Sion Cottage and attached stable, dovecote and walls

Sion Cottage and attached stable, dovecote and walls

A detached house with attached stable, dovecote and walls, dating from around 1760 and altered in the early and late 19th century, with 20th-century additions.

The main house is built in limestone ashlar with a hipped slate roof to the principal block, and pantile and lead roofs elsewhere. Moulded chimney stacks rise to the returns and rear elevation.

The building is designed in Gothic style. The front elevation presents two storeys and a basement, while the rear rises to three storeys and a basement. Single-storey wings extend to the sides, with a wider 19th-century rear range. The front is symmetrically composed of five windows. The house originally had an enclosed porch flanked by full-height deep canted bays with leaded windows, as recorded in a contemporary print. After changes around 1800, the porch became integral to the structure.

The ground floor features stone mullions dividing paired two-light six-pane casement windows with flat arches and Gothic glazing to the overlights. The porch has deep casement moulding to a flattened pointed arch, flanked by pilasters with panels resembling buttresses and small obelisk finials above the cornice. Sunk quatrefoils decorate the spandrels below. The first floor has three-pane trefoil-headed windows, paired to the fronts of the bays, with a row of three centrally positioned above the porch. A castellated parapet crowns the front, with terminal buttresses to the sides bearing pointed, ball-capped finials above sunk quatrefoil panels. The wider three-storey rear range projects beyond the returns of the main block, each side having a single window. Its second floor contains three-light three-pane trefoil-headed windows, while the first floor has paired three-pane lancet windows. The ground floor is covered by castellated single-storey wings. To the left is a small Venetian window with 20th-century glazing.

The interior has been altered in period style but retains significant original features. A stone staircase against the rear wall has decorative iron balusters, a wreathed rail and curtail step. A good Gothic cornice survives in the hall. The basement and cellars are little altered. Three units beneath the original house are accessed from the rear through three arches: those to the sides are segmental and lead to kitchens, while the central arch beneath the hall is semicircular and leads to a narrow storage room with stone compartments and shelves. The kitchen and service room, extending under the bays, are stone-flagged with low ceilings; the kitchen to the right has a former open fireplace. To the rear is a stone-vaulted coal compartment with blocked shutes. In the rear right of the 19th-century rear range stands another coal store with a rough stone floor and quadrant-vaulted roof pierced by two holes, one circular and one square.

The stable is a two-storey structure of ashlar and brick, probably 19th-century, with coped gables to front and rear and access from Sion Hill. It is adjoined by a high ashlar wall approximately 5 metres long.

A garden is enclosed by an ashlar and rubble wall approximately 2 metres high. Attached to the rear right corner is a two-storey square building, ashlar-faced with battlements and blocked windows to its north and west first-floor elevations. An entrance opens to the south side; this is probably a belvedere, positioned to take advantage of fine views. A wall continues southward at a right-angle for approximately 50 metres, fronts the site to the south for approximately 50 metres, encompasses the buildings to the corner and returns along the west side for approximately 20 metres to meet the stable.

This is a Gothick villa in the Kentian tradition, showing evidence of successive phases of alteration. It is a picturesque suburban villa of particularly early date for Bath.