Brantwood

Brantwood is a house dating from approximately 1797, with significant extensions and alterations made throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is located in Coniston, Cumbria, overlooking the lake.

The original front range is a two-storey, four-bay structure. The first bay is taller and forms an elongated octagon. A rectangular bay window with a wooden balustrade features in the second bay, while the fourth bay has an angle turret. Most windows are sash windows with glazing bars, although the first bay has leaded glazing. The second bay contains tripartite sash windows, and the third features a bowed tripartite sash. A hexagonal turret projects from the first floor, supported by a pier, with full-height leaded glazing to five sides, topped by a pyramidal roof. Chimneys include a cross-axial stack and gable-end stacks. A rear wing incorporates various stacks, including paired gable-end stacks. The right-hand return displays decorative bargeboards and a round-headed stair window with intersecting glazing bars. A one-storey dining room projection is also present, with a hipped roof and a flat central section. The corners of the building feature stone double-chamfered clasping buttresses. A canted French window is located at the front, alongside a return stone window consisting of seven trefoil-headed lights over a weathered projection, with roll-moulded openings and trefoils and sexfoils in the spandrels. The three-storey rear wing has sash windows with glazing bars, with tripartite windows above an archway. The entrance doorway has six fielded panels, and the archway is topped with a keystone bearing the letters "JR". A second-floor oriel wraps around the angle at the left-hand side, featuring small-paned glazing. The studio, located at the rear, is single-storey but level with the second floor; it has a small hipped porch and a large tripartite sash. The left return includes a canted oriel over an archway, a gabled oriel at the end of the second floor, and an entrance with a glazed doorcase and overlight with glazing bars.

Inside, doors have architraves with angle rosettes. The dining room has a coved ceiling and a marble fireplace with a round-arched grate. Other rooms also have marble fireplaces. The studio contains an elliptical-arched fireplace recess with a 4-centred arch and a tiled surround; a small window has leaded glazing. Shelves are positioned above an original radiator. One room has fireplace tiles designed by Burne-Jones.

Brantwood served as the home of John Ruskin, the 19th-century art and social critic, from 1872 until his death in 1900. It was also the home of William Linton and Eliza Lynn, a wood engraver, revolutionary socialist, and novelist respectively; the poet Gerald Massey; and the watercolourist Arthur Severn and his family.