Glastan House

Glastan House is a vicarage, now a private house, built in 1805 and slightly remodelled around 1900. It is constructed of shale rubble walls with dressed granite quoins, sills, jambstones, voussoirs, lintels, bonding stones, and a moulded eaves cornice of former parapets, with a steeply pitched dry Delabole slate roof and axial brick chimneys.

The house has a double-depth plan, originally containing three reception rooms facing the garden (southeast), a small study, and an entrance hall. Behind the right-hand reception room is a large stair hall, and to the rear left are two service rooms flanking a central service stair. The house has two storeys over a basement and includes an attic.

The original symmetrical four-window south-east front has a central grouping of two windows. Round-headed openings are present on either side of the basement and to a central roof dormer, where some coping from a former parapet remains. Basement openings now have French windows added around 1900; the first floor has a canted bay window with plate glass sashes to the right. Other ground and first-floor openings have original 16-pane hornless sashes with crown glass, all with flat arches. The rear entrance elevation is largely unaltered, with three first-floor windows and two mid-floor round-headed windows. A wider, taller principal stair window is located left of middle, and the service stair window is a central feature of a symmetrical grouping with flanking ground and first-floor windows. All windows are original hornless sashes with glazing bars and crown glass. The original four-panel door and overlight remain at the left-hand entrance, which is topped by a distyle porch with square-on-plan columns.

The interior includes an original open-well, open-string stair with stick balusters and a mahogany handrail, along with six-panel doors. Moulded plaster ceiling cornices and a band are present in the right-hand room, and a re-used 18th-century chimney-piece (originally from Wales) is also noted.

Glastan House is an unusual building, designed as a vicarage where symmetry was a secondary consideration. While some remodelling occurred around 1900, the house remains reasonably complete.