Abercamlais including Dovecote Cottage

Abercamlais including Dovecote Cottage

This is a substantial country house built in coursed squared sandstone on the main facades, with colourwashed rubble stone elsewhere and slate hipped roofs. The building features highly enriched deep timber eaves cornices with large foliage consoles in the frieze. It is three storeys tall with a cellar and attic, arranged in an L-plan. Windows have stone sills, and there are big chimneys of cut sandstone with cornices, probably rebuilt in the early 19th century.

The seven-bay south front displays late Georgian sash windows with 12-pane glazing to the top floor and 15-pane to other floors. There is a centre door within a large gabled oak Gothic porch dating from the 1860s, set on a low stone plinth. The porch has renewed bargeboards and glazed Gothic lights—five each side and one each side of double half-glazed doors with similar lights. The timber panels incorporate blind Gothic motifs. The inner doors are early 19th-century double doors with coloured glass margins in a moulded architrave. Three 1910 dormers punctuate the roof: the outer ones are nine-pane with pedimented tops, whilst the centre one is three-light with 6-9-6-pane glazing and a pediment over the centre light. A big corniced chimney sits on the ridge to the left of the right dormer.

The stone west side has one window range to the left with 12-pane sashes on each floor and a blocked door below (the lower ones with stone voussoirs), and two bays of blank windows to the right without stone voussoirs. The right bay has a door within a conservatory. Two 1910 nine-pane dormers and a corniced ridge chimney are present. The colourwashed irregular east side shows various blocked openings indicating the pre-18th-century origins of the house. Two surviving cross-windows and one with thick glazing bars suggest earlier window types. This facade is five bays tall: the three right bays have sashes (nine-pane to the top floor, 12-pane to main floors), spaced closer to the centre bay are two cross-windows with leaded glazing lighting the service stair above a blocked door, none precisely aligned. The left bay has only the top window glazed (12-pane with thick Queen Anne type glazing bars); the two windows below are blocked, the first floor one blocked in the 19th century for bookshelves. Stone voussoirs and stone sills are present. Three 1910 dormers match those on the south front, though the centre one has five lights. The colourwashed narrow north gable has a big stone corniced chimney with gable verges overhanging the servants' bell. There are no windows, but a very small half-timber and brick hipped late 19th-century pantry addition is present.

The rear west elevation has a two-storey lean-to with plain flat eaves. Attached at the north-west is a 19th-century single-storey L-plan range hipped at the north-east corner and west end. A back door is in the short projecting east wall, a 20th-century window to the left in the north wall, and a four-pane sash in the hipped west end. The west side, set back to the right, has a door and triple casement. The rear north of the main house has a five-light 1910 dormer without pediment and flat eaves, with a large stone corniced chimney to the right. Stepped 15-pane sashes to the left light the main stair; then an attic nine-pane sash sits over a first floor 12-pane to centre, with no windows to the right. On the west side is a plain conservatory on a stone base, said to have been brought from his previous house by Prebendary Williams after 1861. This links to Dovecote Cottage.

Dovecote Cottage is a 17th or early 18th-century L-plan former laundry, game-larder and dairy, now altered as holiday accommodation. It is one storey and attic with 20th-century eaves dormers and largely 20th-century windows. The roof is gabled to the north and west, hipped to the south-east. A very large north end outside stack has a rendered shaft. The north side has an original door with an oak lintel and thin hoodmould, and a similar blocked window to the right. The south side had one window visible in old photographs.

The interior plan comprises three equal-sized front rooms with a centre hall, parlour to the west and dining-room to the east. The hall is open to the north stair hall. Behind the dining-room is a service stair and kitchen in the north-east wing, with a small north-west room behind the parlour.

The entrance hall has full fielded panelling with a bolection-moulded fireplace and overmantel on the east wall. Two eight-panel doors flank the opening to the stair hall, one to the left of the east wall leading into the dining-room. A wide doorway in the centre of the west wall with a semi-circular lunette opens to the parlour. A fine plaster ceiling features a moulded cornice with egg-and-dart detail, a guilloche broad square border, and a centre moulded circle around a swirled acanthus rose. Moulded spandrel panels with foliage sit between the circle and square border. Oak floorboards are present throughout.

The parlour was stripped of panelling except for shell-headed niches each side of the fireplace—one square-headed to the left with a door, the other arch-headed. It contains a carved marble late 18th-century chimney-piece from the sale of Fonthill Splendens, Wiltshire, which was demolished in 1807. Panelled shutters are present. A half-glazed door to the west conservatory and the door to the hall have Regency architraves with roundels. A fine plaster ceiling, more Baroque in character than the hall ceiling, features radiating motifs and a cornice similar to that in the hall.

The dining room is fully panelled like the hall but has a plain plaster ceiling with one small acanthus rose. A large elliptical-arched north sideboard recess is present. A marble early 19th-century chimney-piece sits on the west wall.

The stair hall contains an exceptional open-well stair with scrolled open tread ends, thin turned balusters (three per tread), and thick turned newels, generally of the column-on-vase type. The thick handrail is ramped up to the newels with an unusual kick back at the top of the curve. The landings have rails ramped up at each end. The extraordinary feature of the stair is that the balusters are made of turned fruit-wood of at least six varieties including apple and cherry. Notched iron supports were introduced in 1875. Painted fielded wall panels and dado panels line the space.

Under the stair are 11 stone steps leading to the cellars. Two low stone vaults run in parallel under the east part of the house, with another cellar (blocked) under the north-east kitchen. An opening on the east of the stair hall leads to a kitchen passage running north and to the service stair to the east, enclosed at the bottom then open well with short flights on the east wall. The service stair has a closed-string, delicate turned balusters, square newels, and a moulded rail. A cupboard to the south has an eight-panel door; a newel post of a pre-18th-century stair is said to have been found behind shelving in the cupboard.

A room parallel to the north of the service stair has an eight-panel door, as does the kitchen at the north end of the passage. The kitchen has a high ceiling with two plastered beams, a fielded panelled window seat in one east window, a north fireplace, and a large built-in dresser on the south.

On the first floor, the stair hall has a square ceiling with a plaster rose and border. The landing has an extraordinary 19th-century dresser made up of sawn posts from 18th-century four-poster beds, late 17th-century fat turned balusters, and bits of 17th-century woodwork, some from Brecon Cathedral removed during Scott's restoration. The south-west bedroom is fielded-panelled with two eight-panel doors and a fireplace with Dutch tiles. A plain architrave opens to the east of the landing to the service stair, which is open-well from this point upward. Eight-panel doors lead to the north, east and south-east rooms.