Strattenborough Castle

Strattenborough Castle is a building dated 1792, located on the north front to the left of the main door above a ground floor window. It was designed to function as both a working farm and a Gothic eye-catcher for Coleshill House. The structure is made of rubble stone and brick, featuring dressed stone quoins and openings. The farmhouse faces its yard to the south, while the north front rises above the dwelling's roofline, creating a wall with two castellated projecting sham towers, one square and the other polygonal. The combination of materials indicates either a late 18th-century sensitivity to the organic growth of a building, with brick additions to an earlier stone structure, or a complete rehabilitation at a later date. The entire north facade is marked by mullioned and cross mullioned windows, some of which are blind, while others have 9-pane sashes. Additional features include single and cruciform arrowslits, elaborate string coursing, and stone arched surrounds with brick infill. To the east, a wall from the main block connects it to a stepped gabled barn, which is symmetrically balanced to the west by a larger barn that has a gabled stone-tiled roof, set further back. This larger barn features a north end with an enormous sham window of five lights, which is partly ruinous and all bricked in. Below this 'window' is a genuine 11th-century Norman tympanum, and above it, set in brick, is the date 1794.