The Hermitage

The Hermitage is a house dating from the mid-18th century, with an ashlar front and a stone-tiled roof. It features coped gables and end wall stacks. The two-story house has an attic, with two hipped dormers. The formal three-window front has a parapet, a moulded cornice, and a moulded first-floor course, all of which project forward over raised angle strips. The windows are set within bead-moulded architraves; there are paired 12-pane sashes to the outer windows, a 12-pane centre sash on the first floor, and a canted projecting ashlar porch with a string course that also acts as a cornice. The porch contains a six-panel door in a moulded surround, and there are eight-pane windows to the sides. Thick glazing bars are present on the sashes. Urns are positioned at each end of the parapet. The front continues in a similar style to the right, with a slate roof, a similar moulded cornice and string course, a right-end angle strip, and a corner urn. Pairs of 12-pane sashes are above and two pairs below. The west end wall is roughly rendered, and a late 19th-century parallel north-west rear range extends from the main house, with three stories and a one-window range of paired sashes, which was extended to the left in the 19th century. Further to the left is a fine, later 18th-century ashlar-fronted structure with a triple-hipped roof, a parapet, and a cornice. This section has two large, moulded Venetian windows with 8-12-8 pane sashes, and the centre sash features intersecting glazing bars to the arched head. The interior is divided into two tall rooms with cellars at the rear. The basement of the main house contains a cyma-moulded doorway and a two-light window with a removed mullion, now located within a later rear extension. At the rear ground level, there is also an ashlar Roman Doric column, possibly indicating a rear open loggia.