted ceiling panel with putti in a decorative plaster frame and plaster wall panels in the manner of a French boudoir. The south west corner bedroom, partially within the nineteenth-century octagon tower, has a lantern ceiling with further stained glass panels of floral design. A painted wooden service staircase with stick balusters serves the upper floors. The roof is of queenpost construction. Brick cellars survive.