Graig House (aka Great Graig) including terrace to S and E

Graig House (also known as Great Graig)

This painted stucco house presents a Regency-style façade disguising a complex building history spanning from the later 16th century through the 19th century. The house comprises two principal phases: a 2-bay, 1½-storey range on a north-south axis (now the rear service wing) from the later 16th century, and a 2-bay range from the later 17th century added across its south end. This was later extended by half a bay to the west and substantially raised and remodelled in the early 19th century.

The symmetrical south façade displays three large windows at ground floor, with French windows to the centre and a false window to the right, formerly protected by a glazed verandah roof. The first floor has three 4-pane sash windows, each with a swept canopy roof and originally with a balconette, while the second floor features three small lunettes, each with a cast-iron balconette. A stuccoed band runs across the first floor, and the shallow-pitched slated roof has prominently oversailing boarded eaves carried round to form a pedimental east gable. Chimneys stand at both gables and a coupled ridge chimney near the west gable. A stone terrace runs along the front with urns on panelled pedestals and returns round the east end via a broad flight of steps.

The east return façade features a broad 2-storey bow with large tripartite sashed windows on each floor, the upper furnished with a cast-iron balconette and swept canopy roof. A wide flat-roofed porch in a stepped-down bay to the right contains 2 pairs of fluted columns and an entablature, protecting a doorway with panelled and glazed double doors. This opens into a 2-storey addition in the re-entrant angle. The rear wing is a 2-bay structure with a large tripartite small-paned window, a gabled dormer to each bay, and a large stepped extruded chimney to the rear gable wall.

Internally, the ground floor of the rear range is divided into two cells by a thick rubble chimney stack with a large rectangular fireplace on its south side with a massive stone lintel. The southern cell has three deeply-chamfered lateral beams with triangular stops, one passing through the front of the stack. The northern cell stands on a higher level and contains chamfered longitudinal beams, a large segmental-arched fireplace in the north gable wall, and a flight of stone stairs rising in the northwest corner. An inserted partition wall at the south end of the south cell creates a lateral hallway leading from the east entrance to a 19th-century staircase at its west end. The south crosswing contains two rooms of full bay width, each with lateral ceiling beams chamfered with triangle stops, and an added half-bay at the west end of uncertain function.

At the first floor, the rear range contains a massive tie-beam truss in the centre, now incorporated in the north side of the chimney stack at approximately 1½ metres above floor level, cut through for a doorway to the west of the stack. Each room has an open principal-rafter truss. In the southern room, a closet to the east of the stack contains what appears to be the head of a spiral stair and an early window with a saddle bar. The staircase in the northwest corner has a return with three steps mounting to the position of a former doorway into a former northwest wing. At the west corner of the junction of the rear and front ranges, a wooden staircase to the attic has at its foot three stone winders of a former spiral stair, and a blocked window in the west wall suggests this may be the remains of a former stair turret. The chambers in the front range have lateral beams with unstopped chamfer.

The property includes a terrace to the south and east, with a high screen wall attached to the west gable wall continued from the former coach-house.