Hean Castle

Hean Castle is a Victorian-Tudor house of ambitious design, comprising a main range extending east to west with return wings and a rear service range. The building is approached from the west, where a long rear corridor connects the principal rooms, with main reception rooms facing east or south towards the gardens.

The main structure is two storeys high, built principally in small regular rock-faced courses of red stone from Runcorn, with lighter sandstone dressings throughout. A darker stone is used for aesthetic variation in bands and in a battered plinth beneath a string course at ground storey window-sill level. All roofs are concealed behind crenellated parapets. Windows are dressed in lighter coloured sandstone and glazed in plate glass.

The plan and elevation are irregularly composed. The east half of the main south front is advanced for emphasis, with octagonal turrets at the corners. A high tower occupies a central position set back from the front, with an octagonal stairs-turret at its south-west corner rising to a higher level.

The main south elevation features octagonal corner towers of three storeys with gargoyles at the angles beneath the battlements. Crenellations are carried throughout, partly on plain corbel courses and partly on corbel tables. The left part contains minor rooms with windows in groups of one, two or three with single transoms and low pointed arches. The top storey of the left corner tower has lancets under label moulds, with quatrefoil decorations beneath the top windows. The principal rooms occupy the advancing right half, with a garden entrance door and a corner oriel at the left corner of the advancing part. A central bay window of two storeys is mullioned and transomed with side lights, and displays the Vickerman arms on a panel at first floor level. The right corner tower has an additional string course at first floor level, with heavily moulded first storey lancet windows with blank apexes, and top storey lancets within square frames.

The west elevation includes a return of the minor half of the main front leading to a large covered carriage-porch at the main entrance. The porch belongs to the original construction and is crenellated with a parapet on a corbel table and large pointed arches on all faces, with label moulds featuring carved faces as stops. Above the west-facing arch are carved shields bearing the Vickerman monogram and the date 1876. The main door is vertically boarded with massive forged ironwork. An extension to the left of the entrance was added in 1926 in similar detail, using red stone from Llanddowror, with leaded lights in lower windows and leaded lights above transoms in upper windows.

The east elevation comprises the return of the major half of the main front at left, abutting a retained older house at right. Beside the octagonal corner tower is a door and a setback with an octagonal corner oriel. A single-storey bay window with two mullions and two transoms, and side lights with two transoms, is positioned here. To the right is the preserved side elevation of a house of circa 1840: a two-unit design with the left unit advanced and gabled, constructed in rock-faced small courses of local sandstone with contrasting courses and battered plinth in darker stone. Lighter sandstone bands appear at sill level and as quoins. The roof is of slate with a central chimney. Windows have mullions and transoms. The return of this earlier building at north is rendered brickwork.

The house retains its layout and interiors from the Vickerman period. The entrance corridor has a framed ceiling with canted sides. High-ceilinged rooms feature exposed framing. A large central staircase in three flights displays exposed soffit framing and a very large bottom newel carved with arms.