Glen Trothy House (including attached Sacred Heart Chapel)

Glen Trothy House is a large country mansion dating from the late 19th century, with an attached private Roman Catholic chapel. The house is built of snecked rubble with freestone dressings, featuring a dentil eaves band and polychrome banding towards the upper walls. It has steeply pitched slate roofs, tall axial red-brick chimney stacks, and hipped dormers. The two-storey house includes an attic. Windows are primarily horned sashes with large plate-glass panes, although some subsidiary elevations feature mullion and transom windows.

The south front is asymmetrical, incorporating the main house on the left and additions including the chapel on the right. Features include a large polygonal bay window with a tall conical roof and lucarne to the left, and a large canted bay window with a belvedere to the right. A long verandah with a tiled roof sits on the ground floor between these two bays, accompanied by a smaller polygonal bay window, a projecting gable with a triple lancet window, and a later 19th-century addition with a large off-centre gable. The main entrance is located on the north side, sheltered under a bracketed hood in a projecting gabled bay, with a hipped roof stair tower set back to the left. A later 19th-century gabled wing, incorporating a great pyramidal roofed tower with a louvred belfry, is positioned on the extreme left. The west elevation demonstrates a gabled bay to the left and joins the polygonal bay of the south front to the right.

The interior, not inspected during a recent survey, contains a richly furnished and painted High Victorian Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to the Sacred Heart, as noted in a 1994 listing. The chapel is rectangular and full-height, with a projecting sanctuary. The east wall is extensively decorated with dressed stone, and features a cusped, full-height rere-arch framing a circular window with coloured glass. This window is divided into cusped quadrants by a large crucifix, incorporating two Mary figures against a foliage background. A crenellated reredos extends below the crucifix, including a central canopied tabernacle and marbled colonettes with diaper ornamentation at the base. The altar table stands on three marbled columns with water-holding bases, alongside a piscina and aumbry. The sanctuary arch is flanked by statues of the Holy Family, and the reveals of the arch display depictions of St Gregory and St Augustine. The walls are stencilled and coloured, with unsigned stained glass. The wagon roof is divided into square panels each painted with religious subjects, including depictions of the Sacred Heart. The north vestry retains original furnishings. A timber-fronted gallery sits at the west end, beyond which is a ‘viewing box’ which originally opened off Reginald Vaughan’s bedroom, allowing him to follow Mass when unwell. The rest of the house includes heavily carved Jacobethan chimneypieces and a dog-leg staircase with twinned newels.