Coomb Cheshire Home

Coomb is a country house built in rock-faced squared rubble stone with ashlar dressings and slate or imitation slate roofs featuring coped shouldered gables, formerly topped with stone finials. The roof copings were clad in lead in the late 20th century. Stone corbels support iron eaves gutters. Windows generally have shouldered heads to the lights, coved lintels, chamfered mullions, and relieving arches above. Between the lintels and relieving arches are small quatrefoil or trefoil panels filled with plate glass sashes. The stonework shows considerable variety: the main walls are of grey to purple stone, possibly Pennant, while the quoins, window surrounds, relieving arches, plinth and flush bands are generally greenish to brown sandstone. The tympana between window lintels and relieving arches are set with diagonally-placed coloured stones, probably Pennant, and some principal window surrounds and mullions are pale grey limestone. Lintels and sills are pale sandstone.

The building follows a roughly L-plan with south and east main fronts. The east entrance front features a tower to the left with a bracketed cornice to its flat roof, which was re-roofed in 2001 to a slightly pitched profile (it formerly had a steep slate roof above). The tower contains a large grey limestone arched doorway with angle shafts, hoodmould and double panelled doors, with an arched tympanum pierced with a cinquefoil flanked by diagonally set stonework. A two-light first-floor window with pointed relieving arch and a single light to the top stage complete the tower. The centre of the east front has two two-light windows to the ante-hall with grey stone surrounds, monolith sandstone column-shaft mullions and a pierced quatrefoil in each head. Three first-floor single lights with arched relieving arches rise above, and an eaves stone dormer contains a two-light window. A large gable to the right has a two-light window to the attic and first floor with pointed relieving arches, and a broad three-light window to the ground floor with grey limestone mullions. The north gable end is rendered and has been altered.

The south facade has an entrance tower at the right corner and a gable at the left corner, with a lower range between them featuring a large ashlar canted bay window. The tower contains a three-light window to the ground floor, a two-light window to the first floor and a single light window to the top stage. The middle section has single lights flanking the bay on the ground floor; the bay itself displays a one-two-one light arrangement with quatrefoil piercings in a corbelled parapet. A similar arrangement of single lights appears on the first floor, where the window was originally three lights but had its mullions removed in the 20th century. A central stone dormer on the eaves matches this style with a two-light window. The gable to the left is flush, forming the end of a three-bay cross-wing. Its ground floor has a four-light opening (two close-spaced two-light windows with a thicker mullion between) beneath a pair of relieving arches; the first floor has a three-light window and the attic a two-light window, both with roundels beneath the relieving arches. The west side comprises a three-window range with three two-light windows with cambered relieving arches to the main floors and three stone eaves dormers with single lights, though the ground floor centre and left windows are blocked for a 20th-century addition.

A large billiard room, originally almost free-standing, is attached to the west side of a lower rear service range and is now surrounded by late 20th-century single-storey accommodation. It has an elongated octagonal plan with longer sides and shorter front and back. Plate-glass sash windows with moulded shouldered heads and blank roundels face south and west. A rear lean-to with curved northwest corner completes the structure. The roof is divided into two sections by a clerestorey with sloping glazing and detached colonnettes at the angles. Above the second roof sits a louvred lantern with canted ends, a slate roof and iron cross finials.

The service ranges between the main house and the hillside behind are rendered and generally altered. The main part follows an L-plan with a hipped end roof facing east over the entrance court and various eaves-breaking windows, with a steeper hip to the northwest corner.

The interior is planned around a top-lit stair hall. The corner southeast entrance hall opens onto an east inner hall with a northeast dining room beyond, and a west arch leads through to the stair hall. South of the stair hall is a morning room, with a passage to the west opening onto a southwest room. Much of the interior decoration dates from 1920-1922, though both the entrance hall and the south rooms retain heavy ribbed ceilings from 1864. The upper bedrooms are plainly finished.

The entrance hall has diagonally-intersecting moulded plaster ribs to the ceiling and contains an inserted lift. The east ante-hall is largely of 1920s date, including a 17th-century style plaster leaf cornice and a thick inner ceiling border. The walls are oak-panelled with vertical panels over a panelled dado; the upper panels carry affixed carved work consisting of paired cherub heads above and rosette motifs to the centre, all within applied frames of complex rebated outline. A leaf pattern decorates the cornice. The accounts suggest this is antique panelling, though if so it has been extensively restyled. One wall to the left of the arch to the stair hall bears simpler panelling without applied detail. A panelled depressed arch with Ionic pilasters, panelled reveals and top cornice opens to the stair hall. The dining room to the northeast is plainer and was opened out to the west in the late 20th century. Its ceiling displays neo-Adam ornament with ribs in a Union Jack pattern, while painted wood dado rails and wall panel frames are of neo-18th-century style. A painted wood neo-18th-century surround frames a pink marble fireplace.

The stair hall is rectangular and topped with a clerestoried roof light of three bays with leaded lights and two arched trusses. The sloping panels below the clerestorey and corner triangular panels bear 17th-century style ornate plasterwork. The woodwork is Jacobean in style, with walls panelled to picture-rail height and decorated with Ionic pilasters ornamented with strapwork. Panelling and pilasters also appear beneath the stair. The staircase features pierced strapwork balustrades rising on the north wall in two flights with a half-landing, followed by a short return on the east to a first-floor landing on two sides with similar balustrades. The panels are separated by newels with strapwork decoration and Ionic scroll capitals; similar newels also appear on the stair dado.

The centre south room contains a very ornate early 19th-century white marble fireplace with tapering fluted columns and a plaque carved with classical figures representing the Sciences. A contemporary iron grate accompanies the fireplace. The ceiling is panelled in the style of the 1860s with diagonal boarding in panels; the walls carry 1920s plaster panels and panelled double doors in a white-painted early 18th-century style frame with a broken pediment. The southwest room features an ornate ribbed ceiling of the 1860s and considerable oak panelling of 1920s date with strapwork pilasters. The stone fireplace appears to be genuine re-used early 17th-century work with a Tudor arch, and the ornate oak overmantel in Jacobean style may incorporate genuine period work. The billiard room was not available for inspection at the time of survey.