Rusthall

Rusthall is a large house, likely with origins in the 17th century, but substantially rebuilt around 1820. It has undergone various 19th and 20th century alterations, with a significant modernisation around 1970 including extensions. The house is constructed of painted brick with stone ashlar dressings, brick stacks, painted brick chimney shafts, and a peg-tile roof.

The house has a large and irregular double depth plan. The main block faces west and features front and back rooms on either side of the entrance hall, which contains the main staircase. A large room extends to the north, with a rear stack backing onto a rear room and a 20th century extension at the left end. An axial stack is disused between the front and back right rooms, representing the principal rooms of the 1820 house. Service rooms to the rear have been rebuilt and enlarged.

The two-storey house presents an attractive, nearly symmetrical three-bay Gothick front. Outer bays project at ground floor level, featuring octagonal corner piers rising above the parapet, topped with stone caps and finials. A stone cornice sits below an embattled parapet. The right bay has one window, and the left bay has two, all with Tudor-style hoodmoulds with shield-shaped label stops. The right window is a mullion-and-transom window without glazing bars. The left bay's windows are tripartite sashes with a central 12-pane sash and a tier of Tudor arch glazing bars with coloured glass in the spandrels. Round-headed first-floor windows in the end bays have hoodmoulds and three-light windows with a lattice pattern of glazing bars. Large gables above the facade have ornamental open cusped bargeboards with prominent apex and bottom finials. A two-storey gabled porch in the centre features similar bargeboards and an arch-headed plank door with a Gothick pattern of studded cover strips and a fanlight with patterned glazing bars. A stringcourse runs at first-floor level, above which is a shield-shaped plaque. The first-floor window above the porch has a Tudor arch head and a two-light mullion window with margin panes. The porch is flanked by small arch-headed lancets.

The right (south) end features double gables with similar bargeboards and a projecting ground floor bay, mirroring the front design. Here, the windows are largely circa 1970 aluminium-framed, with ground floor openings enlarged to French windows. Other windows around the house are also circa 1970, with the exception of a few originals, such as a large Tudor-style oak ovolo-moulded mullion-and-transom window and a flat-faced mullion window in the rear north room of the front block. These original windows contain diamond panes of leaded glass and have good ferramenta.

The interior presents a mixture of styles. The entrance hall contains a conventional Georgian staircase with stick balusters and a mahogany handrail. The northern rooms (to the right of the front) are in a 17th century style, with chamfered spine beams with run-out stops, Tudor arch stone fireplaces, and some reset genuine Jacobean panelling. The roof has not been inspected.