Broad Leys, Gillhead, Cumbria

The entry in Pevsner's Cumbria (with Matthew Hyde, 2010) reads:

BROADLEYS, 2½ m. s, just past the former Lancastrian border. By CFA Voysey, 1898-1899, in the years of his greatest success and fertility (cf Moor Crag, nearby), for Henry Currer-Briggs of Yorkshire, colliery owner. Later owned by the Milnes of Manchester, and since 1950 by the Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club [WMBRC]. Built by Pattinsons (with electric lighting), and fitted out by Simpson.

Towards the lake Broadleys is, for Voysey, unusually formal in composition, and yet not in any set symmetry. The front has three full height curved bows, the middle one with two transoms, the l and r ones representing two storeys and expressing them. Some bare wall to the r, not matched by the l. On the landward side E, it is an L with a long low service wing under a big roof. The main block has a porch and to its l, a square projection with continuous windows to the staircase. On the seldom-seen N elevation, five tiers of windows are artfully disposed to suit the interior requirements. White roughcast, green paint, unmoulded sandstone mullions and transoms, set flush with the wall, battered buttresses, iron brackets under the eaves, graded blue-green slates and big plain chimneys. A continuous dripmould of rough slate links all the windows. What is so surprising about the interior is its cosy scale. We enter into a low space which opens into the double-height hall, lit by the full height of the centre bay, and warmed by a huge walk-in fireplace – but these words imply a grandeur which is conspicuously missing; the scale is always human, even slightly dwarfish. The upstairs corridor bridges and looks down into it. Oak panelling without mouldings. At the N end is the DRAWING ROOM, now the bar, with the shallowest tiled bow for the fireplace. At the other end the DINING ROOM, with a green-tiled fireplace, and more simplified panelling. That is all; it was, after all, only a holiday home. The STAIR winds round four posts, and a decorative slatted cage of balusters with inset hearts: Voysey's signature. The upstairs rooms and corridor are very low for the date, but the roof slopes intrude nonetheless. Only four bedrooms. Three have fireplaces of narrow yellow-glazed bricks. The views from the curved bows are sensational.

LODGE. Also by Voysey. The stone is exposed, except in the gables. Dovecote in the N gable.

Photograph by Jack Warshaw.