Maescelyn House

Cadw's description

Location

On an elevated site NW of the town overlooking the Usk valley with lawns sloping down to S; reached by a curved tarmac driveway entered between stone gate piers with pyramidal copings.

History

Dated 1873. Small Victorian country house in subdued mixed Gothic and Jacobean Revival, thought to be by J L Pearson who had worked in the area; built for R Townley Woodman on the site of an earlier house said to be C18.

Exterior

2-storey and attic bull-nosed rubble fronts with pink freestone dressings including gable parapets, stringcourses, cill and eaves' bands. Tiled roof with cylindrical stone chimney stacks, some grouped.

Interior

Entered on W front with its twin Arts and Crafts asymmetrical gables. Tall finials; narrow attic lights above stringcourse with 2-light casement windows below. Offset narrow 2-storey porch with gablet to front and trefoil parapets to sides. 2-light cross-framed bowed oriel to 1st floor with some coloured glass; pointed arch below over raised shouldered entrance; boarded door with decorative iron hinges and bell-pull; trefoil- headed window to right side. The asymmetrical S (main) front is of 4 bays; advanced and splayed 2-storey steep pitched roof bay to left with weather-vane and advanced gablet right hand bay with finial forming the end of the eastern cross-range. One 2-storey and attic bay, with similar gable treatment to dormer (finial missing), and one 2-storey bay to centre; cross-frame windows except to attic and single light to centre left bay; blind trefoil heads to ground floor windows. 2-window E front with gabled chimney breasts and paired, central bellcote with ornamental bargeboards; similar glazing to the S front. Hipped roof service extension adjoins and extends beyond rear, brick walls to inner sides. Asymmetrical N (rear) elevation with tall trefoil-headed staircase window to right, central dormer with arched and bracketed bargeboards, gable to rear of cross range to left with finial. Cross-frame windows, offset to left hand bay lighting back stair-case; buttress/chimney stack to centre right.

Pearson's influence does not appear to be evident in the ground floor main rooms but the interior retains a robust open well staircase with turned banisters and octagonal newel posts with ball finials. Tiled floor to porch.