Grovehill House

Grovehill House is a large house dating from 1789, built for George Croker Fox. It is constructed of stucco or thin render over ashlar, with the original ashlar visible on the front and part of the service wing. The rear and left-hand return feature relief blocking out, likely following the joints of the original stone wall. The building has flat keyed arches, a mid-floor string course, and a moulded parapet cornice with modillions. The roofs are covered with asbestos slate, with rendered stacks at the rear and a smaller stack on the left.

The house has a deep rectangular plan with a service wing at the rear. The symmetrical front facade features two storeys over a basement, with a 3-bay, 7-window arrangement, featuring 3 windows to each bowed bay flanking the entrance bay. The windows are late 19th-century 2-pane sashes with horns. A central tripartite porch has square columns and a moulded parapet cornice, with a round-arched doorway featuring a keyblock and a plain fanlight. Spandrel panels with festoons sit over the sidelights, and a tripartite doorway behind contains an original 6-panel door with a cobweb fanlight and festoons.

The right-hand return is articulated with a 1:3:1 bay layout, topped with a triangular modillioned pediment with a spoked lunette over bays 2-4. Bays one and two are blind, and most other windows are original hornless sashes with glazing bars, a style consistent on the rear and left-hand return.

The interior retains original and early 19th-century features. The vestibule has an original moulded plaster ceiling cornice, linked to the central stair hall by an elliptical arch over a Venetian doorway with panelled pilasters. The stair hall has an original cantilevered stone open-well open-string staircase with a ramped mahogany handrail and stick balusters. A Vitruvian scroll frieze appears midway up, and a 3-bay Ionic colonnade sits at the back of the staircase, accompanied by a moulded ceiling cornice. A left-hand reception room, the only one inspected, boasts an elaborate early 19th-century moulded and carved ceiling cornice and band, featuring egg and dart, acanthus, anthemion, and trailing vine details. A circa 1900 tiled and iron grate sits within an Adam-style chimney-piece, likely of the same date.

In the garden stands a very thick 7-metre stump of a Lucombe oak, planted around the time of the house's construction. A watercolour painting of the tree was made by John Childs just before it was felled in December 1983.