Swangrove House, Garden Walls, 4 Corner Pavilions And Gate Piers

Swangrove House, along with its garden walls, four corner pavilions, and gate piers, is a designated Grade I listed building. Constructed in 1703 by William Killigrew of Bath, it is described as a 'maison de plaisance'. The house is built of fine ashlar, with rendered side and rear elevations, and has slate roofs with coped verges. It combines Cotswold vernacular style with Palladian influences.

The main house is two storeys with cellars and attics, presenting two steep, coped, stone gables with a flat roofed room between, and lower two-story wings, all topped with an embattled parapet. The façade is arranged as a 1:3:1 bay design. The centre features tall cross windows on the first floor, while other windows are 2-light casements. Keyed oval windows are positioned at the apex of the gables. A continuous string course runs above the ground and first floors, stepped above the first-floor windows in the centre, and features lead cresting. A straight flight of balustered steps leads to the first-floor front door, which is a six-panel design with a two-light overlight, all within a bolection moulded surround and topped by a segmental pediment that rises from the string course. Lead downpipes are present at the junctions between the centre and wings, and the rainwater heads bear a portcullis badge and the date '1703'. The rear elevation features three doors with bolection moulded surrounds, and three cross windows with drip moulds on the first floor.

Four detached corner pavilions are constructed of ashlar with pyramidal Cotswold stone slate roofs, ball finials, and a moulded eaves cornice. Each pavilion is single-storied and contains a plank door in a bolection surround, as well as a keyed oval window. Low, coped rubble garden walls connect the pavilions and enclose the site, with ashlar gate piers featuring ball finials situated to the south.

The interior of the house retains significant original features. On the ground floor, stop-chamfered and moulded beams are visible, along with a cornices and an oak staircase with turned balusters, a closed string, and a moulded handrail that extends to the attic. A central ‘blue room’ on the first floor is fully panelled with raised and fielded panels. A bolection moulded fire surround is centrally placed, with cupboards featuring glazed doors on either side; the cupboard to the right contains a buffet, a marble basin set on a pedestal within a recessed marble niche, and a mask of a mandarin with a tap in his mouth (connected to a cistern and fed by a pumphouse in the adjacent woodland). The attic contains a central panelled room, notable for its early 18th-century marbling and japanning, featuring gold leaf chinoiserie designs of insects and birds on a black background. These designs are attributed to Stalker and Parker, and relate to "A treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, 1688.”