Ruishton House

Ruishton House is a country house dated 1893, designed by Mr. Spiller for Robert Grieve Sommerville and Marion Pethick Somerville. The building is constructed from gauged and moulded red brick and features a gable front with decorative tile hanging and applied half timbering in the gable ends. It has overhanging eaves with sprockets, plain clay tiled roofs, and decorative ridge tiles. Large ribbed brick stacks are topped with terracotta dragon-headed water spouts.

The house is L-shaped, with the entrance located on the west front and a long service wing extending to the northeast courtyard. In the Old English Tudor style, the west front has two and a half storeys and is divided into 1:3 bays. The right three bays are gable fronted, featuring a 2-light sash window in the gable end with 12 panes, similar first-floor sash windows, and a pair of windows on the left and three on the right with louvred shutters. A long 3-light French window flanks a large gabled porch, which has a half-glazed door with sidelights and tinted glass. A fine cast iron verandah with a floral motif abuts the porch and encloses the house on the west and south fronts, and it is in good condition with a ruberoid slate roof.

On the ground floor of the west front, there is an inserted Ham stone quoin inscribed 'laid by Stuart Somerville 1893' along with the initials RGS and MPS on the south side. The garden front is symmetrical with three bays and a gabled center, and the long service wing has applied half timbering on the first floor. The interior has not been seen.

The Somervilles owned the paperworks at Creech St Michael, and there is a memorial to them in the Church of St George in Ruishton. While the plan of the house may be uninspired, it features good external detailing and may contain interesting interior features.