Kingston House

Kingston House is a country house of around 1710, probably built for Fettiplace Blandy, though it may incorporate earlier 17th-century origins. The interior was partly remodelled around 1730. The building is constructed in Flemish bond red brick with limestone ashlar basement, quoin strips and dressings. It has a shallow gabled lead roof, and brick chimney stacks projecting from the side walls of the central block are paired together by round arches with moulded stone dressings.

The house follows a double-pile plan in the Early Georgian style, comprising two storeys with a seven-window range across the front. The front elevation has a 2:3:2 composition, with a projecting pedimented central block raised by an attic storey above the outer bays. The basement features 2-light stone-mullioned windows. Access to the house is via steps to double-leaf doors with a fanlight; the keyed round-arched doorway has a Doric entablature and base (without shaft) set into a rusticated surround with triglyph frieze. Above this is a segmental-arched sash window with engaged Ionic columns and curved shoulders. Throughout the front elevation, 6-pane sashes with thick glazing bars light the rooms; the keyed round-arched windows and segmental-arched first-floor windows all have moulded stone architraves and apron blocks. A string course runs horizontally across the façade, and a moulded cornice is carried across the raised centre. The attic windows and the lunette in the pediment have keyed moulded architraves. Flaming urns of the Blandy family are placed at the outer ends of the pediment and flanking the parapets.

The rear elevation is almost identical, featuring 2-light cavetto-moulded basement windows and double-leaf doors set in a plain moulded architrave with fanlight and entablature. The pedimented three-bay side walls contain similar windows and two round-headed attic windows in each pediment; a doorway to the left has stone steps with brick walls and stone piers.

The interior is particularly notable. The basement contains an 18th-century kitchen and reset early 17th-century panelling with traces of filigree decoration beneath the paint. The plan centres on a central hall opening to a rear hall with a staircase; the first-floor saloon was subdivided in the 1730s. The hall itself has an Ionic dentilled cornice and panelled dado; on the rear wall is a tall round-arched entry with a later 18th-century door and panelling, flanked by two fine Baroque stone fireplaces. Keyed segmental-arched doorways with 6-panelled doors lead to the dining room on the left, which contains doors, panelling, and a marble fireplace of around 1730, and the parlour on the right, similarly panelled with an earlier 18th-century fireplace featuring a finely carved frieze and Fettiplace griffins on the consoles. A bedroom opening onto a closet behind the parlour has earlier 18th-century bolection-moulded panelling with a dentilled pediment over the doorway and a broken-pediment entablature over a marble fireplace, although much of the panelling and cornice were removed in the mid-20th century. Behind the dining room, a dog-leg back staircase with turned balusters on a closed string provides service access. The principal staircase is notable for its pedestal-shaped newels and fluted bulbs carved at the foot of the turned balusters; it rises in two arms to a balustraded first-floor gallery. The gallery features a buffet with a finely carved large shell niche. The first-floor rooms date from around 1730 and include eared architraves to overmantels.

Historically, the likely date of construction is around 1710, when Fettiplace Blandy, son of John Blandy and grandson of Sir Edmund Fettiplace, succeeded to the property. The 1728 deed indicates that the Blandys purchased the "Mansion House" which had been bought by Fettiplace from John Latton in 1670, the old moated house subsequently being left to fall into decay. It has been suggested that George Townsend, architect, built this Early Georgian house, a theory based on similarities with the designs of his former master, Vanbrugh.