Farleigh Castle

Farleigh Castle is a country house, now used as a school, built around 1806 and remodelled around 1895. It is constructed of Doulting ashlar stone with slate and lead roofs, and features octagonal ashlar chimney stacks and turrets. The architectural style is Tudor Gothic.

The house is two, three and four storeys high, with buttresses, weathered string courses, moulded cornices, carved stone heraldic achievements and crests, panelled parapets and gargoyles, battlements and towers. The east-facing entrance elevation is three storeys high with five windows. To the left is an angular three-light stone mullion and transom bay window with a quatrefoiled parapet; next to it a blocked window with a stopped drip mould and a heraldic device. The central section is set between full-height buttresses, with a cross-gabled coping and crocketted finials, a four-centred moulded arch to the main entrance, and an angled bay. To the right are mullion and twice-transomed windows with quatrefoils and shields to the spandrel, a mullion and transom window, gargoyles, a quatrefoil, a moulded string course and a parapet. Further windows are mullioned, with stopped dripmoulds to the ground and first floors, and a mullion window to the second floor, all with a moulded string course, coped and embattled parapet.

The south elevation, facing a formal garden, is generally similar, with seven windows over two, four and three storeys, corner buttresses, a tower with an octagonal stair turret and an angular bay. A diagonally set single-storey pavilion, likely from the early 19th century, includes steps to a central entrance under a semi-circular moulded arch with patera above, flanked by diagonal two-stage buttresses, crocketted finials, coped pediment and embattled wing walls.

Inside, the entrance hall extends through the full height of the building and has oak panelling on the ground floor. A staircase rises between a pair of square, Tuscan columns, with a moulded cornice and a three-light round-headed stone mullioned window containing stained glass and a glazed lantern light above.