Great Burgh (Including Attached Wall, Railings, Piers, Terrace And Steps)

Great Burgh

Large house, now used as offices. Built in 1912 by the architect Ernest Newton for the Colman family, with builders Benfield and Loxley. The building is designed in the Neo-Georgian style and constructed of flint with Bath stone dressings and a Westmorland slate roof carrying four Bath stone penlled stacks.

The house is two storeys high. The entrance front is not quite symmetrical, with a fenestration articulated as 1:1:1:1:2:1. A central projecting two-storey porch of Bath stone projects forward, featuring elaborate moulded cornice. The first floor carries a 12-pane sash window with keystone, flanked by lion's head masks with floral drops. The doorcase is open with pedimented head and carved panel and floral motifs, with attached Ionic half-columns. The door opening itself has a round-headed arch with keystone and pilasters, impost blocks, and a radiating fanlight. Two 3-panelled doors lead into the porch, accessed by three steps. The returns of this porch feature circular windows with keystones.

To either side of the porch, the next bays contain 16-pane sash windows to the first floor and 30-pane sash windows to the ground floor. To the right, a projecting section under a hipped roof contains two similar sashes. To the left, the next bay projects and features a round-headed staircase window with a circular window below. At the extreme left of the entrance front is a further projecting section of one bay.

Attached to each side of the house is a low Bath stone wall with moulded parapet and fourteen square Bath stone piers featuring moulded cornices and iron railings which incorporate Ionic columns in their design. Two massive central gate piers carry elaborate urns decorated with flowers and wheat ears.

A service wing is attached to the right-hand side, built in similar style and materials but of lower elevation. The left-side doorcase features a moulded architrave, blank panel, brackets, two panelled doors, and is flanked by a circular window.

The north-east front displays four sashes each to the first and ground floors. The ground floor has a courtyard arrangement with two hipped single-storey rendered wings linked by a verandah.

The garden front is symmetrical, containing fifteen sashes. The central nine windows are set in walls of Bath stone, with the wings being flint and Bath stone. The centre section has three 12-pane sashes to the first floor and two 12-pane sashes with keystones to the ground floor. A central French window with broken swan's-neck pediment, rectangular fanlight and double doors opens onto the garden. The next three windows on each side are set within two-storey canted bays with rusticated pilasters; the first floor windows are 12-pane sashes and the ground floor windows are 18-pane sashes in round-headed openings with keystones. The end three bays to each side have 12-pane sashes with keystones to the first floor and 18-pane sashes to the ground floor.

A terrace and seven steps in Cotswold stone balustrading are attached to the building.

The south-east front carries five 12-pane sashes to the first floor and three 18-pane sashes to the ground floor.

Interior

The hall features a marble Gibbs surround and a Venetian-type entrance with Ionic columns. The former Dining Room, now a Conference Room, is lined with Queen Anne style oak panelling with finely carved swags and baskets of fruit. Four 6-panelled doors with cornices of swags and blank panels above open from this room. The ceiling is plastered. An oak well staircase, possibly a reconstructed 18th-century example, has three balusters to each tread—one turned and two fluted columned—with scrolled tread ends and a curved knop with column. A service staircase has stick balusters.