Kilvrough Manor

Kilvrough Manor

A Georgian country house of three storeys rendered in white, with an L-shaped plan beneath hipped roofs behind castellated parapets. The house is a conversion and extension of an 18th-century double-pile building.

The entrance front faces north and comprises five bays. A central entrance portico with four cast iron Tuscan columns supports a plain entablature, with a fielded-panel door beneath an overlight containing Y tracery. The windows are principally sashes with plain architraves and sill bands to the middle and upper storeys, though some are now blind.

The garden front to the west features splayed projecting bays set back from the angles, between which are three narrower bays. The windows—mainly sashes and casements inserted into original openings—are positioned at a different level from the entrance front. The lower storey contains lunettes, one of which in the right-hand splayed bay was converted around 1979 into a segmental-headed escape doorway with a glazed door. The middle storey windows, which light the principal rooms, are larger than those of the upper storey. A plat band runs between the middle and upper storeys. A full-height projection, added probably around 1800, lies behind the garden front. This is accessed from the south through an added glazed lean-to leading to a half-lit boarded door with a semi-circular overlight giving access to the rear stairs. Adjacent to the projection is a small gabled toilet. The north wall is blank except for an inserted escape stair and door, while the rear wall carries plainer details.

A service wing was added around 1800 on the east side of the entrance front, set well back from the main elevation. This two-storey wing with a slate roof is lower than the main house, which shows two sash windows in its east wall above the service wing's roof line. The service wing's north wall is roughcast painted white. At its right end is a one-storey lean-to with a panelled door and fixed-pane window. To the left are a 12-pane sash window, a boarded door, another boarded door under an overlight, an inserted door with vents, and an external brick stair with stone treads rising to a doorway at the upper left end containing a modern escape door in an earlier opening. The upper storey has four sash windows. The east end of the service wing is attached to the stable court. The rear face is of whitewashed rubble stone built into a steep bank, where steps lead down to lower storey openings on the left side: a segmental-headed doorway and two boarded-up segmental-headed windows. The upper storey has three sash windows. Further right, where ground level is higher, are two wide three-light casements in the upper storey, one light of which is boarded up in the right-hand window.

The interior contains a stair hall with a replaced open-well stair but retaining classical plaster cornices to the middle and upper storeys. The lower and middle storeys have late 19th-century panelling. The principal rooms occupy the piano nobile on the first floor, overlooking the garden to the west. A corridor with a dentil and paterae cornice provides access; its doorways have fluted friezes to the architraves and carry replaced doors.

The principal rooms comprise a central dining room with a drawing room to the north and library to the south. Both the drawing and dining rooms retain panelled shutters. Doorways between the rooms have panelled doors, some with beaded surrounds to the architraves, and fluted friezes to the overdoors.

The dining room fireplace features a marble surround and fine wooden chimneypiece with Ionic columns, floral trails to the entablature, and martial trophies with quivers of arrows above the columns. Plaster wall panels have egg-and-dart mouldings to the borders and paterae to the concave corners. The ceiling cornice incorporates a frieze of vases, anthemion sprays and egg-and-dart mouldings; the ceiling displays a central ribbed oval panel.

The drawing room also possesses a rich cornice with paterae, garlands, vases and egg-and-dart, with a ceiling containing an oval panel. Its walls have plaster panels similar to the dining room. The fireplace has a marble surround and wooden chimneypiece with a frieze of floral garlands flanked by consoles supporting a moulded cornice.

The small library at the south end of the range exhibits plainer details. Its fireplace is flanked by recesses, probably originally intended for books, while the windows have moulded reveals and cupboards beneath the sills.

The lower storey contains service rooms including, at the southwest corner, a brick-vaulted wine cellar retaining original bins and a strong room with an iron door beneath the later service stair at the south end. In the northwest room, set above the mantelpiece, is a cast iron fireback with relief moulding: pilasters with twisted columns and Ionic capitals frame a prancing horse and a cowering figure, with the date 1674 (the last two digits reversed) and the initials CR (Charles II).

On the east side of the main house is a dog-leg service stair with round newels and thin square balusters.