Henlade House

Henlade House is a country house built between 1805 and 1815, with an enlargement around 1890. It was designed by an unidentified Italian architect for John Proctor Anderdon. The house is rendered over brick and features hipped slate roofs that are concealed behind parapets, along with brick stacks. It has a double pile layout facing north, which was enlarged to include a billiard room in the southwest wing.

The building is two storeys tall and has a symmetrical facade with 2:1:2 bays. It features a moulded cornice below the parapet and pilaster quoins, with the central bay slightly projecting forward. The windows are 12-pane sash windows, although the first-floor end window on the left is bricked up behind glazing. There is a central flat-roofed Ionic porch with fluted columns on tall plinths, a flight of six steps, and a quadrant of columns with glazed infill. The porch includes a half-glazed door and inner double doors, which are also half-glazed and topped with a wrought iron Adam style fanlight.

The right return of the house has a full-height canted bay with blind windows, while the left return consists of nine bays, with the first two bays on the left bowing out and the penultimate two bays extending. The original four bays have 12-pane sash windows, while the late 19th-century extension features sashes without glazing bars and a door in the fourth bay on the right.

Inside, the house has an octagonal hall that opens into a larger hall with a curved south wall. There is a cantilevered stone stair with cast and wrought iron balusters featuring rosette designs and mahogany handrails. Both halls are decorated in the Aesthetic movement style from around 1872, with stencilled decorations of sunflowers against a pre-Raphaelite green background and a painted coffered dome in the hall.

Original doors are present throughout the ground floor, along with contemporary chimney pieces likely imported from Italy. The dining room features moulded plasterwork cornices and carved wooden pelmets that echo acanthus leaf decoration but are designed to be hung upside down. The walls are covered with 1870s lincrusta wallpaper of an 'aesthetic' design, which has since been colour washed. The billiard room is panelled in stained pine and includes two fireplaces and original fittings. The house retains interesting original features, particularly from the decorative scheme of the 1810s, which has not been widely appreciated by later generations. The exterior plaster is noted to be in poor condition as of November 1984.