Castellau House

Castellau House

This is a two-storey house with a six-window front facing south, featuring recessed and bowed returns beneath a shallow hipped slate roof with wide boarded eaves supported on cantilevered brackets. The walls are roughcast and whitened, with a rendered stack set back from the front to the right. A string course runs at first-floor level and continues around the east end. Door and window openings have raised surrounds.

The central entrance comprises panelled double doors flanked by 4-over-4-pane hornless sash windows. Above the doorway and flanking windows survives a three-bay section of veranda with a slate roof supported on slender iron piers, each bay having open arches and radial bars to the spandrels. The upper storey contains six 6-over-6-pane horned sash windows under flat heads, with pairs of larger 2-light casements to the ground floor flanking the entrance.

Two rear wings set in from the bow ends of the front range create an L-shaped plan. The east bow end has a 6-over-6-pane horned sash to the upper storey and a pair of 6-pane windows below, with a stack positioned in the angle of the two ranges. The east side of this wing has irregularly-spaced windows, predominantly 6-over-6-pane horned sashes. The upper storey includes a round-headed light with radial glazing beyond which are four sashes. The ground floor towards the centre features a circular light with radial glazing, flanked by a sash to the left and two short 6-pane windows to the right. The gable end has no openings but carries a bell fixed to the apex. The west side of this range has a round-headed doorway to the right with a twentieth-century glazed door, and two small 6-pane windows to the left. The rear of the front range contains a tall round-headed stairlight with margin glazing in an added gabled unit.

The west bow end of the front range displays a blind window to each storey. The west rear range follows the same stack arrangement as the east range. Its west side has three windows to each storey, all offset to the right and containing 2-light multi-pane casements. A single-storey lean-to adjoins the gable end with two lunette windows under voussoir heads and a planked door to its east side. The rear of this wing has openings with twentieth-century multi-pane glazing, French doors to the right with a window above, and a window to the far left with a blind window above.

The entrance hall is distinguished by a high ceiling cornice decorated with pairs of modillions, foliate bosses and egg-and-dart moulding. The drawing room lies to the left of the entrance hall and the dining room to the right. To the rear is a full-height round-headed recess flanked by doorways, that to the right being blind. The left doorway leads to the stair hall. Both rooms feature panelled double folding doors within fluted architraves with roundel or rosette motifs at the upper angles, and panelled folding shutters to the windows.

Across the bow end of the drawing room stands a pair of Ionic columns of yellow scagliola supporting a cornice. This cornice and the ceiling cornice are decorated with foliage, hops and beading. The north wall contains a white marble fireplace with relief decoration to the chimney piece depicting a cupid in the centre flanked by scrollwork and leaves. The dining room features a black marble fireplace in the north wall, a highly ornate ceiling cornice decorated with entwined flowers, foliage and beading, and a ceiling rose with ears of wheat and ribs forming a fan pattern.

The stair hall contains a cantilevered semi-circular stone staircase with decorated tread ends and mahogany handrail. The cast iron balustrades are finely detailed, consisting of shaped balusters with central rosettes alternating with double parabolas featuring scrollwork, all symmetrical about central rosettes. The stairlight contains painted glass depicting heraldic emblems. A foliate ceiling rose adorns the landing. To the left of the stair hall is an archway leading to cloakrooms, and to the right a doorway to the kitchen. The south wall of the stair hall contains a segmental-headed recess. The roof is said to retain seventeenth-century trusses.