Heywood House

Heywood House is a country house, now used as offices, built in 1837 on the site of an earlier house designed by Harvey Eginton of Worcester for H.G.G. Ludlow. It is constructed of limestone ashlar with a Welsh slate roof and distinctive octagonal ashlar stacks. The architectural style is Jacobean, arranged around an E-plan. The house is two storeys and has attics, with a five-window front. A two-storey central porch features Tudor-arched openings and hood moulds. Above the porch is a first-floor oriel with an open parapet, shaped gable, and unusual free-standing octagonal “minarets” and a square clock tower are situated behind the gable. Bays flanking the porch have six-light mullioned and transomed casements to both the ground and first floors. The wings have two-storey canted bays with four-light mullioned and transom windows and open parapets. Three-light mullioned attic windows are set within shaped gables with corner stacks. The right return displays a square porch and numerous ovolo-moulded mullioned casements, with a group of four large stacks to the left. The left return features a large external stack with offsets and similar windows. The rear elevation incorporates a single-storey service range to the left and a single-storey billiard room to the right; these are linked to the main range by a corridor with a Tudor-arched doorway and cross windows with leaded lights. The west end of the billiard room features ribbed doors and a three-light Tudor-arched window, while the front has mullioned and transomed windows. A gabled stair turret with an oriel window sits at the centre of the main range to the rear, with cross windows either side and shaped attic gables. A plaque commemorating the house's construction is located inside the porch. The interior retains high-quality original fittings. A large central hall contains a 17th-century-style stone fireplace with a strapwork overmantel and Doric columns supporting the entablature, alongside a rib-panelled ceiling. A Tudor-arched opening with cusped spandrels leads to a rear stair hall, which features an early 18th-century-style open-well staircase with barleysugar balusters, carved tread ends, and a ribbed ceiling. The southwest room has a gilded strapwork-decorated plaster ceiling and matching fitted cupboards. A former dining room in the southeast corner displays reset 17th-century panelling with strapwork carving. The billiard room has a five-bay arch-braced collar truss roof. Good quality joinery is found throughout the house, including eight-panelled doors within moulded architraves with attached shafts on the ground floor, and some Tudor-arched doors with cusped panels. The back stairs, originally in an 18th-century style, have been slightly altered to accommodate fire safety measures. A conservatory is attached to the left side of the house; it is constructed from timber and cast iron on an ashlar plinth, and it lacks glazing, with cast-iron ridge cresting to the hipped roof.