A DESCRIPTION OF ASHFELD MANOR (FORMERLY MOORELAND MANSION)
HARRODSBURG, KENTUCKY
The great Romanesque Revival house at Mooreland, an estate located at the east city limits of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, was built by Colonel Daniel Lawson Moore for his second wife, Miss Minnie Ball of Woodford County, whom he married in 1891. The residence is the largest in Mercer County, and the handsomest building in the Romanesque Revival style in Central Kentucky. It took five years to build. The architect is unknown. In architectural quality the residence is equal to the Theophilus Conrad house at St. James Court in Louisville, designed by the architects, C.J. Clark and Arthur Loomis, and built during the mid 1890’s, which is considered the finest example of its kind in that city.
The mansion at Mooreland is built of limestone and brick, the front of the building being entirely of stone. Each block is carefully tooled, with ribbing or bush-hammer and is laid with pink mortar. The façade features a veranda of large semicircular arches carried on short round pillars of polished granite with elaborately carved limestone capitals. The veranda curves into octagonal forms at either end, that at the south extremity being a four-storied tower crowned by an entablature and parapet. The interplay of smooth and rusticated blocks of stone, and careful attention to details, distinguished the house as a sculpturesque work of architecture of the first order. The massing of polygonal and curved forms are handled masterfully around the flanks of the building, including an arcaded piazza on the south side and porte-cochere on the north.
One enters the ample reception hall facing the banistered staircase at the far end rising in several flights right and then left to the second floor. Dominating the stairway structure is a huge stained-glass window of seven panels containing floral and Rococo motifs in soft pastel colors, predominantly of pink, tan, and blue-gray. Some elements are of smooth and some of rippled glass, with small rounded, jewel-like accessories in harmonizing colors. The wall below is paneled, matching the dado level elsewhere in the reception hall. Beautifully detailed working fireplaces are in the hall, and baywindow treatment to the outer walls. A great deal of thought and craftsmanship has been lavished on the woodwork and ornaments of walls and ceilings, and all are in an excellent state of preservation.
The parlor at the front on the left features salmon pink in wall panels and drawings which makes an unusual but pleasing color combination with the bird’s-eye maple trim. The parquetry in the floor of the parlor is the most elaborate in the house. It relates to that in the library behind, joined to the parlor by a doorway with sliding doors. The two rooms have similar crystal chandeliers, which were purchased in Paris, France and have fixtures for both electricity and gas. These two rooms, opened together, served as the ballroom.
The room on the right at the top of the upstairs landing was the master bedroom, for which reason it has a closet adjoining the fireplace, and a corner lavatory with marble basin. It is the most complex in shape, expanding into a polygonal recess at the base of the principal tower. French doors open out onto the south loggia, which has a tessellated floor (like the front veranda) in white and gray marble. The loggia is enclosed, with French Doors surmounted by great glazed lunettes opening to the out-of-doors.
The dining room back of the master bedroom has a mantel of carved cherry, and the glazed tiles around the fireplace are of related aborigine color. Plaster work of the frieze and ceiling include Roman flaming standards and wreaths, held together by swags of graduated beads. The dining room frieze resembles that in the adjoining reception hall; whereof the latter’s ceiling design consist of long rectangular ending in Moorish type arabesques. The polygonal end and otherwise simple shape make the dining room the most formal of the lower rooms. Back of the impressive staircase are the carriage entrance hall, breakfast room, lavatory, pantries and various storage rooms, and the kitchen and back porch. The hallway off the porte-cochere has a marble was basin recessed between gun and utility closets.
The upper hall has grilled screens, similar to that in the lower parlor, in recessed left and right of the staircase. The four principal bedrooms on this level follow the contours of the rooms below. Especially noteworthy are the curly-wood panels in the doors. The rear portion of the house contains a maids’ stairway up from the first floor stairs to the third floor, several passages, and a servants’ chamber.
