Loseley House

Loseley House is a Grade I listed country house built between 1562 and 1569 by Sir William More, possibly around an older core. A west wing was added around 1600, possibly to a design by John Thorpe. The house was altered around 1689, the west wing was demolished in 1835, and a nursery wing was added to the south-east in 1877.

The house is constructed of sandstone with malmstone and clunch dressings. The sandstone was originally brought from Waverley Abbey, and the roofs are slate. The original design intended a half-H shaped plan house with a courtyard and an open end to the north closed by a wall and gatehouse, but only the south and west wings were completed. The main house is now the former south wing.

The building is mainly two storeys with attics to the ends, and the nursery wing is single storey with attics.

The entrance front faces north and is asymmetrical with a moulded plinth and angle quoining to bays. Multiple brick stacks are positioned to the left, with ridge and rear ridge stacks to the left and right of centre, and a square corbelled stack to the right end. Four projecting square gabled bays and three recessed bays with gabled dormers feature stone-dressed, mullioned, leaded casement fenestration with arched lights, some under simple hood mouldings. The gabled bay to the left has one attic window, one large twelve-light first floor window, and two ground floor windows. The bay to the right has one ground and one first floor window with a gabled dormer above. A tall entrance bay to the right has one window on the first and second floors, with three first floor windows to the right in the first bay of a three-bay hall range. A large square bay to the right has three tiers of six lights rising through the ground and first floors to light the hall, with an attic window above. Two further bays to the right each have one window to each floor. The entrance, positioned to the left of centre, is a 17th-century doorway with fluted Doric pilasters, a triglyph frieze, a broken scroll pediment with cartouche, a semi-circular fanlight, and double doors of eight moulded panels.

The south front is irregular with a projection to the west end and two large and one small gable. It features two windows below, five gabled dormers, and eight windows to the remainder. A small round-headed vermiculated doorway on the ground floor has an iron-studded door. A 19th-century loggia is positioned to the east.

The nursery wing has four gabled dormers, with brick below on the ground floor and stone above.

The interior features a main entrance with block rusticated arched surround leading to a screens passage of the great hall to the right. The passage has Jacobean panelling, fluted pilasters, and arched door surrounds. The great hall has a minstrels gallery to the west end with a balustrade on guilloche-moulded brackets and fluted Ionic columns attached to a panelled and glazed screen. High relief foliage and fruit carving is attributed to Grinling Gibbons as an early work. A 19th-century ceiling with plasterwork panels covers the hall. Trompe l'oeil inlay panelling to the west end, taken from Nonsuch Palace, shows a perspective view of passages in arched panels one-quarter inch deep. Painted panels on the south walls display an intertwined H and K (Katherine Parr). Italian style "grottesche" panels over the gallery were also brought from Nonsuch, from the banqueting hall. A white stone "Kentian" fireplace features Ionic columns and an Elizabethan overmantle.

The library has a 19th-century panelled ceiling in Jacobean style. A four-centred, rusticated, arched opening to the fireplace features an Elizabethan overmantle dated 1570, thought to be assembled from one of Queen Elizabeth's travelling cases.

The drawing room dates to the late 16th century with a panelled ceiling and frieze of moorhens and cockatrices. A large clunch fireplace features two storeys with coupled columns below on a plinth decorated with classical swags. Coupled caryatids appear above. The fireplace surround is rusticated with some vermiculation, strapwork, and panelling above. A late 17th-century staircase features twisted balusters. Upper rooms retain some 17th-century panelling, moorhen and cockatrice friezes, and fireplaces.

Queen Elizabeth I visited the house in 1577, 1583, and 1591. James I visited in 1603 and 1606, and Charles I, when Prince of Wales, visited in 1617.