Gunfield

Gunfield is a large detached house with a former chapel, later used as a music room, linked by a passageway. It was built in 1877 by Frederick Codd, with the chapel added in 1909 by N.W. & G.A. Harrison for St. Hugh’s Hall, and the linking passageway in 1915 by Arthur Hamilton Moberly for the Denekes family. A porch and a three-storey loggia on the garden front were also designed by Moberly. The house is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and floor bands, accentuated by blue brick bands. It has a tiled roof with tall gables, tall brick chimney stacks rising from ground level, and a small tower in the central bay with a pyramidal roof topped with a cast iron finial. The architectural style is Gothick.

The house is two storeys with an attic and a semi-basement and has six windows. The front has two gabled outer bays, with grouped pointed-arch sashes, three to the right and two to the left, with a central colonette. The design steps outwards on the ground floor to the right. An entrance is located on the right-hand return, approached by steps to a gabled timber porch. The garden front features two gabled bays; the right-hand bay has a canted bay extending through the ground and first floors, with central windows featuring colonette mullions and a cast iron balcony to paired pointed-arch attic windows with colonettes. The left-hand bay has a projecting timber and brick loggia, open on two sides with a tiled roof supporting a smaller timber-framed balcony with herringbone brickwork on the first floor; the glazing is likely later. A tiled roof with overhanging eaves supports an openwork timber balustrade to a roof terrace, accessed by a flat-arched attic doorway.

Inside, many original features are retained, including cornices and skirting boards. A principal staircase has a curiously low-level balustrade of turned balusters with a moulded handrail and a carved lion finial to the newel post. A Gothick stone chimneypiece features in the stair hall. Ground floor doors are Gothick in style with chamfered panel rails. Two main reception rooms have been combined, separated by a two-column screen with a moulded frame in a simple Art Deco style, believed to be by Moberly. These rooms both contain 18th-century style chimneypieces. The original entrance bell, housed in an elaborate cast and wrought iron crenellated structure with an enriched pull featuring wrought iron flora and foliage and open-work pendants, has been repositioned inside the hall.

An external passageway leads to the former chapel, which is two storeys high, with the upper level tile-hung and featuring two-light windows, and a tiled roof. The ground floor is open to the front, with a good cast and wrought iron lantern with coloured glass diamond panes and scrolled wrought iron brackets. The former chapel itself is brick-built with a pitched tiled roof. It consists of four bays, each buttressed with tiled offsets, and featuring four-light transom and mullion windows with small leaded panes, the eastern window having a cusped tracery head. The interior has a well-detailed open arch-braced timber roof, a fireplace, parquet flooring, and a western gallery.