Truthall House

Truthall House is a house built in the late 19th century as an extension to an earlier structure, incorporating 19th-century and possibly 17th-century walls, and standing on the foundations of 15th and 16th-century fabric. The walls are constructed of granite rubble with dressed granite architectural features including quoins, an ashlar porch, mullioned windows and copings. The roofs are of Delabole slate with copings to two cross-gables at the front; the roofs step down to uncoped gables at the rear and a roof parallel to the front sits at the rear left. A tall dressed granite chimney stack with a canted-on-plan weathered chimney breast rises from the right-hand wall. On the left is a later dressed granite stack near the ridge of a small wing set back on the left, and a brick shaft rises over the gable end of a courtyard-facing wing.

The plan is double-depth and slightly irregular, with two roughly equal reception rooms at the front flanking an entrance and stair hall. At the rear left is a parallel wing of circa early 19th-century date, retained as a service wing. At the rear right is another room remodelled from possibly 17th-century fabric as a service cross-wing, part of whose rear wall is integral with the 17th-century courtyard wall of the neighbouring Truthall. The present occupier has found a chamfered granite doorframe of presumed 17th-century date leading between this room and the front. Set back on the left is a small wing in the angle between this 19th-century house and Truthall. The circa early 19th-century wing at the rear left communicates with Truthall via a doorway incorporating reused 17th-century dressed granite.

The house is in Victorian Tudor Gothic style, standing at two storeys plus attics in the front cross-wings. The nearly symmetrical three-bay south front features a central entrance bay flanked by wide cross-gables. The central entrance is recessed under an embattled porch with waisted corners over tall plinths, beneath the imposts of a chamfered four-centred arched doorway constructed of voussoirs. A parapet string cornice is aligned with those over the bay windows to the middle of the gable ends. Above the porch is a squat four-light mullioned window slightly off-centre towards the right. The four-light mullioned bay windows are two storeys high and surmounted by embattled parapets. Above the parapets are mullioned windows in the gables: a two-light window to the left and a three-light window to the right. The principal drawing room on the ground floor right has a tall single light window on either side of the bay window. The gable copings are carried on moulded kneelers of three courses on either side.

The right side, facing the road, is also well detailed with three single light ground floor windows and three two-light mullioned first floor windows; the right-hand bay is stepped down. Between the left-hand and middle windows is a dressed granite two-stage chimney with two cornices rising from it. The windows of both these fronts are original horned sashes with glazing bars to the upper sashes only. At the rear are four circa mid-19th-century twelve-pane hornless sashes.

The interior, partially inspected, has been little altered since the late 19th-century building phase, which dates the stair and a ceiling cornice in the right-hand reception room. The house relates to the neighbouring Truthall and probably includes fabric and evidence valuable for understanding 17th and 18th-century development. However, it is an interesting house in its own right and remains virtually complete.