Dyffryn House

Dyffryn House

An eclectic design drawing from French Renaissance and English Baroque styles. The French influence appears particularly in the mansard roof and window treatment, while the English Baroque character dominates the Great Hall block of the main facade. The building comprises two storeys and an attic, with rendered elevations and freestone dressings. The roof is a hipped mansard of slate with a balustraded parapet over the main cornice; stone chimney stacks feature bracketed cornices.

The main north front is dominated by a tall square Hall block projecting left of centre, which has a balustraded parapet with urns and a pedimented front. Above the pedimented front rises a giant five-light round-arched window enriched with keyblocked ornament. Three-storey towers appear at the centre and ends, providing symmetry to the composition. To the right of the hall block, the ground floor is advanced and features a similar parapet with urns. This section includes two five-light bay windows with glazing matching that of the hall, and between them a similar three-light window sits beside the present round-arched main entrance with spandrel ornament. A projecting lobby or porch stands in front of the hall block, with a porte-cochere opening onto the Carriage Court; this has paired Doric columns and a rusticated entrance surround. Most glazing is of the horned sash type. Attic windows to the pedimented dormers are round-headed in French manner, while some heavily keystoned casement windows to the ground floor left have voluted architraves. To the right, a stone wall screens the modernised section and the rear of the stable courtyard. The left (east) side contains five windows, including a shallow splayed bay.

The garden front to the south is symmetrical, comprising thirteen bays and including projecting end towers and a broader projecting central bay which is pedimented like the hall block. This central bay includes tripartite glazing to the second floor with a bay window below. The towers contain niches with statues at ground floor level. Between the central and end bays are two-storey splayed bays, linked to a central classical veranda with paired Doric columns and a balustraded parapet with ball finials. A modern extension lies to the west, beyond which is the converted former stable courtyard featuring a pyramidal clock-tower to the south range (originally the coach-house), with semi-circular windows to the loft.

The interiors display lavish decoration with main rooms designed in a wide variety of styles, a practice favoured by wealthy nineteenth-century owners. Some chimneypieces are said to have been brought from other houses.

The Great Hall is the single most important room, echoing those of major sixteenth-century country houses such as Hampton Court and Burghley. It features a full-height mock hammerbeam roof and a large end window. The walls are enriched with two tiers of pilasters carrying friezes and a dentilled cornice; corbelled round arches with gilded keystones sit below over a panelled dado. The roof is a five-bay implied double-hammerbeam of herringbone-boarded construction. A grand timber chimneypiece has a massive cornice carried by full-height terms; the stone fireplace surround and overmantel feature Ionic columns flanking a coat of arms. An enormous window to the north end contains coloured glass depicting Queen Elizabeth I, with a round-arched doorway below featuring double doors and marble columns. A splayed dais recess to the west wall has a coffered ceiling. At the south end, a minstrels gallery is carried on curved brackets, spanning an open passage from the staircase hall that gives access to the Great Hall and neighbouring rooms; doorways are surmounted by large plaster relief tondi.

The Billiard Room lies to the east of the Great Hall and has a dado with integral bench seating below a deep band of carved panelling in exceptionally florid Renaissance manner. It features a similar frieze and chimneypiece and a deeply panelled ceiling with ceiling bosses. The Orchid Room to the south has a painted ceiling, Ionic columns and gilded surrounds to wall panelling. Immediately adjacent is the Rose Room, designed in broadly eighteenth-century French style, featuring a delicately painted ceiling with corner roundels and gilded festoons to the beaded surrounds of wall panelling. The fine marble chimneypiece is more circa 1600 in style, with tapered figural pilasters, Smythson-like bosses and strapwork surrounding an equestrian figure with French inscription reading "Dieu Benit La Zouche de Courson". To the west is the Tulip Room (now the Dining Room), with a ribbed ceiling including Gothic foliate bosses; its bowed west end backs onto the Bar, while the north wall backs onto the wainscotted Staircase Hall. At the east end of the Staircase Hall is wall-arcading in a similar manner to that of the Great Hall.

The staircase features broad flights with shaped tread ends and panelled newels with finials. The first-floor landing has paired marble columns, beyond which the stairs continue in a similar manner to the second floor. The Oak Room opens off the Staircase Hall and was formerly the dining room. It displays panelled ceiling, wainscotting and mullioned and transomed windows all in Tudor and Elizabethan manner, with a similar style inglenook-like fireplace featuring an oval smoke window.

The two remaining public rooms to the west are the Bar and Lounge, used for the conference centre. The Bar has a lightly ribbed ceiling and a luxuriantly foliage-encrusted marble chimneypiece in eighteenth-century manner, reusing a remarkable French-style seven-double-branch chandelier; the panelling is modern. The Lounge has an unusual plaster ceiling with broad ribs and thistle, rose and daffodil ornament to square, diamond and lozenge-shaped panels. A fine French chateau-style marble chimneypiece features putti flanking a round-arched fireplace containing a fleur-de-lis fireback.