Kenegie House

Kenegie House is a country house dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, substantially remodelled in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and again greatly altered externally in the late 19th century with slight extensions in the 20th century.

The house is built of granite ashlar and granite rubble with granite dressings, plus Bath stone dressings applied to 19th-century features. The roof is of grouted gabled scantle slate. The chimneys are mostly of dressed granite and largely 19th-century in date, though the axial stack to the right of the centre is probably 17th-century.

The plan is large and irregular. The original range runs on the main axis and originally comprised a 3-room arrangement with a through passage to the left of the hall, flanked by 2-storey porches at front and rear of the original through passage position. These porches date to the 16th or 17th century. The house was extended with wings at either end at right angles to the rear during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the late 17th or early 18th century, a bow window was fitted to the front of the hall. A wing was added or rebuilt at right angles to the front on the left side in the late 18th century. In the 19th century, the rear of the house was remodelled to create a new front; the spaces beside the porch were filled in; the rear left-hand wing was remodelled to form a pair of wings; and a service wing including a servants hall was built in front of the front left-hand wing.

The house is 2 storeys throughout. The exterior shows irregular elevations across its north front (original), principal south front (19th century), north garden front (18th century), and western entrance. The dominant architectural features are the 16th or 17th-century porches at front and rear, and the remarkable bow window to the left of the front porch. The wing at right angles to the front left displays a partly 18th-century front with flat arches over original openings and some surviving sashes. Although much of the underlying masonry dates to the 18th century and earlier periods, the visible features are predominantly Victorian, with numerous transomed mullioned windows executed in a late Elizabethan style.

The late 16th or early 17th-century porches retain their original doorways. The front porch doorway is surmounted by a basket arch and hoodmould. The inner doorway is pointed. The first floor of each porch is carried on a moulded cornice. The hall window is a 6-light bow window with widely spaced mullions and a moulded granite cornice above. The bowed casements are original, dating to circa the late 17th or early 18th century, fitted with small panes of crown glass and wide ovolo moulded glazing bars. A low 18th-century wall with cambered coping stands in front of the window.

The interior of the ground floor contains predominantly 19th or 20th-century detail. The right-hand room has a 17th-century chamfered granite fireplace with jointed lintel. The hall features 18th-century panelling and moulded ceiling cornices. Most of the first-floor rooms retain circa late 17th or 18th-century features including bolection-moulded and other panelling, moulded plaster ceilings—many deeply coved—and various enrichments including some with modillioned cornices. A principal axial passage with a coved ceiling now opens into two or more chambers. A circa 1700 stair with panelled newels survives; the stair hall has a mid-floor entrance from a terraced garden at the left-hand side of the house (shown as an east garden front with piano-nobile first floor in a drawing by William Borlase dating to circa 1770).

Kenegie has been the home of many notable Cornish families, including the Tripconies in the 16th century, the Harris family in the 17th and 18th centuries, and was once the home of the Arundel family (the lions at Trerice originally came from here). Formerly one of the great Cornish houses, it was considerably altered during the 19th century but retains much fine-quality detail from the 16th to 18th centuries.