Lisvane House

Cadw's description

Location

Towards the top of the rise in Mill Road with gardens to side and rear.

History

Built 1899-1902 by Edwin Seward, Cardiff architect, for his own occupation. Interior conceived as setting for collection of old furniture and fittings including C17 staircase. Mill Road was built on land released for development by the Clark family from the former Lewis estate from 1890s: this plot unusually was sold with freehold. Now subdivided into 6 separate dwellings.

Exterior

A house in individualistic Arts and Crafts style. Highly asymmetrical with roofs at many different angles and pitches and a wide range of building materials: brick, roughcast, tile hanging, applied timbering, plasterwork, ashlar, rockfaced stone; tiled roof incorporating wide flat-roofed dormers for views from each side, stacks mostly removed. Windows are mostly rectangular panels of leaded quarries (some leading lost) set in moulded frames and mullions to front, though there are also sashes and casements of different designs. Road frontage of 3 storeys has a plethora of features. Ground floor of snecked rockfaced stone with ashlar surrounds has 5 windows of different shapes to left of front entrance bay; this breaks forward and has an elaborate dark wood doorway with moulded arch over asymmetrical panelled door and side light both glazed with decorative leading and dolphin motif; multipane overlight; to right of doorway a 3-light window. First floor to left, part brick part roughcast, has 3 windows under very deep boarded and bracketed soffit of a tiled overhang; at centre the first floor is jettied out over the doorway and has a wide bay window surmounted by a small black and white timbered gable incorporating a shell motif; to right a bracketed band of half timbering with heavy brackets creates a jetty/balcony effect with 2-light window above. Above left is a part-timbered wholly asymmetrical gable end with vertical banding to the external stack and small window to side where roof sweeps down to right; to left the roof sweeps down lower and changes to shallower pitch over the first floor gallery of the side elevation; above the entrance bay is a flat roof dormer.

Garden frontage to side right has 3 unequal first floor windows; tile-hung bay to left, at centre timber panelling incorporating pargetting; ground floor has two 3-light windows to left and to right a recessed garden bay supported by cast iron column giving onto brick and tile terrace with steps down. At end right are 2 single-storey bays one with hipped roof supported by heavy brackets and one with steep gable with overhanging eaves and applied timbering; canted bay to left with latticed lights, full-length mullioned window to right, all with ashlar surrounds. Huge crow-stepped external stack to side elevation with flanking chamfered pointed-arched lights.

Interior

Interior was designed by Seward as a setting for his collection of old furniture and fittings including a staircase of of 1688. House now subdivided into separate dwellings.

Reason for designation

Listed as an architecturally interesting house in individual historicist style by a major Cardiff architect.