Colomendy Wood including attached Garage and Stabling

Colomendy Wood

A Neo-Jacobean and Arts-and-Crafts style country house, built of rock-faced red sandstone rubble with carefully squared quoins and red sandstone ashlar dressings to important openings. The service wing is rendered in roughcast. Welsh slate roofs with iron staining and stone chimney stacks complete the exterior. The building follows a half-H plan with short wings projecting on the garden side. The entrance is off-set on the courtyard side, with a large service wing projecting to the left. An L-shaped block forms a stable court containing both stables and garages. The main range and service wing are two storeys with attics, the additional wing is two storeys, and the stable court is single storey with attics.

On the entrance front, the main range has an off-centre entrance with a windowed bay on the left and a blind bay on the right. The entrance sits within a three-sided tower with a three-centred arch doorway canted to the right. Above it are three paired mullioned windows on the floor above, and a small slated gable behind a parapet. Ground floor and upper windows have red sandstone ashlar surrounds. A four-light timber mullioned window appears on each floor to the left; the lower one has a tiled voussoir head and the upper sits close under the eaves. To the right, in the angle between the porch and wing, a tall stack houses small rectangular windows on either floor, probably for cloakrooms. The right section has blind walling with a handsome lead downpipe featuring a hopper head. The roof is very steeply pitched.

The right return gable features a French casement with sidelights and overlight on the right and a small two-light casement on the left, both with tiled heads. The first floor holds a seven-light window with the centre three lights projecting forward as a canted oriel supported on carved timber brackets. The entire attic gable projects on four heavy carved brackets carrying a bressumer with a bell-cast slate-hung gable above, which contains a small two-light casement in its lower part.

The garden front has a small projecting gable on the left and a larger one on the right with the hall between, creating the impression of hall-and-cross-wings. The left gable features a seven-light mullion-and-transom window on the ground floor and a mullioned window above with slate-hung cladding between and in the gable. The windows wrap around as bays in the manner that became popular in speculative housing of the 1920s. A small two-light casement sits in a bargeboarded gable. The centre section contains the garden door on the left and a two-storey hall window to the right. This is a projecting bay with four lights featuring a king mullion and three transoms, with two additional lights to the sides and an embossed lead-panelled head. The upper wall to the left is entirely hidden by wisteria. A central three-light gabled dormer sits above with a tall stack to its left. The larger right wing echoes the hall bay's design but has blind panels between four-light mullion-and-transom windows with king mullions and panelled heads, a three-light casement in the gable above, and a stack on the ridge. The wing's end displays wrap-around windows of the type first used by J. Burnet and C. R. Macintosh and later greatly employed in garden suburbs.

A further gabled wing behind has a three-light casement on the upper floor but was not properly observed at resurvey in August 2005. It runs through to the entrance front where it joins the stable wing, which has a wrap-around corner window on the first floor and a plain casement below.

The main service wing overlooks the entrance court with a seven-light timber mullioned window below and two three-light windows above. It has a three-light gabled dormer and a large stack in the steeply sloping roof. The gable end features two two-light casements on either floor and a three-light one in the attic.

The stable range comprises four bays with doors and two-light windows. The third bay has a two-storey projecting entrance with hayloft above, featuring a pulley beam in gabled housing and a taking-in door. Three gabled ventilators punctuate the roof. The garage returns at right angles with double doors and a gabled dormer above. The rear sections were not seen.

Internally, only the central Hall and the Panelled Room at the south end of the range were observed at resurvey. The Hall is two storeys high with an open flying timber staircase featuring shaped cut-out balusters, positioned facing the two-storey bay window. An internal oriel opens into one of the bedrooms. The Panelled Room contains a pseudo-inglenook fireplace and mixed panelling, some of which is said to originate from another house.