Ven House

Ven House is a Grade I country house begun in 1698 and completed around 1730 by Richard Grange for James Medlycott. It was altered and extended by Cubitt and Decimus Burton in 1836.

The house is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with Ham stone dressings. It has a hipped Welsh slate roof behind balustraded parapets and brick chimney stacks with moulded stone caps. The building follows a rectangular plan of 7 bays by 5 bays, with curved sweep walls to flanking pavilions. It rises three storeys over a basement.

The North elevation, which has 7 bays, features a rusticated plinth and stone pilasters with Corinthian capitals to the corners and between bays 2/3 and 5/6, carrying a cornice. Panelled pilasters to each bay of the second floor carry a string course and balustrade, with terra-cotta urns above the principal pilasters. Windows vary by floor: the basement has 12-pane sash windows behind railing-type grilles; the ground floor has 8-pane sashes; the first floor has 18-pane sashes with thick glazing bars set in keystoned architraved surrounds, those to the three central bays being heeled and shouldered; the second floor has 12-pane sash windows in simpler surrounds with deeper keystones. The central ground floor bay features a projecting flat-roofed porch with three steps leading to a pair of 5-panelled doors in a stone surround with attached Corinthian columns carrying an entablature and swan neck pediment bearing the Medlycott arms with eagle crest. The sweep walls extend to the full height of the plinth plus balustrades, each comprising five bays on quarter-circle curves.

The South elevation is similar, except the central French doors are flush with the wall and have fluted quasi-Doric pilasters and a segmental pediment on an entablature. The side elevations are simpler, with plain plinth and brick band course above first floor level. The West elevation has a central glazed door in a keystoned architrave with pediment hood on console brackets. The East elevation is partly concealed by 1836 outbuildings.

The interior was modified in 1836, when a large two-arm staircase behind the hall was replaced by a cantilever stair with cast iron balustrade in the middle of the East side. The hall, positioned at the centre of the North side, rises through two storeys and has stone fireplaces to both sides, flanked and surmounted by overmantels with Ionic pilasters and pediments. At its back is a gallery on stained timber Ionic columns, curving back at the centre. The floor is of stone and marble, and the applied plasterwork ceiling features a complex centre panel with a painting of 'Time and Beauty'. The salon or great drawing room to the South of the hall is higher than other ground floor rooms and has a moulded plaster ceiling with acanthus coving, mostly 19th-century joinery, and some scagliola work.

The South West corner room has an applied plaster ceiling with plainer cornice, 19th-century joinery, and a marble fireplace. The centre West room has a plain ceiling, field-panelled walls with fluted Tuscan pilasters and metopes to some parts of the frieze, and a marble bolection mould fireplace with over-mirror. The North West corner room has shallow fielded panelling to the walls with semi-circular headed recesses either side of a marble fireplace of around 1740; the ceiling has applied plasterwork decoration above heavy moulded wood coving. The North East room has plain walls and console-bracketed coving to the ceiling with an 18th-century centrepiece, and 19th-century joinery. The South East corner room has a moulded ceiling with console bracket coving, 19th-century joinery, a wood and gesso fireplace, and Chinese-style hand-painted wallpaper.

The first-floor bedrooms are plainer. The South East bedroom has moulded covering and good 18th-century fireplaces with pine egg and dart shouldered surrounds and carved overmantels with marble lining and early 19th-century grates. Similar fireplaces appear in the North East and central South rooms. The fireplaces to the three rooms on the West side have been removed and are said to be in storage.

The house was featured in Country Life on 24 June 1911, with descriptions of the garden and its features appearing in Country Life on 29 October 1898.