Longmead And Attached Walls And Gate Piers

Longmead is a detached house built in 1855, featuring painted stucco and a slate roof with wide bracketed eaves. The building has an L-shaped plan, with a rear wing creating an asymmetrical cross. It stands two storeys tall with a cellar and has a two-window range. The exterior includes a plinth, a moulded first-floor sill string course, and horned 6/6-pane sash windows. The ground-floor windows have cornices on consoles, while the first-floor windows, which have radial glazing bars, are adorned with moulded eared and shouldered archivolts. The front ground-floor window is tripartite with 6/9 panes. A glazed porch with a hipped glass roof and round-arched lights was likely added in the late 19th century, possibly lowering the sill.

Inside, the ground floor features panelled shutters and a white marble fireplace flanked by semicircular-arched recesses in the left-hand room. There are reeded architraves on the four-panel doors and stick balusters on an open-string dogleg staircase. The hall has a high dado rail from the late 19th century.

The property is surrounded by an attached rubblestone wall. The north side features a retaining wall approximately 6 meters high and 60 meters long, which reduces to about 2 meters at the gate piers topped with pyramidal caps and double 20th-century gates to the east. The wall curves eastward for about 20 meters before turning south, standing about 1 meter high and extending for approximately 100 meters along the south side of the garden, where there are similar gate piers for a pedestrian entrance. Historical records indicate that the house was built for a sum not less than £500.