Gunfield And Attached Entrance Gateway To South

Gunfield is a house, dating from around the 1840s, and now operating as a hotel. It has undergone some 20th-century alterations. The external walls are constructed from plastered stone rubble, with some areas appearing as ashlar, and features rear lateral and axial stacks with tall plastered brick chimneyshafts topped with moulded cornices. The roof is slate-covered.

The original design comprised five rooms, with the main reception rooms located on the left (east) side and an entrance hall and main staircase positioned at the rear. The front of the house, facing the garden, is asymmetrical, with a 1:3:4-window arrangement. A full-height canted bay dominates the central section. This bay features French windows with double-panelled, glazed lower sections, and upper timber mullion-and-transom windows containing casements with glazing bars. Smaller casements with glazing bars are also present on the first floor. To the right of the bay is a 20th-century bay. Similar windows are found elsewhere on the front elevation, including taller mullion-and-transom windows on the first floor to the far right, and smaller windows set within two gabled dormers.

The deep eaves have a plastered soffit. The roof of the bay is hipped, leading to an apex finial, incorporating a gabled dormer and including a pivoting oculus window over a pair of first-floor windows. The distinctive wavey bargeboards, with their long, thin, spikey apex finials and pendants, give the house its characteristic appearance, particularly noticeable at the rear, where the building is lower in height from the road and incorporates two gabled bays. The entrance bay steps down. Some windows on the rear elevation retain original leaded glass in a Tudor pattern.

An approach from the road leads to a stone rubble Tudor-arch gateway, containing a pair of faceted panel doors under a fanlight with a radial pattern of glazing bars. Glass steps descend to the main doorway, which has a part-glazed door and overlight, both featuring a pattern of glazing bars.

The interior retains original features, including panelled doors, moulded plaster cornices, and chimney pieces. The original staircase has an open string and stick balusters, with small pieces of timber attached to the underside of the handrail, creating a triangular arch effect; this produces an arcade-like appearance. The roof space was not inspected.