The Great House

The Great House is a large house with a complex history, incorporating elements from the 16th and 17th centuries, a front range from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and a garden range dated 1788. The garden range was almost certainly designed by James Wyatt for Richard Ryder, then Home Secretary. The house is constructed from coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and has old plain-tile and Welsh slate roofs with brick and stone stacks. It is arranged in a U-plan with two storeys and attics.

The front facade has seven windows, a plinth, a plain parapet, and a heavy moulded cornice, with the side bays projecting forward. A central glazed door is framed by a moulded stone architrave and flanked by fluted pilasters supporting a flat hood. All windows have early sashes with thick glazing bars set within moulded stone architraves with aprons. The roof is hipped, with five hipped 2-light dormers arranged 1:3:1, and tall stone stacks with brick shafts projecting from the end walls. To the left of the front range is a seven-window, two-storey garden range constructed in ashlar, featuring a first-floor sill band and moulded cornice, a two-storey, three-window semi-circular bay, and a tripartite sash window at ground floor. The sashes are large with thin glazing bars, and the Welsh slate roof is concealed by a plain parapet.

An early rear wing, situated to the right of the front range, has a stone moulded gable parapet with projecting kneelers and a large projecting lateral stack, and has been re-windowed with sash windows, including a tripartite sash.

The interior of the central hall features late 17th-century panelling with arched panels above the fireplace. The garden range contains an ante-room with a distyle in antis Doric screen supporting a three-centred central arch, a bow-ended drawing room with a delicate honeysuckle frieze and a marble fireplace with a relief panel depicting the Muse of Music, and a three-window saloon with a similar frieze and a marble fireplace featuring a central panel of a cherub driving a chariot containing a lion and a goat. There are two late 18th-century staircases, both with wreathed handrails and stick balusters.