Kenwith Castle

Kenwith Castle is a house, now operating as a hotel, built around 1760, incorporating an earlier 18th-century wing to the left. The external walls are colourwashed render over coursed slatestone rubble, with hipped and gabled slate roofs, and rendered stone end and ridge stacks. The building follows a double-depth plan and is designed in a Georgian Gothick style. The symmetrical front elevation has a 2:3:2 arrangement of windows, with a projecting two-storey bay at the centre. Pointed arches feature over the Gothic-style sash windows, which have glazing bars. The front is finished with a moulded cornice and crenellated parapet. A pointed archway gives access from the left side, with a 20th-century double door. The house is flanked by crenellated walls leading to two-storey blocks. Each wall has a segmental-arched double entrance, and to the left, a quatrefoil-shaped opening. The block to the right connects to another crenellated wall, approximately 16 metres long, and a two-storey range which forms one side of a stable yard. Internally, a room to the left boasts panelling with carved mouldings dating to around 1730-40. A doorway, reset in the 20th century, has a pulvinated frieze with oak leaf and acorn carvings originating from around 1730-40. Matching brackets flank a carved overmantel above a fine marble fireplace, which itself has a lion’s mask carved on the frieze, also dating to around 1730-40. An early 19th-century staircase has a straight flight and features wrought-iron lyre-shaped balusters and a wreathed handrail. A mid-18th-century panelled and round-arched doorway is located at the rear right of the building.