Trawsgoed House

Trawsgoed House is a country house of scribed render with slate roofs and 19th-century red terracotta ridge tiles, built in two storeys. The main block is square in plan with a northeast entrance front and a southwest garden front. A range running parallel along the northwest side projects slightly beyond the northeast entrance front, and attached to the other side of this is the service range, which also has a northeast facade.

Northeast Entrance Front

The northeast entrance front is nine bays wide with a raised pediment over the central three bays. The roof is hipped to the left, and a large 17th-century four-shaft rendered external chimney stands on the left end wall. The right end has a 19th-century yellow brick stack on the ridge. Flat mutules run along the eaves and continue across the centre beneath a plain stucco frieze below the pediment, which has similar brackets and an ornate coat of arms. The upper floor has twelve-pane sash windows with stone sills, while the ground floor has long French windows and broad central double half-glazed doors set in a moulded architrave with panelled pilasters and a large cornice. A large central portico of Bath stone features paired Ionic columns on each side, with a frieze, cornice, and flat top. Plain rendered piers with diagonally crossed iron rails stand between the columns. Five stone steps lead up to the centre. The ground floor windows on the left have been altered (they matched those elsewhere in an 1888 photograph). Two 20th-century windows have top lights, and a third, positioned in the angle to the projection, is a door with an overlight in a late 19th-century surround.

Southeast End

The southeast end has two large 17th-century external chimneys. The right-hand chimney projects as a gable with slate roofs, while the left one is much broader. Both chimneys feature rendered clusters of four octagonal shafts. The bay between them has early 19th-century mutules to the eaves cornice and a first-floor twelve-pane sash window.

Southwest Garden Front

The southwest garden front comprises a central two- to three- to two-window inserted block between the remodelled two-window ends of the former wings. The scribed render is topped by an overall ashlar cornice and balustrades between piers. The balustrades have narrow round-ended openings of early Victorian type. A 17th-century chimney stands on the right end wall and a tall 1891 yellow brick stack on the left end. The roofs are low and hipped on the wings. The wings have French windows on the ground floor and twelve-pane sashes above, set at a lower floor level than the central block. The central block has arched windows on both floors, closely spaced, with the central three set in a shallow curved bow. French windows on both floors have plain fanlights. Ashlar balconies with wrought iron rails serve the first floor. Blind boxes are fitted to all windows on the southwest front.

Northwest Range

Across the northwest side runs a range with a tall hipped roof and detailing from 1891. The southwest end is flush with the garden front, and the northeast end projects to the left of the entrance front. This represents a remodelling of a two-storey hipped range shown in photographs from 1756 and 1888. The steep hipped roof has two tall yellow chimneys on each side (on the ridges of the main house and of the 1891 additions) and metal urn finials. The plain three-bay southwest garden end has twelve-pane sashes over two French windows (with no window on the left), moulded yellow brick eaves, and two large hipped dormers with tall one-two-one-light casements with top lights and steep pediments over the central two-light. The northeast front of four bays has sandstone ashlar dressings to match the 1891 addition to the right, in Northern Renaissance style. It features an ashlar eaves cornice, two large ashlar three-light dormers with transoms (the centre light broader) and flat cornices, four two-light first-floor ashlar cross-windows, and two similar ground-floor windows in the outer bays on each side of a large projecting bay. This projecting bay has four windows with top lights, divided by thin pilasters and with large paired pilasters at the angles, a deep frieze, cornice, and top iron rails between piers, as on the portico. A frieze with a smaller cornice continues on each side and around the side walls, as do the ashlar sill courses and plinth.

Main 1891 Addition

The main 1891 addition to the right is similar in style with a slightly lower ridge but the same eaves line. It comprises six plus two bays, the last two advanced with a steep hipped roof and finial. Three tall yellow brick chimneys rise from the roof. Four two-light ashlar dormers have pediments, and one on the hipped roof has a flat cornice to balance the two on the other hipped roof. The main floors have ashlar cross-windows as elsewhere, with an eaves cornice, cornice, and string courses continued from the left projection but without ashlar in the frieze. The first bay on the ground floor has a door with an overlight in an ashlar doorcase with frieze and pediment. The northwest return has a hipped roof with two ashlar dormers, one two-light and one three-light with varied pediments, ashlar eaves and string courses, two first-floor windows set to the right, two ground-floor cross-windows, and a large doorway. Double doors with a cambered head and three-light overlight with leaded glass and cornice complete this elevation.

A parallel plainer rear range to the 1891 addition has a mostly two-storey rendered elevation to the service court, with a projecting hipped southwest wing to the left. The roof pitch is lower, with plain four-pane sash windows set high over the basement. The wing has a southwest end single-storey room with a hipped roof and large glazed lantern, and a lower hipped section beyond with steps up to the southwest door. The northwest side has eaves continued from the return of the front range but the roof is to a lower pitch.

Interior

The interior was not accessible at the time of survey. The 1891 addition has been converted to houses and is in good condition. The main house and southeast hipped range interiors are in poor condition following dry rot.

The entrance hall, positioned on axis with the entry, has a plain panelled plaster ceiling and a large late 19th-century purple marble fireplace at the right end. A spine corridor behind gives access to the main rooms: the southwest library and the two rooms on the southeast side, now joined. The two southeast rooms were joined in the 19th century with two timber Corinthian columns set in the sides of the opening with responds. The southwest half has a good early 18th-century ceiling with a central sunken roundel set in a square, with radiating flat oak-leaf patterned ribs from the centre of each side. A 19th-century marble fireplace with thin paired pilasters is also present. The northeast half has a simpler ceiling with rococo style ornament to the frieze and cornice, and a border with corner motifs. The door has a rococo style overdoor in plaster with putti. The Maples estimate of circa 1900 suggests that this room was redone at that time.

The finest surviving room is the library, which is expensively furnished and brightly painted and gilded in an Empire style, possibly part of the Maples work. The room is divided into three sections, with the centre containing a bow divided from the sides by fluted marbled Corinthian columns. The domical ceiling in the centre is gilded and festooned, with a brass chandelier. A circular plaster border is surrounded by painted anthemion and arabesque decoration with heraldic panels in the corners. The coved cornice is painted with fleurs-de-lys and putti. The ceiling pattern is reflected in the carpet. A strongly Empire style marble fireplace at the right end has sub-Adam style detail to the tall corniced jambs, which rise higher than the shelf. A coat of arms occupies the centre, with an ornate brass fireplace surround and mirrored overmantel with arched carved panels on each side and acroteria. The fruitwood bookcases also have acroteria. The mahogany freestanding bookcases at either end are later. Both doorways have pedimented doorcases and huge veneered nine-panel doors with ormolu and porcelain fittings. A painted marbled dado and end pilaster strips complete the scheme. Round-headed French windows have projecting architraves and keystones, and there are further painted panels in the bow. The room to the left of the library is mostly stripped of detail.

To the side of the library is a surviving late 17th-century dog-leg staircase with a bolection-moulded closed string, barley-twist balusters, and openwork pendant and finials. The ceilings of the library and southwest room have been strengthened, resulting in the floors of the rooms above being raised, which has distorted the proportions of the southwest room with its bolection-moulded chimneypiece. The roof of the main range is contemporary with the late 17th-century staircase and employs refined carpentry techniques in which the common rafters are tenoned into the purlins.

The remodelled northwest crosswing has a large ground-floor front room with a panelled plaster ceiling featuring dentil and egg-and-dart ornament, Ionic pilasters, and a fireplace damaged by dry rot. The 1891 stair was brought from London. A long flight of stairs leads up to a broad landing with pineapple newel pendants and finials. The landing has a curious mix of Gothic arched openings and classical detailing. One first-floor room reuses a sub-medieval fireplace with carved spandrels flanked by possibly early 20th-century pilasters featuring trumpets, mermaids, and other motifs. On the ground floor, a barrel-vaulted strong-room retains its Chubb doors and gate and the inscription "VI Earl 1888 Lisburne".