Grizzlefield House, including attached garden walls

Grizzlefield House, including attached garden walls

House, late 18th or early 19th century, extended mid-19th century and later.

The main house is constructed of red brick with sandstone dressings and Welsh slate roofs. The brickwork to the front of the original house is laid in Flemish Bond, whilst elsewhere it is generally English Garden Wall Bond, retaining some penny-ruled flush pointing.

The interior plan centres on a central entrance connecting through to a rear stair hall. The former kitchen, positioned to the right of the stair hall, now has an inserted access opening through to the mid-19th-century extension to the east and has been knocked through to the dining room at the front. The extension now functions as an open-plan kitchen. The first-floor landing, central to the original house, provides access to the main bedrooms, an enclosed stair to the attic, and a corridor to the extension; however, a truncated service staircase rising from the former kitchen suggests that first-floor circulation may originally have been divided. The western half of the house contains a two-roomed cellar accessed from the original kitchen beneath the remnants of a servants' staircase to the first floor.

The south elevation of the main house is symmetrical, comprising three bays and two storeys with gable-end stacks and a central entrance. The entrance features a finely carved sandstone door case with fluted pilasters and an open-based pediment accommodating a bats-wing fanlight. The elevation is divided by a moulded eaves band, sill-level string courses, and a plain plinth, all in ashlar sandstone. The first-floor windows have monolithic lintels with projecting keystones; ground-floor windows have brick flat arches. Window joinery consists of sympathetically detailed modern replacements: flush fitted with exposed sash boxes and eight-over-eight pane double-glazed hornless sashes.

The mid-19th-century extension to the east is a single bay, set slightly back. It comprises two storeys with an end stack, the upper floor partly accommodated in the roof space. Its central ground-floor window, which has a flat brick arch, has been enlarged to form a glazed doorway. The first-floor window is a later insertion fitted with a double-glazed horned sash window.

On the west side of the main house, set back in-line with the ridge, is a single-storey screen wall with a lean-to outbuilding built behind. This is a single bay, stone-coped with a quarter-circle ramp down to an altered garden wall. The screen wall has a single inserted opening with modern glazed double doors.

The rear elevation of the main house features a central, round-arched stair window with sympathetically detailed replaced joinery. To the right is a ground-floor window similar to those of the front elevation. To the left is the 2006 single-storey extension, which extends across the rear of the 19th-century side extension; the two first-floor windows above are 19th century or later insertions. The roof is fitted with 20th century or later roof windows. The rear of the mid-19th-century extension has two first-floor windows, both appearing to be later insertions. The outbuilding to the west has a window and two roof lights.

The west gable of the main house is coped with shaped kneelers; the brick chimney does not retain coping and carries five chimney pots in line. There is a small, central attic window and a single first-floor window slightly offset to the rear of centre, both thought to be original openings with sympathetically replaced joinery. The ground floor is blind. The projecting outbuilding built against the screen wall has a small window that is either inserted or altered.

The east gable above the mid-19th-century extension is detailed as the west gable except that it is blind. The gable end of the extension is plain-verged and has a twin-flued chimney set immediately to the rear of the ridge. This extension has a central ground-floor window and two evenly spaced first-floor windows, all with flat brick arches and replaced joinery with two-over-two pane horned sashes. A second ground-floor window is a later insertion.

Interior features include original cornicing to the entrance and stair halls as well as the front reception rooms, which also retain window shutters and fireplaces, although both fire surrounds are considered later replacements. Cornicing to the bedrooms and original kitchen is modern. The original kitchen, now linked via a large inserted opening to the dining room, retains its large fireplace fitted with a coal-fired range. The staircase has stick-balusters and a ramped handrail. Interior doors are generally six-panelled and likely to be mostly original. The roof structure appears to be largely original, of typical construction with timber-pegged through-purlins supported by an open attic truss.

The mid-19th-century addition retains a large kitchen fireplace but has been knocked through on the ground floor and altered on the upper floor.

The attached garden walls extend south from the screen wall on the west side of the main house. The primary garden wall is brick-built and stone-coped with a shaped top including curving ramps. This wall incorporates a blocked round-headed doorway that is impinged upon by the coping, indicating that the wall-top shape is a later alteration. A less elaborate garden wall of similar materials stands to the west of the house.