Dunstone

Dunstone is a villa, built probably in the late 1860s, originally said to have been connected to the Warberry Nursing Home. It is now in use as a hotel. The building is likely from 1868 and was reportedly built for General Redvers Buller. The house has a slate roof and plastered exterior, with stacks featuring rendered shafts and cornices.

The main block faces south, with an entrance on the east return leading into a passage and an open well stair hall. A secondary north-east block, containing a massive chimney shaft, likely served as the kitchen and partly fills in an earlier stable yard.

The three-bay east front is asymmetrical, featuring a pedimented gable and corner pilasters with moulded cornices at first-floor sill level. A projecting porch has panelled corner pilasters, an entablature, a parapet, and ball finials. The doorway has a hollow-chamfered segmental head and a mahogany panelled door. The centre bay above features a 12-pane sash, while blind round-headed windows with pilastered architraves flank the left-hand bay. A first-floor window on the right was reglazed in the 20th century, and the ground-floor window is round-headed, with a moulded pilastered architrave. A segmental-headed archway, matching the porch doorway, leads to the former stable yard but has been infilled.

The south return has a 3:1 window front, with the three-window section broken forward under a pedimented gable and articulated with pilasters and a plain entablature. There are three first-floor 12-pane sashes. A pedimented doorway is on the left; a projecting, flat-roofed bay window is to the right, with paired 20th-century two-pane sashes and a balustraded parapet. The right-hand bay of the front has one first-floor 12-pane sash, and the ground-floor window has been converted into a doorway leading into a fine Edwardian octagonal conservatory. The conservatory features an octagonal lantern, a wrought-iron finial, a dentil cornice, and high-transomed windows with small panes above the transom.

The interior is well-preserved, with fine joinery, plasterwork, and a staircase.