Huntsham Court Including Walls And Gate Piers To Courtyard Immediately To The West

Huntsham Court is a country house now in use as a hotel. Built in 1869–70 by Benjamin Ferrey for Charles Troyte, it was renovated in the 1980s. The building is constructed of grey stone rubble with Ham Hill stone dressings, features a red tiled roof, and has chimney stacks with grey stone and Ham Hill ashlar shafts.

The design is in Tudor style, deliberately conservative for its date, and employs an asymmetrical plan. The main range has double depth and contains the principal rooms, with an entrance hall, porch and principal staircase positioned to the right. Four service ranges adjoin the house on the left, arranged around a small rectangular service court. An octagonal kitchen based on the design of the Abbot's Kitchen at Glastonbury adjoins the rear of the service ranges.

The west-facing entrance elevation is asymmetrical, with a crosswing to the left and a projecting two-bay block to the right, both topped with gables. The projecting block comprises a two-storey porch and adjoining stair wing. The main block has a picturesque irregular front with a complete set of stone windows, mostly mullioned and transomed. A three-sided turret with a conical roof stands to the left, with a corbelled first-floor oriel window beside it, featuring a pierced quatrefoil parapet and rising above a buttress decorated with carved heads. A large gable projects from the right front, beside which is a large six-light transomed window with king mullion, lighting the entrance hall. The stone porch doorway has a shouldered lintel and carved detail with carvings in the tympanum. The inner face of the left crosswing has two gables with attic windows and a corner stack with a slim stone shaft.

The principal garden elevation facing east is broken forward at the right end with two gables, and features a two-storey canted bay with conical roof, carved grotesques and a quatrefoil-carved parapet to the left of centre. A stone stack to the left carries carved armorial bearings. Fenestration throughout comprises stone windows, mostly mullioned and transomed.

The south elevation has a gable projecting to the front at the right with a two-storey canted bay decorated with carved grotesques. To the left is a three-window block with a gable bearing armorial bearings and a doorway. Stone windows, mostly mullioned and transomed, include a large four-light stair window above the door. The service ranges have lower rooflines, mullioned windows and gables. The octagonal kitchen is topped with a timber louvred ventilator crowned by a conical lead spine, and has pointed arched two-light windows with roundels above paired lancets.

Some interior features were removed in the 20th century and replaced with 19th-century substitutes, but considerable amounts of Ferrey's original interior survive. The entrance hall retains Ferrey's corbelled stone chimneypiece and a fine arcade of polished granite columns with Early English style carved capitals. The hall is lined with Jacobean-style panelling incorporating some Jacobean carved figures said to have been re-used from the earlier Huntsham Court. The stairwell is divided from the porch by a two-bay arcade and features a stair with twisted balusters, with good tiling to the floor of the porch and stairwell.

The drawing room, facing east, has an introduced late 19th-century chimneypiece and a beamed ceiling preserving the original painted decoration. Gothic overdoors are original. The library, facing south, was gutted in the 20th century but the original shelving was being re-introduced at the time of survey in 1986. The other principal rooms have stone or marble chimneypieces. The single-storey octagonal kitchen preserves the original corbelled chimneypiece. A top-lit first-floor axial corridor with bedrooms off retains original joinery.

The listing includes stone walls to the courtyard immediately west of the house, including gate piers to the carriage entrance.

Ferrey had restored the adjacent parish church for Arthur Troyte between 1854–56 and was probably also the architect of the 1871 addition to the church, completed shortly after finishing Huntsham Court for Arthur Troyte's son. The Troyte family improved Huntsham, which remains largely an estate parish, during the 19th century. Huntsham Court preserves its original exterior, plan form and many interior features, and forms a group with the parish church and adjacent lodge.