Penpont including attached conservatory and rear service ranges

Penpont is a substantial country house built in Bath stone ashlar with slate hipped roofs and deep overhanging eaves supported by paired brackets. The building comprises three storeys arranged in a roughly square plan with an enclosed service court to the west, an attached conservatory, and rear service ranges.

The east front is the principal elevation, presenting five bays divided 2-1-2 by thin pilasters. Two massive corniced roughcast chimneys rise behind the roof ridge. The upper storeys feature square 6-pane windows with moulded architraves, and 12-pane first floor windows with architraves and cornices. The ground floor is extended by one bay to each end and displays French windows set in architraves with pilasters and a raised plinth. These French windows are of the earlier 19th century with marginal glazing and painted heraldry in the top lights. A central door in an architrave with sunk spandrels sits above a large fanlight with coloured glass, flanked by big double panelled doors with sidelights. The frame incorporates simple roundels at the intersections.

The most distinctive feature is a Greek Doric portico extending across the entire front, comprising seven bays divided by paired columns—22 in total—topped by an entablature, cornice and low blocking course. The colonnade breaks forward at the centre and end features, where angle columns are paired in depth to create clusters of three. Small raised panels punctuate the blocking course above the outer bays, while a large ashlar corniced parapet crowns the centre projection, panelled between panelled piers. The loggia is paved in stone and remains open at the ends, returning as solid walling at the extended rooms beneath the same entablature and flat roof.

The south side presents six bays of irregular spacing with similar windows, except the fourth bay where they are narrower. A thin west end stack and thin angle pilasters articulate this elevation. The ground floor extension has the open end of the loggia to the right, then extends windowless for two bays with an angle pilaster and windowless west return. The entablature continues over a recessed French window in the fourth bay before stepping forward around a shallow curved bay containing four long windows. The leftmost bay has a slightly projected window with similar entablature and two long windows. All these windows are floor-length with cambered heads and marginal glazing, unaligned with the windows above. The recessed French window bears painted heraldry in its top light.

Attached to the rear wall of the service court is a very fine rectangular conservatory of 1828. This features fishscale glazing to the curved roof and timber glazed walls. Its five-bay front has a broader centre bay with cambered-headed top-lights and long windows with coloured glass margins, separated by pilasters and crowned by an entablature. The centre displays double glazed doors with stone sills. Matching three-bay ends are positioned to the east (one bay without glazing) and west (two bays). The rear west elevation shows two hipped ends, each with a chimney and a recessed centre containing a large tripartite 8-12-8-pane stair window.

The north side comprises six bays with angle pilasters and irregular spacing. The top floor third bay has no window. The ground floor shows two windows to the right, while the extension to the left exposes the open end of the loggia and extends windowless for two bays with an angle pilaster to the left and an added projecting section with two 12-pane sashes. A windowless west return and a basement window under the sixth bay complete this elevation.

The rear service range, which may incorporate the 16th-century Abercamlais Fach, presents a long two-storey roughcast and rendered north wall with a very tall stone and brick lateral stack raised in roughcast. Irregular sash windows—some with rough dripstones—number three bays to the left of the stack and three closer-spaced bays to the right, with a west end stack. The west side of the rear service court is enclosed by a low colourwashed outbuilding with cambered-headed broad doorway and double doors, a tall opening to the right, and a shuttered window further right. Within the service yard, the west range features cambered opposed openings, smaller cambered arched openings to each side, and a hipped eaves dormer. The south side contains the servants hall, a single storey structure with a tall west stack and a big triple 19th-century sash. The rear of the main house is fitted with a single-storey addition incorporating a reused 17th-century back door housing an 18th-century 6-panel door. The main service range on the north shows a three-storey long south front with flat eaves and a centre pedimental gable over a bell. Fenestration is mostly irregular small-pane sashes with evidence of alteration; some ground floor openings have dripstones. One window with thick glazing bars at the extreme right may be early 18th-century reused material.

The interior retains a double-pile plan with an entrance hall, parlour to the left and dining room to the right, a large square stair-hall at the rear centre, and additional rooms to the rear left and right. In 1828, the parlour and dining room were extended outward by one bay.

The entrance hall was refitted in elegant Regency Gothic style, probably in 1802. It features a five-bay quadripartite plaster vault on thin wall shafts. Opposed doors to the main rooms are set in reeded surrounds with corner roundels. Roundels with Gothic leaves ornament the vault intersections. Double baize doors with sidelights and a large fanlight matching that over the front door provide access to the stair hall at the north end.

The dining room to the right has a fine ceiling in six plus two plaster panels decorated with laurel leaf festoons in bordered panels. The ceiling may be of the later 17th century with two additional panels added in the early 19th-century addition to match. The addition is marked by two fine Ionic columns with pilaster responds. A fireplace on the west wall dates to the earlier 19th century and is executed in grey and white marble with big leaf-scroll consoles and rosettes on blocks above a moulded lintel and arched iron grate. A door further right in the west wall provides access to other spaces. Panelled shutters of the earlier 19th century complete the room.

The left drawing room displays earlier 18th-century fielded panelling in large panels with a panelled dado and a fine doorcase to the entrance door, featuring a bolection-moulded surround with double lugs at the corners, a coved cornice and a very large scrolled pediment. The ceiling in six panels is of the 17th century, adorned with grape and pomegranate plasterwork on beams and panels with moulded cornices and oval wreaths of laurel and flowers. A fine earlier 19th-century marble chimneypiece by J. E. Thomas of Brecon incorporates Ionic grey marble columns and a pulvinated lintel bearing a plaque depicting a warrior, wife and child. A 19th-century grate is fitted with glazed tiles in the style of W. de Morgan. A six-panel door to the left of the fireplace and a fine Ionic screen in yellow marble to the added piece complete the space. The early 19th-century addition displays a similar two-bay ceiling and panelling, with early 19th-century pelmets to windows and panelled shutters.

The stair hall features a thick moulded cornice and a big open-well 3-sided staircase of the later 17th century. Massive Jacobean-style newels with caps are accompanied by column balusters with caps and bases set diagonally to the handrail. The staircase displays a moulded string, thick moulded handrail, and ball finials on newels with iron rods rising to pendants above, finished with wrought-iron scrolls and candle sconces. Bolection-moulded plaster panels underline the staircase. A dado rail and a low square hall under the stairs with pilastered depressed arches on four sides complete this space.

The library to the south has a panelled ceiling in four panels with guilloche moulding to the beams. The south bay window features a single-panel ceiling. A reused carved chimneypiece, six-panel doors to the east and north, five-bay bookshelves with pilasters between and cupboards below, and folding shutters to the bay furnish the room. North of the hall, a passage runs behind the front room with winding service stairs. A six-panel door on the right leads to a short passage through a thick wall into the front room.

The landing ceiling contains two bolection-moulded square panels, each with a large roundel, and a dado rail. Four 6-panel doors in architraves provide access to other spaces. The staircase has shutters to the stair lights.

The service range includes a passage running west with a kitchen to the north, which features a Tudor-arched fireplace, beams, a dresser and a recess.