Rammerscales House

Rammerscales House is a medium-scale Palladian mansion built around 1760. It features a rectangular plan with three storeys, a sunk basement, and a roof balustrade. The front and rear elevations each have three bays, while the flanks have five bays. The exterior is constructed of lightly-droved red ashlar with polished dressings and a continuous cill band at the first floor.

The east front includes a recessed Doric porch with a distyle in antis, an architraved door with a traceried fanlight, and a similarly proportioned tripartite window above. The inner light is consoled and pedimented, while the outer first-floor windows each have a consoled cornice. The second-floor windows are framed in double-lugged architraves, and the ground floor windows are in double-lugged margins. The building's angles are channelled at the ground. The other elevations have unmargined windows and a continuous blocked cornice. The roof features corniced stacks and a shallow-pitch slate roof concealed by a parapet. A low lean-to addition at the rear blocks the original door, and there is a nearby louvered timber game store.

Inside, the house has a tripartite plan and is largely intact, with some early 19th-century refitting. The rear service rooms were altered around 1938 by M Purdon Smith. The entrance hall features a Doric screen, and beyond it is a cantilevered stair with a cupola and an early 19th-century cast-iron balustrade. The interior includes 18th and early 19th-century chimneypieces, notable cornice plasterwork—especially in the large drawing room—and a long gallery that runs the full length of the top floor, which was fitted out in the mid-19th century, possibly by John Starforth, for the library of William Bell MacDonald.