Voelas

Voelas

This is a house built in rubble stone with slated eaves roofs that overhang at the gables, and numerous rubble stone chimney stacks with slate caps and dripstones. The building has an irregular plan consisting essentially of two parallel ranges, with the entrance front facing the rock-face to the east. It is two storeys high with square-headed windows featuring large tooled-slate flat lintels and slate sills. Most windows are timber paired or triple casement windows with Gothic Y-tracery top-lights.

The garden front displays a main house in the centre, a service range to the left, and set back to the right is a large matching early twentieth-century south-east addition. The main part has a stone right end stack and a larger stone left end stack at the original left end. There is a slightly lower one-bay roof to the left with a smaller end stack, added after 1906, with continuous eaves. A square lateral stone stack sits on a wall-face gable to the right. The added left bay, with its lower ridge, has a half-length Gothic triple casement over a lean-to. The next three bays have standard three-light windows on each floor, but there are glazed doors to the right of the first bay and in the third bay, with slate steps. A third ground floor three-light window is positioned at the extreme right, beyond the chimney. The south end-wall has a two-light window to the first floor left and ground floor centre. Two of the first floor windows are twentieth-century near-copies.

To the left of the facade a service court projects with an early twentieth-century first floor added gable to the right, featuring two first floor two-light windows and a casement pair below to the left. A coped rear wall of the service yard follows, with a window and door, and the wall returns to the north with a bellcote over the service yard entry.

Set back to the right is an early twentieth-century two-storey, three-bay south end block with parallel gabled roofs and stone end stacks. The west side has two two-light windows under shallow gables, the left one over a matching glazed door and the right one over a similar two-light, with a three-light to the ground floor centre. The left end has paired gables, each with a two-light window, over a timber five-sided canted bay to the ground floor centre, with a glazed door to the right (inserted in the late twentieth century). The east side has a chimney-gable with a lean-to against it containing an inglenook at ground floor, a window on each floor to the left, and one to the first floor right. The north return has a window on each floor.

The rear of the main range has stone end stacks and casement-pair windows to the left on each floor. A three-bay open porch with stone square piers and lean-to roof follows, gabled to the wider centre bay. The porch has a half-glazed door with pointed glass panels and an overlight with three pointed oval glazed panels, with a window on each side and slate paving. Above the porch centre is a casement pair, and to the right is a large first floor mullion-and-transom timber stair light, followed by a three-light on each floor (each with an inserted small window adjoining).

The service range has continuous stonework with a slightly lower eaves and a stone ridge stack spanning four bays. Windows are generally casement pairs, although there are two smaller windows in the first floor left and a smaller casement pair in the ground floor right bay. The north end gable has a twentieth-century three-light at first floor.

The interior has an Edwardian character, derived partly from work for C.R. Kenyon after 1897 and mostly from work for P. Boughton-Leigh after 1906. A narrow entrance hall with plain earlier twentieth-century stairs opens to three front rooms of moderate size: a library with a lateral fireplace, a small centre room, and a dining-room. The library and dining-room have later twentieth-century panelling and altered fireplaces. The dining-room contains an oak beam. At the south end of the hall is an entrance to a large added parlour with an inglenook fireplace, panelled walls, and green tiles to the fireplace with a shelf over. There are two beams in the parlour. North of the hall and staircase is a service area with a kitchen clad in late twentieth-century boarding and a deep chimneybreast entirely encased. Bedrooms have small earlier twentieth-century chimneypieces.