Stanborough House

Stanborough House is a country house dating from circa 1780, with a late 19th or early 20th century addition at the rear.

The exterior is constructed of slate rubble with the front elevation faced in Flemish bond red bricks featuring some flared headers and rusticated Portland stone quoins, plinth stringcourse and cills. The roof is grouted scantle slate, hipped at the front with lead rolls to the hips and gable-ended at the rear wings. Rendered axial stacks and rear gable end stacks provide the chimneys.

The building displays two storeys and an attic with a symmetrical 2:1:2 window range. Large 18th century 12-pane sashes are set in openings with flat ribbed brick arches and Portland stone cills. A late 20th century 2-storey porch has been added to the front entrance, rendered with cement rendered quoins, a glazed door, 12-pane sash and slate hung gable. The glazed inner door is original with reticulated intersecting glazed panels. The right hand return has a doorway with similarly glazed double doors to the front room with an elliptical head and open pediment with fluted half-columns, above which is a 12-pane sash. The rear wing is set back slightly with asymmetrically arranged 18th century sashes, one of which is a 2-light sash serving the kitchen. The left hand return has plain glazed double doors to the front room with asymmetrically arranged 18th century 12-pane sashes set back to the left. The two gable-ended wings at the rear and the flat-roofed infill between are slate hung. The wings have single storey lean-to outshuts at the back.

The plan is deep with two principal rooms at the front and a central entrance hall between them, leading to the stairhall with an open-well staircase behind the left hand room and partitioned servants' stairs behind the right hand room. Two long service wings extend to the back, with the kitchen to the right behind the servants stairs and other service rooms to the left behind the main stairs. Single storey outshuts stand at the end of each wing, and in the late 19th or early 20th century the space between the wings was filled in to create another large service room.

The interior is largely complete with most 18th century joinery and plasterwork intact, including mahogany panelled doors and panelled internal window shutters. The front left hand room features a moulded plaster cornice and frieze with palmette and anthemion decoration, and a wooden pilastered chimneypiece with urns and festoons in the frieze. The front right hand room has a similar chimneypiece and a moulded plaster cornice with a festoon frieze. The garden door to the side has fluted pilasters and a moulded archivolt. The wide entrance passage hall is marked by an arch with fluted pilasters and a moulded elliptical archivolt. The stairhall contains a moulded plaster cornice and an open-well staircase with stick balusters and a moulded mahogany handrail wreathed over the column newel at the curtail and ramped up to the landing newels; the open string has shaped tread ends. A large landing features a wide arch. First floor rooms contain 18th century chimneypieces with festooned friezes and Devon marble architraves. A doorway from the stairhall to the former rear courtyard has a traceried fanlight. The rear right hand wing has a window, now a cupboard, into the former courtyard with thin fluted half-columns and a cornice.