Dingestow Court

Dingestow Court

An entertaining and eclectic house showcasing successive architectural styles from the late Tudor period through the 19th century. The building's complex plan comprises a late-Tudor gatehouse range on a north-south axis, with a multi-phase main domestic range linked to its south end on an east-west axis, forming an elaborate L-shape.

The principal north entrance front is dominated by a late 18th-century rendered house with a hipped slate roof. It rises three storeys in a symmetrical composition of 1:5:1 bays, with the outer bays breaking slightly forward. Details include a string-course over the ground floor and an eaves cornice with blocking-course. Windows consist of segmental-headed 12-pane sashes to the two main floors and short 6-pane sashes to the second floor. Bizarrely at odds with this restrained Georgian design is a tall two-storey Perpendicular Gothic style porch of sandstone ashlar attached to the centre. This has a Tudor-arched outer doorway with shafts and foliated spandrels, opening onto a simple round-headed inner doorway with panelled and glazed door and fanlight with Georgian tracery. At first-floor level is a tall two-centred arched three-light window with Perpendicular tracery, with a balustraded balcony above accessed by an enlarged window. A low hipped-roofed lantern to the staircase rises from the right-hand end of the roof, while a linear cluster of six tall Tudor-style octagonal chimney shafts (belonging to Vulliamy's addition) rises behind the centre of the ridge. Wrapping round the east corner and projecting slightly is an ashlar Tudor-style wing of Vulliamy's south range, two storeys and two bays with the left gable. To the east of this is a much later single-storey outbuilding range. At the west end a short two-storey two-bay continuation, rendered and windowed like the main range, projects at the second bay as a flat-roofed porch with round-headed arches at ground floor, linking to the gatehouse range, which is also rendered.

The gatehouse range is long and two-storeyed. Its principal feature on the east front is a broad gabled centre rising above eaves level, carrying a large late 19th-century crow-stepped ashlar bellcote with a clockface below and a tall delicately-fashioned weathervane finial above. At ground floor is the modernised portal of the coach-passage, above which sits a segmental-headed blind or blocked window. The portions to north and south of the centre differ: the south portion has higher eaves and a roof of graduated slates with two windows on each floor (all different), while the north portion has a more steeply-pitched roof of small stone slates and five 12-pane sash windows at first-floor level, the first three smaller. A lower one-bay addition is attached to the north end. On the west side of this rubble range, the original gatehouse is the principal feature of interest. It is three-storeyed and gabled, with a sunk-chamfer string-course over the ground floor and a thin chamfered one over the first floor. The west portal to the coach-passage is segmentally arched and surrounded by large blocks of creamy-white stone with sunk-chamfer moulding. The floor above contains a restored four-light transomed window, and the top floor has a three-light mullioned window with a hoodmould. Inside the coach-passage are exposed ceiling beams and joists. At the north end of this side is a pair of 19th-century Tudor-arched coach-house doorways. A harmoniously-designed recent external staircase is attached to the north gable wall, serving domestic accommodation on the upper floor. Various altered or inserted windows are present to both north and south portions, including dormers in the roofs. At the south end, a short two-storey kitchen wing projects to the west and carries a large extruded chimney stack to its north side. On its south side, the east corner has a short turret bearing a louvred wooden lantern with an oversailing pyramidal roof.

On the south side of the main range, Vulliamy's addition of 1845–1846 is architecturally almost another house in itself. It is a close copy of an Elizabethan original at Franks, Horton Kirby in Kent, but executed in sandstone ashlar rather than brick. The building is two-and-a-half storeys over cellars, in a symmetrical design of 1:2:1:2:1 bays. The paired bays project with twin gables, the inner gables slightly smaller than the outer. The roofline is ornamented by tall octagonal chimney shafts, both clustered and single. The inner of the west pair of bays contains a Renaissance-style architrave to a recessed porch with a round-headed arch flanked by Tuscan columns. The outer bay of each pair has a two-storey canted bay window with pierced parapet. Throughout, both main floors feature large mullion-and-transom windows, and the attics have three-light mullioned windows. Set back at the west end is a two-bay element added by Prichard and Seddon in 1859, two-and-a-half storeys in similar style, with a doorway at ground floor and a pair of tall steeply-gabled dormers in the roof. Set back at the east end is a one-storey three-bay wing added by Lawrence & Goodman in 1877, in Perpendicular style. This features three large multi-light transomed windows with quatrefoil top lights and hoodmoulds, a Lombard frieze and embattled parapet.

Interior features include an entrance hall in the late-Georgian part extending the full width of the five-bay centre, remodelled by Creed in 1888. It features a beamed ceiling and panelled walls, an extremely elaborate wooden chimney-piece at the rear wall with twisted side columns and various ex situ materials (probably designed by Samuel Bosanquet in 1845), and a fine open-well staircase at the west end of late 17th-century character, with closed string, turned balusters and a heavy moulded and ramped handrail.

Within Vulliamy's 1845–1846 addition, the drawing room and library in the southeast corner is lined with pilastered wooden bookcases and features a French-style red marble fireplace and a Jacobean-style coffered ceiling with plaster pendants. A small ante-room adjacent to this contains original wallpaper (green, with panels of naturalistic flower sprays), an elaborate white marble fireplace, a modillioned polygonal plaster cornice and fleur-de-lys ornament to the ceiling centre. In the southwest corner, the dining room (enlarged by Prichard & Seddon in 1859) displays a Tudor-style rib-work plaster ceiling copied from the Queens Head Inn, Monmouth.

In the back-hall of the servants' wing to the west is a complete set of 14 bells to rooms, each with an identifying label such as "SRB's room", "Tapestry room", "Green room" and "Miss Bosanquet's room". In the gatehouse, the first-floor room contains a moulded Tudor-arched fireplace.