Conghurst, With Walls And Outhouses Attached

This is a late 16th-century house that was significantly altered in the early 19th century and extended around 1900. The main part of the house has a sandstone ground floor and a tile-hung first floor, with lathe and plaster to the return elevations. It has a plain tiled roof, while a later wing is rendered and has a slate roof. The front, dating from around 1800, features a plinth, plat band, and cornice with stack clusters at the rear left and right. There are four glazing bar sashes on the first floor, two sashes to the right and two cross-windows to the left on the ground floor; the bay to the left was added around 1900, and the bay to the right was built in the mid-19th century. A projecting sandstone porch with Doric pilasters and a cornice provides access to a central double door with a rectangular fanlight. The rear wings are two storeys with an attic and have a half-hipped roof, featuring irregular wooden and metal casements. The original main entry was through an old rib and stud door, now within a flat-roofed stone porch.

The block built around 1800 contains a geometrical staircase with stick balusters and a wreathed handrail, in addition to simple marble fireplaces. A rear wing features a stone inglenook with a side panel depicting the arms of the Scott and Congerhurst families, quartered and dated 1599. An original principal room retains a moulded dais beam with dentilated egg and tongue and fluted enrichment, a parallel cross-passage beam with similar enrichment, paired cambered-headed doorways with fern leaf spandrels, and a filleted ovolo-moulded mullioned and transomed window set into the passage. The house has brick-lined cellars.

Attached to the east is a stone-walled courtyard, enclosed by walls approximately 8 feet high and about 20 by 30 yards, with boarded gates, alongside a range of outhouses constructed from stone, red brick, and weatherboarding, with a plain-tiled roof. These outhouses are arranged in an L-shape, with boarded doors and wooden casements and are one storey high with an attic. Beyond the house lies a walled garden, extending into the parish of Sandhurst. This garden is enclosed by red brick walls on a sandstone base, buttressed in places, ranging in height, and encompassing an area of roughly 50 by 50 yards.