The Clock House

The Clock House is a mid-19th century building, constructed of rubble with green limestone dressings, and has renewed slate roofs with slightly oversailing eaves. It is arranged in an L-shape with a near-symmetrical entrance front. The advanced, steeply-gabled porch features moulded wooden bargeboards, a wooden glazed louvre with a bracketed pyramidal copper roof, and a lead ball finial. The porch’s ogee entrance arch has blind, cusped trefoil tracery above, supported on stylised carved head-corbels. The date 1844 is displayed in raised lettering within a moulded lozenge recess in the gable apex. A contemporary part-glazed door has an ogee fan and is panelled below, with plain arched lights to the porch return walls. Flanking the porch are recessed 30-pane sash windows, appearing as cross windows with chamfered reveals. Above these are two gabled dormers with bargeboards matching those on the porch. The windows are original, with triangular intersecting tracery and multi-pane glazing.

To the right of the porch is a recessed bay with a moulded segmental arch carrying the jettied upper storey, featuring a two-light mullioned window above a 16-pane sash. This connects to a two-storey tower with angled corners and a hipped roof, featuring lead finials and decorative ironwork. An advanced, flat central buttress on the tower has two narrow 8-pane fixed windows and a blindslit-light above, topped with a moulded wooden gablet. The south face of the tower has a battered base and a two-storey canted oriel window with a moulded base and plain, modern windows.

Adjoining the tower is a tall clock tower of two sections; the lower section is rubble with dressed stone above. The lower section has recessed pointed-arched slit-windows with bracketing. The upper section has depressed-arched recesses to each face, each containing twin slatted bell-vents with an oculus and clock face above. There are bracketed eaves and a pyramidal copper roof with a lead finial. Behind the main block is a large, battered, projecting plinth with a surmounting wooden verandah, featuring octagonal posts and a wide Tudor-arched arcade with a decorative iron balustrade. To the left of the main block, connected by a recessed communication bay, is a single-storey service block with a hipped roof, angled corners, a gablet, and ironwork consistent with the rest of the building. A small octagonal chimney has simple moulding. This wing, together with the two towers, was added later in the 19th century.