Temple Druid

Temple Druid

A two-storey house of unpainted render with a slate hipped roof featuring deep eaves and decorative brackets. The front comprises a three-window range with restored 9-pane sashes over 12-pane originals (old photographs show earlier 6-pane sashes and a 19th-century tripartite plate-glass sash to the right). The centre features an arched doorway with a half-glazed door and fanlight with radiating bars, framed by raised imposts and keystone. A rebuilt Roman Doric stucco porch with two front columns, two attached column responds, entablature and cornice now fronts the door; old photographs reveal the porch is a later addition, with the original arrangement consisting only of attached columns with entablature and cornice flanking a door with two long arched panels.

The building sits on a raised plinth with band and eaves band detail. Windows have keystones and slate sills. The eaves feature long brackets throughout, except where the centre breaks forward slightly with a long bracket at right angles and shorter front brackets beneath. A renewed brick chimney stack rises at the left end.

To the left is a low two-storey service wing with a small brick left end stack. This wing has two large square 6-pane first floor windows and one ground floor window (a late 20th-century broad French window replacing a tripartite sash). A 20th-century conservatory, in poor condition as of 2004, adjoins. The right end wall carries eaves around and features a raised band with one window on each floor. To the right lies the end of the rear outshut, also with one window per floor, the upper one a 19th-century 6-pane sash. The glazing generally dates to the late 19th or early 20th century.

The outshut rear wall is constructed of rubble stone with close eaves and very rough stonework, altered where windows have been cut. In 2004, two large raking shores were supporting the structure. A stone chimney stack, raised in red brick on the roof slope to the left, and a short stone chimney on the rear wall to the left service the building. A blocked ground floor door survives to the left. Openings generally feature late 19th to early 20th-century red brick sides with concrete or metal heads. A centre stair light illuminates the interior.

A wing running north behind the lower western wing was restored around 2000 with a roof of local small thick grey slates, rendered walls, two storeys, and modern casement windows.

Interior

The plan comprises a central hall with a room on each side and stairs at the rear. Most detail dates to the mid-19th century, except for the sitting room to the left (southwest), which displays detail suggestive of the work of John Nash, though the room dimensions do not match any recorded Nash designs.

The hall contains four small niche recesses, a circa 1800 six-panel door to the sitting room on the left, a 19th-century four-panel door to the right, plain moulded cornice, a plain elliptical arch, and stick-baluster stairs with a ramped thin rail, scrolled tread ends, and a bulbous mid to later 19th-century bottom newel. The room to the right remains unrestored, with a 19th-century plain cornice and a 20th-century small fireplace on the north wall. A kitchen is located in the northwest rear wing.

The Nash-type sitting room is fairly small and square with an elliptical apse on the east side facing the hall. The apse features plain plaster over a curve of doors: a centre six-panel door in a deep panelled reveal, a plaster wall-pier on each side, and then a curved six-panel fielded-panelled door (each opening to a shallow shelved cupboard) set next to an outer narrow two-panel door on each side. A deep panelled reveal with a six-panel door opens to the north. Panelled shutters flank the south window. A later grey marble chimneypiece on the east wall is flanked by two arched recesses.