Hy Brasail

Hy Brasail is a house in three distinct parts, combining a late 19th-century villa with substantial Italianate additions made in 1912, and a roughcast house attached to the rear.

The original structure is a plain late 19th-century villa on the left side, featuring two full-height canted bays with three-sided hipped roofs. These bays have narrow windows in their canted sides, with broad sashes to the first floor centres and French windows with overlights to the ground floor. A moulded cornice between floors on the bays continues as a plain band across the house itself. The original building has a hipped roof with bracketed eaves. A single-storey flat-roofed addition was made to the left end in 1920, marked by a date on the rainwaterhead. This addition has a balustraded parapet and a large square bay window facing the front.

The 1912 Italianate additions come forward to the road edge on the right side and are executed in very fine Bath stone with slate deep-eaved roofs. The dominant element is a broad square four-storey belvedere tower at the right end of the house, containing the entrance and main stair. The tower is topped with a deep-eaved pyramid roof crowned by a wrought iron vane dated 1912, and features four-bay colonnades rising to the open belvedere storey at the top. The colonnades have red sandstone shafts set to square angle piers, with three columns between each face. The moulded caps and bases are of grey sandstone. A deep frieze above each side contains four inset red stone panels. The second floor has a single centre rectangular light facing the courtyard. The first floor displays an unmoulded single light window with transom and a detached moulded cornice above, positioned to the left as a large two-storey wing is attached to the right. The right side of the tower, visible from the rear yard, has another cross-window at first floor level.

Below the tower lies a fine ashlar Palladian porch with two red stone columns and pilaster responds framing a broad centre opening with narrow side openings. A cornice tops the side bays and continues around a blank arch above the centre bay. Sunk spandrel panels and side panels are carved and marked "WB 1912", with cornice and parapet above. Within the porch are half-glazed double doors matching broad side panels.

The large two-storey, three-bay range at right angles to the tower features an open arched loggia below with three plain arches supported by moulded imposts on the reveals. Above this is a single large room lit by three large unmoulded flush cross-windows, the transoms slightly set back from the mullions. A raised band marks the division between floors. The loggia opens to the rear left with one arch leading to the back courtyard. The first floor rear has one cross-window positioned over this arch and a tall plain chimney.

The recessed end section is two-storey with a two-bay loggia. The lower storey is arched, matching the main range, while the upper storey features ashlar balustrades to two large square-headed openings with corbels under the lintels. A third similar opening is cut into the end wall facing the road, though the ground floor here remains plain without an arch. The left bay is pitched roof over. Above the first floor of the end bay stands a smaller belvedere tower with ashlar broad angle piers carried up from the floor below. This tower has inset three-bay colonnades with two columns to each of the two open faces—the centre bay broad, the outer bays narrow. The column shafts are red stone with moulded caps and bases, but with no pilaster responds. A plain lintel with moulded string above is broken forward and carried around the angle piers. Three blank panels fill the frieze—a rectangle to the centre and square panels to each side—and the tower is topped with a deep-eaved pyramid roof. The rear of this tower has a broad attached external chimneybreast.

A plain roughcast house is attached to the outer corner, two storeys high with slate eaves roofs. The road-facing elevation features a centre gabled projection with a sash window above two sashes, the lower ones with stone lintels and a single sill. Two paired gables to the right end wall contain a door and a pair of sashes below, with two sashes above.

The interior was not available for inspection, though the belvedere tower is said to contain the entrance hall and stair.