The Hendre

The Hendre is a large and sprawling red-brick Victorian mansion, irregular in plan and with irregular elevations in a mixture of historical styles. It resulted from several phases of enlargement by successive generations of the Rolls family between around 1830 and around 1900. A courtyard open to the west is formed by large domestic south and east ranges (the former incorporating the original shooting lodge) and a secondary service courtyard (stables, coach houses, etc.) on the north side. Projecting from the northeast corner is a diagonal library wing.

The mansion is built of red brick with Bath stone dressings, slate roofs and clusters of Tudor-style brick chimneys.

The Original Building and South Elevation

The original building, engulfed by later additions to its north, east and west sides, exposes only its south elevation. This is two and two-and-a-half storeys and three unequal bays. The middle bay is projected, two-and-a-half storeys and gabled. The third bay is narrow and two-storeyed with a gable breaking the eaves, and reduced in both dimensions above the ground floor. The middle bay, enriched with brick pilasters, stone bands and gable copings with kneelers, has a shallow rectangular bay window of four tall round-headed lights at ground floor, a first-floor panel containing another window of four round-headed lights, and a round-headed single-light window in the gable with a neo-Norman style architrave. The third bay has a transomed three-light window on each floor. The first bay has a cross-window at ground floor and a wooden two-light oriel above, with Perpendicular-style tracery.

Wyatt's Additions (circa 1837-41)

The earliest additions, by Wyatt around 1837-41, are a neo-Norman style three-storey tower to the left (west) end and a longer three-bay range at the right-hand (east) end. The tower has pilasters terminating in ball finials and a machicolated parapet; a round-headed doorway at ground floor, coupled round-headed windows at first floor and three round-headed windows at second floor, most of these features with elaborate neo-Norman enrichments. Its broader west return side has narrow turret-like outer bays clasping a large projected bay window at ground floor and set-back upper floors with a gable crouching between the turrets. All these features are encrusted with neo-Norman detailing, and the ground floor bay window has the initials of J.E.W. Rolls in raised brickwork. A neo-Norman arcaded parapet to this window is continued at right angles across the top of a flat-roofed projection from the side of the great hall to the left (built 1858).

The addition from around 1840 to the right of the original house is of three unequal bays in a slightly less eccentrically eclectic style, except for the third, which is treated as a featured corner tower. From a large and strongly battered stone plinth, rising in a single attenuated stage to above eaves level, this has one unusually tall round-headed lancet window, a smaller one rising into a gablet, and a corbelled pyramidal roof carrying a narrower clock-house stage with a steep two-stage ogival cap finished with a weathervane finial. The east return side, three-storeyed from a lower ground level (containing service rooms at basement level, and small parlours, a staircase and bedrooms on the upper floors) is relatively simple, having three round-headed windows on each of the first two levels, six small ones to the top floor (grouped 1:2:2:1), and a steeply gabled dormer breaking the centre of the eaves.

The 1885 Conservatory

The last component of the restlessly elaborate south elevation is a conservatory added at the left (west) end in 1885, a structure of serene simplicity by comparison with the rest: a six-bay arcade of large chamfered Tudor arches with a single buttress at the west corner and a plain stone parapet. Its west end wall has four pinnacled buttresses, very large transomed windows (bricked up in 1924) and a clerestory of small cusped lights. The buttresses and clerestory continue on the otherwise unwindowed north side (to the courtyard) where there is a Tudor-style doorway in the fifth bay.

Henry Pope's 1880s Addition (East Elevation)

The east elevation of the east wing is dominated by Henry Pope's 1880s addition, which is tripartite: a very large projected gable with a three-storey bay window (mullioned at basement level, mullioned and transomed on the two main floors); a lower and narrower three-storey bay treated as a tower feature, with a pair of segmental arches at basement level, a square transomed four-light window at first floor, an oblong transomed four-light window at second floor, and a pierced parapet with flaming-urn finials to the corners; and a much lower two-storey service range treated as if it were a free-standing house in its own right, distinguished mainly by a broad projected bay which rises above eaves level and has a low arched three-light window at basement level, a large transomed window above, and pinnacled kneelers to the gable coping. Linked to its southeast corner at an angle of 45 degrees is Aston Webb's library wing.

The Courtyard Elevations (1870-72)

The courtyard elevations are less easy to read. Although mostly erected in J.A. Rolls's phase of addition in 1870-72, they are more expressive of a patron's unpredictable requirements than of an architect's coherent scheme. Only the style—Tudor—is consistent.

Of the south range the main elements from right to left (west to east) are: the great hall; a two-storey porch which, despite being sited at almost the extreme west end of the whole complex, was the main entrance; a single-storey linking corridor; and a square three-storey tower. The great hall, of three bays with buttresses and tall transomed windows, though large in itself, is visually dominated by the disproportionately large porch. This has angle buttresses, a carved Tudor-style doorway flanked by single-light windows, a band carved with the Rolls family motto "Celeritas et Veritas" to the front and "Open House Open Heart" on the right-hand side, a canted oriel above the doorway, and a stepped gable containing a panelled shield. Two bays of single-storey corridor, with buttresses and two-light windows, link the left side of the porch with the tower in the corner. This has the appearance of a stair tower but is not, since its ground floor is the third bay of the corridor; above this, each of its two exposed sides has a two-light window at first floor and a three-light window at second floor, and it is topped by a pierced parapet with ball finials to the corners.

The courtyard side of the east wing begins with a relatively narrow two-and-a-half-storey element wedged against the northeast corner of the tower, and continues with a longer one-and-a-half-storey service range (to the north end of which the stable courtyard on the north side of the courtyard is linked). The former, built to house a large billiard room at ground floor, of one structural but three architectural bays in a symmetrical composition, has a very large rectangular bay window at ground floor with a transomed five-light window and a pierced parapet; a central attic gable with kneelers and finials breaking through a pierced parapet; and tall transomed windows. The service range, of two wide structural bays separated by a chimney stack, has a projected ground floor dominated by a transomed window matching that of the former billiard room; three gabled half-dormers with two-light mullioned windows; a multi-flue lateral chimney stack interrupting the roof; and a large pyramid-roofed lantern (or ventilator) on the ridge of each half.

The Stable Courtyard

By contrast with the foregoing, the north side of the courtyard is both functionally and architecturally coherent, being the entrance range of the stable court. Offset to the right in an otherwise single-storey range (three two-light windows to the left, one to the right) is a one-and-a-half-storey, three-bay, symmetrical gatehouse which has a large Tudor-arched coach passage in the centre, a sundial above this, a shallow three-light window either side, a pair of gabled half-dormers breaking through a pierced parapet with a carved shield in a central upstand, clustered gable chimneys and a large central lantern with diamond lattice glazing and a swept pyramidal cap with lucarnes and a weathervane finial.

The west elevation of the west range, a symmetrical five-window composition with gabled outer bays defined by buttresses and a gabled half-dormer in the centre, all these gables with ball finials, has two-light windows in all parts except those at ground floor of the outer bays which are three-light. The north elevation of the north range, which has simple segmental-headed single-light windows with brick surrounds (grouped 3:3:1), has a Tudor-arched coach doorway opposed to that in the south range, with a full height gable over it containing a window like the others, and at the west end is a larger gable containing a segmental-headed loading door. On the east side of the stable court, built in the angle with the end of the service wing, is a large square two-and-a-half-storey block under a two-span roof at right angles.

Aston Webb's Library Wing (1896)

The library wing added by Aston Webb in 1896, attached diagonally to the northeast corner of the east wing of the main house, consists first of a narrow corridor link but principally of a massively proportioned single-storey, single-cell library block, both raised over an undercroft. In the front elevation (to the garden) three bays of wide segmental undercroft arches (one to the corridor, two to the library) separated by buttresses form a visual link between the two elements, but above that level they differ greatly, the library being twice the height of the corridor. The corridor has a parapet, beneath which are small two-light mullioned windows and a central three-light oriel. The library is of three bays, the first two having tall three-stage transomed windows, and the third filled by a projected bay which has a battered brick plinth at basement level and an enormous multi-light mullion-and-transom window (deliberately reminiscent of the oriel or compass windows of medieval great halls). A string course decorated with carved panels crosses the heads of all three windows, and above that is a coped brick parapet raised into shallow gablets over the windows. Behind the one over the bay window is a tall louvred ventilator with a domed cap.

The gable end of the library, framed by sturdy full-height buttresses, has a central chimney enriched with carving on two levels, flanked by undercroft arches like the others, and transomed three-light windows to the library itself. At the rear a wide projection houses a central slightly extruded chimney stack flanked by inglenook windows on three levels.

Interior Features

The south range includes: an entrance vestibule with a screen of two fluted Tuscan columns; a great hall with hammerbeam roof; a large 17th-century-style open-well staircase; and various rooms with ex situ 16th-century and 17th-century architraves, overmantels and panelling of high quality, including two bedrooms fully wainscotted.

The east range includes: a former billiard room with Tudor-style ribbed ceiling; a dining room with similar ceiling including fine painted panels with lettered scrolls (e.g. "Joy and rest tend each guest"), and an elaborate Renaissance-style wooden buffet with flanking doorways; a private parlour or office with wainscotting incorporating painted embossed leather panelling over a panelled wooden dado; and a larger parlour with strapwork and pendant ceiling.

The panelled library has a coffered wooden ceiling and an inglenook fireplace with stained-glass side windows depicting the house around 1838 and the library wing around 1900. The very large bay window contains armorial stained glass.