Bryn Corach

Bryn Corach

A large Gothic style villa, one and a half storeys with a complex plan that creates a picturesque overall character. The building is constructed from rock-faced rubble stone with grey freestone dressings, topped by a steep slate roof with snecked rock-faced stacks.

The house comprises three main sections: a double-depth entrance range facing north, a west wing set forward on the right side of the front, and a gabled southwest wing positioned on the steep ground behind.

The entrance range is four bays and asymmetrical in design. The facade is anchored by a circular tower with a conical roof. To the left of the tower stand paired gables with a veranda at ground floor level. To the right is the entrance itself, featuring an octagonal glazed top-lit porch with pointed windows and double doors, topped by a late 20th-century pyramidal roof with lantern. Above the entrance is a two-pane sash window set in a gabled half dormer with bargeboards. The tower has pointed arched windows linked by a continuous impost band at first floor (glazing detail renewed), and a similar window to the ground floor in a projecting gablet. The conical roof is carried on brackets and features gabled lucarnes incorporating trefoils. The paired gables to the left have arched French doors with wood-mullioned overlights beneath the veranda, and arched wooden cross windows above.

The veranda continues across the two-bay east elevation but is interrupted in the left-hand bay by an early 20th-century lean-to conservatory. The right-hand bay mirrors the entrance front gables, with French doors and a pointed cross window serving a dormer under a coped gable. In the gabled left-hand bay, the attic contains a two-light stone-mullioned window with a quatrefoil set within a freestone tympanum.

The south garden front is also four irregular bays. A broad gable is offset to the right of centre and features a pointed arched window, flanked by a smaller steep gabled dormer with decorative bargeboards to the left and a catslide dormer to the right. A veranda at ground floor right has moulded cast iron posts with scrollwork brackets and a modern glazed roof. Beneath it are replacement half-glazed fielded-panel doors under original pointed wood-mullioned overlights. The wider gabled bay contains a second former doorway on the left side, now converted to a fixed small-pane window. Pointed arched cross windows appear in the lower storey of the left-hand bay.

The west wing advances to the right of the entrance. Its three-bay north front incorporates part of the original house, with consistently pointed arched windows throughout, though one ground floor left window has been inserted. Variations in the stonework reveal different building phases across the three bays. The coped parapet is a later addition, evidenced by a continuous horizontal joint at eaves level. The right (west) side wall of the wing is brick, featuring small-pane steel-framed and replacement windows, as well as a first-floor link to a detached wing of circa 1963. To the rear the west wing is roughcast and painted white, with pointed windows; the lower storey has steel-framed glazing while the first floor windows have been replaced. The east return wall facing the main house has a segmental-headed two-light window.

The southwest wing is a 20th-century addition, two storeys with basement. It is constructed from whitened brick to basement and ground floor, with pebble-dash between brick pilasters at first floor level, beneath a hipped slate roof on overhanging eaves. The basement contains a passage through the side walls. The four-window side walls have replacement and steel-framed casement windows. On the right side of the east wall are double-glazed doors beneath an original diamond latticework overlight. The three-window south end wall, of grey pebble-dash, has replacement windows.