Lovesgrove

Lovesgrove is a country house in the domestic revival style, constructed from grey tooled Llanddewi Brefi stone with ashlar dressings and greenish slate roofs with overhanging eaves, bargeboards, and pendant finials. The building is two storeys with large grey stone chimneys featuring ashlar quoins and cornices.

The house presents a long south-facing garden front and a shorter west entrance front, both with deep-eaved gables. The windows throughout are moulded stone-mullioned with plate-glass sashes and ashlar quoins.

The west front comprises three gabled bays. The left bay has a broad elliptical moulded arch to a recessed porch, with a similar blind arch on the inner back wall and a door on the right wall featuring arched double fielded-panelled doors in a moulded surround. The left bay has a three-light first-floor window. The centre gable contains three-light windows to each floor, with the lower one lighting the hall. A third gable was added in the late 19th century, projecting to the right. An additional projecting gable was inserted in the angle between the west and south fronts, with canted sides, a four-light window below lighting a drawing-room extension, a two-light above, and the gable carried on large timber solid brackets.

The south garden front features three well-spaced projecting gables serving the drawing-room, dining-room, and kitchen on the ground floors, with large chimneys serving each. The facade begins to the left with a canted side and quoins at the original corner, followed by a large full-height canted bay with an ashlar ground floor and corbelled upper floor with quoins. This bay has one-light windows to each canted side and two-light windows to the front at each floor. The second large gable has canted sides, a broad front, ashlar quoins, and windows arranged 1-3-1 to each floor, with large timber brackets carrying the roof overhang. A narrow section with a three-light window at each floor follows. The third gable contains a ground-floor three-light and a first-floor square oriel with an ashlar moulded base, quoins, and four-light window. An L-plan section to the north has a ground-floor arcade with open arches and doors, a first-floor sash with an apex chimney, and continues east as a single-storey range with a timber lintel to a recessed door.

The north side includes the return of the west porch gable with quarter-round corbelling to the upper floor, a two-storey library projection with canted side walls and a canted hipped roof, and a single-storey northeast corner projection with a hipped roof and two-light east window. The service areas have sash windows and a stone porch, with a double-gabled projection to the west.

The ground floor contains rooms in late 19th-century taste. The entrance hall features a double arch opening east into the stair hall, with a panelled ceiling divided by three plaster beams. The north wall displays a Jacobean-style fireplace incorporating some 17th-century carved timber, including one overmantel panel marked EB 1639. The stair hall has an open-well staircase rising on three sides to a landing with turned balusters in a spiral twist over vase pattern, square newels, and ball finials. A fine stained glass panel depicting four small female figures representing the Four Seasons occupies this space, set against pale coloured leaded backgrounds. The stair hall ceiling is coved.

The southwest drawing room has a passage across its north end opening into the main room, which features acanthus cornices, a 20th-century marble east fireplace, and an added deep west bay. The north library contains white-painted bookcases and a fine southwest corner fireplace in Queen Anne style, with niches, panels, and shelves. Three panels of the overmantel display applied mezzotints. The south dining room is reported to have an inglenook-type fireplace with stained glass.