Gatehouse About 40 Metres East Of Lanhydrock House

Gatehouse about 40 metres east of Lanhydrock House

This is a Grade I listed gatehouse dated 1651, built for John and Lucy Robartes. It is constructed of granite ashlar with a lead roof behind a parapet.

The gatehouse has a distinctive rectangular plan with an octagonal tower at each side. A central open passage runs through the ground floor. The right tower contains a guard room at ground floor and a small unheated chamber above. The left tower houses the staircase and closets. A heated first floor chamber occupies the central position, with its chimney stack concealed within the parapet on the right side.

The building was originally attached to the main house with an east range and forecourt walls, which were demolished around 1780, leaving the gatehouse freestanding. In 1857, it was reconnected to the house by low garden walls designed by George Gilbert Scott, who also designed a replacement cast iron gate with brattished top panel in the same year.

The exterior is symmetrical across two storeys. The embattled parapet is topped with obelisks bearing ball finials. At the main angles, each die carries a freestanding Doric column set in front of ramped supporters, all on a moulded plinth.

The front is dominated by a central round-arched archway with engaged columns and hood mould. The outer arch partly supports the first floor chamber, which is jettied over the outer gateway. An inner rounded arched gateway has roll-mouldings and recessed spandrels, with a hood mould featuring label stops. Round-arched niches with corbels flank this gateway, with cross loops beneath. Pintles remain from the early gate.

Above the outer archway are four blank panels and a four-light chamfered granite window with a king mullion, flanked by engaged columns and blank panels, with hood mould continuing around both towers.

The right tower has blind windows at ground floor and first floor with four-centred hollow-chamfered arches, roundels in the spandrels, and an engaged column between the ground floor windows. Cross-loops sit below each. The left side has a four-light chamfered granite window at first floor with king mullion and hood mould, mirrored by a similar blind window on the right side.

At the rear, a central four-centred arched gateway with engaged shafts and carved capitals flanks recessed spandrels and a square hood mould. Above runs a string course with five recessed panels—the central one diamond-shaped, the others cusped. The first floor chamber has a four-light window matching the front, with recessed cusped panels to each side. The rear parapet is embattled with obelisks.

The interior of the front archway ceiling features a plain moulded cornice. Doorways to the guard room and left tower are set at angles within granite four-centred arches with recessed spandrels containing roundels and cushion stops. The guard room door is a twentieth-century plank replacement; the left doorway retains a panelled and studded seventeenth-century door with strap hinges.

The winding stair in the left tower serves the upper floor. Panelled seventeenth-century doors with studs connect to the closet at ground level. The first floor chamber features a granite fireplace with a basket arch, roll-moulded with recessed spandrels. The doorway to the tower chamber has a four-centred hollow-chamfered granite arch with roundels in the spandrels. The windows' king mullions carry mouldings internally matching those in the gallery at Lanhydrock House itself. A bellcote on the roof contains a bell dated 1811.