Cwm Rhuddan

Cwm Rhuddan is a Victorian country house built in the domestic 16th–17th century revival style, constructed primarily in the 1870s with a major addition in the 1880s. The building is constructed of rock-faced squared rubble stone with Bath stone dressings, and has steep slate roofs with deep eaves and bargeboards. Numerous large quoined chimneys feature ashlar string courses, cornices and heavy chamfered caps. Almost all the large mullioned windows have transoms, with the mullions and transoms mostly of painted timber set in ashlar chamfered frames. Ashlar quoins, a plinth, and a string course run consistently around the whole building. Cast-iron verandas survive on the south and east sides; another has been removed from the north side.

The plan is complex, with a very complex roofscape. The original house was essentially a gabled composition with a short pyramid-roofed stair tower, but this is now dominated by the massive square north-west corner addition of the 1880s with its flat-capped hipped roof.

South Entrance Front

The south entrance front steps back in three stages: a cross-wing to the left, set forward of a two-bay entrance range (hipped at the south-east), which is forward of a one-bay service range. A lower range, possibly dating from the 1880s, extends at right angles across the east end. The gabled cross-wing to the left has deep verges, a small hoodmoulded square attic light with Gothic glazing bars, a large three-light window at first-floor level with a relieving arch, and a similar but larger three-light window with relieving arch at ground-floor level.

The entrance range, set back to the right, has a roof hipped at an angle to the right and a chimney on the ridge to the left. At first-floor level are a two-light and a three-light window with mid-transom. Below, within a three-bay cast-iron veranda, are a door and a floor-length three-light window. The door has an overlight with etched and coloured margins above a segmental-arched doorhead with shields in the spandrels, and a half-glazed six-panel door. The veranda has thin fluted columns carrying cast-iron tracery in broad shallow arches; the left two bays are open, while the right bay and end bay are infilled with glass and iron glazing bars.

The right return has a two-light window at each floor in the angle to the service range and a chimney on the ridge running back from the hipped angle. The one-bay service range has two close-spaced chimneys (on the ridge and right end) and a three-light window at each floor.

West Garden Front

The west garden front is equally stepped in plan, with the side of the cross-wing to the right, then a slightly projected pyramid-roofed stair tower, and then the far-projecting added north-west corner block. The side of the cross-wing has a bargeboarded gable over a three-light window with relieving arch, and a large ground-floor one-three-one-light canted bay window with painted stone mullions, a coved cornice and a tarred canted hipped roof, with the string course stepped over. The roof of the cross-wing is hipped steeply to the left, leaving a valley before the steep pyramid roof of the stair tower to the left. The roof is not quite a true pyramid, having a short ridge with two Gothic wrought-iron finials one behind the other.

The stair tower wall face projects slightly and its deep eaves are at a slightly higher level than the range to the left but equal to the eaves of the north-west addition. The eaves have unusual ashlar rounded block brackets. The tower has ashlar quoins and a mid-height cambered-headed stair-light with a flat hoodmould stepped up from the main string course. A shield plaque inscribed 'CB fecit 1871' sits above, with a relieving arch. The window is three-light with sunk spandrels. To the left, set slightly back in the narrow space between the stair tower and the north-west wing, is a first-floor narrow single light.

The north-west corner block, added in the 1880s, is massive and near-square with a steep hipped roof crowned with cast-iron Gothic ridge cresting on all four ridges and iron finials at the angles. Timber Gothic dormers with deep verges and two-light windows with cusped heads and quatrefoils (with iron casements) appear on the south, west and north sides, one each. The block has deep eaves with ashlar brackets as on the stair tower, quoins, plinth and string course matching the rest of the building. The south return has a large three-light window at first-floor level. The west end has a similar three-light window over a floor-length three-light window with relieving arch, the centre light being a door reached by six stone steps. The north side has a high plinth and a large two-storey square bay in ashlar (apart from rubble stone below), with a four-light window at each floor and a single light on each side, all with ashlar mullions and transoms. The east side has a chimney.

North Front

The north front is in two halves: to the right is the north front of the large north-west corner block wing (described above), with a narrow deep recess to a garden door between this and the original house with its cross-wing gable to the right of the two-bay service range. In the recess is a narrow single light above a segmental-pointed headed door with relieving arch and a half-glazed door. The recess is glazed with a lean-to glass roof on a cast-iron pierced beam supported by two sunburst-pattern brackets.

The cross-wing has bargeboards, a chimney on the left roof slope, a hoodmoulded blank ashlar plaque in the gable over a three-light window at first floor, and a floor-length three-light window below with the centre light opening onto the terrace. The service range to the right has the two close-spaced stacks (as on the entrance front) and a four-light and a two-light window at each floor, all with a mid-transom, the lower windows being larger. There is one Gothic dormer like those on the north-west corner block. The terrace in front has iron railings and a door beneath at the right end leading into the cellar beneath the north-west corner block.

East Range

Attached across the east end is a lower range possibly added in the 1880s to a similar design. It is one-and-a-half storeys with a steep hipped roof to the east front and gables on the south and north ends set one bay back from the hipped corners. The gables have bargeboards and unusual first-floor cambered-headed three-light windows without transoms but with a small square light over the centre light. A relieving arch sits over the window, with the string course below and a large ground-floor window (four-light to the south end, three-light to the north). The north gable projects beyond the bay to the left, whereas the south gable is flush, though the south end steps forward from the service range to the left with a two-light stair window in the west return. The north gable also has a little Gothic lancet in the apex. To the right of the south gable and to the left of the north gable is a ground-floor two-light window with relieving arch. An axial ridge stack sits just in from the south gable.

The east front is characterful: a steep hipped roof with two steeply gabled tiny dormers set high on each side of the centre one of three bargeboarded gables. The centre gable is larger and the two-light window taller with a transom which the other two lack. The ground floor is within another cast-iron veranda of four bays, like that on the south front but with a different design to the columns, and cast-iron glazing bars to the glazed end bays. The ground floor has an off-centre half-glazed door between two small rectangular windows, all with relieving arches.

Interior

The square porch has plaster ribs and a roundel to the ceiling, with an inner glazed door with side and top lights. The top lights feature a double eagle crest and the motto 'Unc je serviray'. The hall passage has square panels to the plaster ceiling. Doors are of pitch pine with long panels in pitch-pine frames. The south-west room is a sitting room and the south-east room is a study.

The south-west room has a moulded cornice and a plaster rose with leaf and flower ornament, and pitch-pine lining to the west bay window. A white marble east wall chimneypiece has a segmental arch, five half-spheres of red marble (three to the lintel, two to console brackets) and some incised ornament, with a cast-iron arched grate. The south-east study has original shelved cupboards and a grey marble chimneypiece with iron grate.

The main north-west drawing room in the 1880s addition has a deep cornice with rosettes in the coved frieze and a ceiling panelled in thin moulded ribs into neo-Jacobean patterns. A painted grained door has a neo-Louis XV overdoor painting of a cherub painting a portrait. A bay sits on the north. The east end has a white marble late 18th century or late 19th century neo-Adam chimneypiece with fluting in the frieze, a centre panel with three rosettes, rosette corner panels and fluted pilasters with inset wreath panels. Yellow marble narrow strips run over the rosette panels of the frieze and around the fireplace. A remarkable later 19th century cast-iron Aesthetic Movement grate has an armature of iron squares in a brass surround, holding hand-painted tiles with peach and leaf design around an arched grate with shelves on each side. The shelf recesses each have an ornamental brass baluster and the arched head of the grate has a cast-iron peach branch design. Above is an elaborate overmantel presumably added around 1900, as the mantelpiece has had to be extended on two ornate turned and fluted posts to carry it. The overmantel has four similar posts carrying three gables over mirrors, the centre one wider. Above the gables is a shelf with nine short columns and a cornice, for display of ceramics. In the left corner of the south wall is a remarkable cast-iron Gothic radiator case with pierced ornate panels, thin Gothic shafts and a marble top. The floor has cast-iron grilles over underfloor heating pipes.

To the centre of the north front is a fine panelled room, probably the original dining room and later a billiard room, with pitch-pine panelling and a shelved recess with narrow shelves on pierced curved supports, the shelf edges with brass cresting. The recess has a pierced curved head with sunburst spandrels and interlaced circles to the frieze. A corridor runs east with three small rooms on the north side with narrow fireplaces, one with a chimneypiece painted a remarkable mottled malachite green. The kitchen is at the far end.

The stair hall has a panelled plaster ceiling, segmental-pointed heads to the window reveal and to doors into the large north-west rooms. The open stair has octagonal chamfered newels with octagonal finials, moulded rails and chamfered timbers to the balustrade. The main uprights are divided by a mid-rail with a short upright beneath. It has a closed string. A landing and long corridor run east.

Above the drawing room in the north-west angle is another equal-sized reception room with moulded cornice, an embossed 'lincrusta' ceiling border and a centre plaster rose. Pitch-pine doors and surrounds to windows on three sides. The east end has a purple-veined marble chimneypiece with black marble thin mouldings to the pilasters, framing a fine cast-iron grate with sunflowers to the hood and green embossed tiles to the cheeks with pomegranates and two tiles with roundels of hunting scenes in blue. Above is a very large Aesthetic Movement overmantel in ebonised wood, with shelves for display of ceramics on little turned balusters, fielded-panelled side-pieces, all framing a mirrored centre. The first-floor south-west room has a Tudor Gothic iron grate in a plain grey marble chimneypiece. The corridor running east has a servants' stair off to the attic. One big room at the east end has a ribbed boarded ceiling and a painted slate fireplace with a fine grate on the west wall.