Front House Guest House

The Front House Guest House, originally a private house, dates to the early 19th century and likely incorporates elements of a 16th or 17th century building, with a later addition to the left. The building has solid, roughcast walls, likely of stone, and tarred slated roofs with clay ridge tiles; the ridge tiles on the older front range are handmade with low crests. Brick chimneys are found on each gable of the older front range, and on the left-hand gable of the addition, with the left-hand chimney partly rebuilt in the 20th century. The front range has two rooms of equal size, originally with a passage running between them. A parlour wing is situated at the rear on the right-hand side, and a longer kitchen wing, including the staircase, is to the rear of the left side. The building is two storeys high and has a roughly symmetrical three-window front. All windows have sash windows, with six panes on the ground floor and eight on the second floor. The central doorway features a wooden doorcase with flanking pilasters and a flat hood on shaped brackets, sheltering a six-panel door, the two upper panels now glazed. There are two windows on either side of the doorway; the addition to the left has no windows. The rear wings retain most of their 19th century casement windows. Inside, both front rooms and a room in the parlour wing on the ground floor have early 19th century wooden fireplaces; the left-hand front room’s fireplace includes a moulded architrave, fluted half-pilasters, a pulvinated frieze with a central plaque, and a cornice. The right-hand room’s fireplace has plain pilasters and a dentilled cornice. The ceiling beams are chamfered, one featuring stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. A wooden open-well staircase, located at the junction of the main range and the kitchen wing, has cut strings with thin square-section balusters. The roof was not inspected. Little Front House and Rose Cottage, also part of the Front House Guest House, are listed separately.