Watersmeet House

Watersmeet House is a hunting and fishing lodge, now operating as a shop and restaurant, built around 1832 for Reverend Walter Stevenson Halliday and probably enlarged circa 1850. It is constructed of uncoursed stone rubble with large irregular quoins, and features gable-ended slate roofs with a pyramidal form over an octagon and a wooden finial. The building may formerly have been thatched.

The house follows an L-plan facing south-west, with a central elongated octagon projecting to the front as a canted bay, flanking wings, and a rear wing. A probably later L-shaped wing occupies the angle to the north-west. A lean-to loggia returns to the sides. The building is two storeys and represents a cottage orné style.

The exterior is finished with a plinth and overhanging eaves with pierced barge boards. The south-west front displays rendered ridge and valley stacks and is arranged in 1:3:1 bays. The centre three windows occupy a two-storey canted bay with a steep hipped roof. First-floor windows are two-light small-paned wooden casements with margin lights beneath stone flat arches and small gables above. Ground-floor windows are small-paned French casements with margin lights and stone flat arches. A loggia with cobbled terrace features rustic wooden posts with straight braces and a lean-to slate roof, glazed to the centre.

The right-hand gable-end has two-light wooden margin-light casements to each floor. The left-hand gable-end features a first-floor wooden casement of two Tudor-Gothic lights with Y-tracery and a returned wooden hoodmould. Beneath this is a small-paned half-glazed door with three Tudor-Gothic lower panels, three Tudor-Gothic upper lights, and boarded reveals. An inscription above the door reads: "The spot was made by nature for herself: / The travellers know it not, and it will remain / Unknown to them; but it is beautiful: / And if a man should plant his cottage near, / Should sleep beneath the shelter of its trees, / And blend its waters with his daily meal, / He would so love it, that in his death-hour / Its image would survive among his thoughts." The rear wing features Gothic wooden casements and an external lateral stone stack. The probably later L-shaped range at the rear has an external stone end stack.

The interior preserves complete fixtures and fittings of 1832 in the ground-floor front rooms, including moulded cornices and panelled shutters. Panelled doors, which are double in the central octagonal room, have reeded architraves with square pateras at the corners. The fireplace in the octagonal room features a reeded architrave with roundels at the corners. An open-well cantilevered wooden staircase in the circa 1850 rear wing comprises an open string with cut brackets, turned balusters (two per tread) and a swept handrail wreathed to the foot newel.

Reverend W. S. Halliday acquired the estate in 1829 and began his house, Glenthorne, soon afterwards. Estate documents confirm that Watersmeet House was occupied by 1832. Halliday owned a copy of P. F. Robinson's Rural Architecture; or a Series of Designs for Ornamental Cottages (1832), still in the possession of the Halliday family, and was significantly influenced by the designs illustrated within it. A print of Glenthorne as it appeared in the early nineteenth century is kept at Watersmeet House.