thanks again the mid th century embellishing has been sort of attributed to john elkington gill but that seems to be based on no more the fact that he worked on the nearby parish church my guess if that looking at the architecture raikes davy designed it himself and probably got a surveyor or perhaps even gill to draw up some working plans i'll keep searching if there's any clues they are in that strange tower which is why i likened it to the work of alexander thomson but that's more for explaining to readers the ideas and architectural concepts that were floating about at that time rather than suggesting he designed it it's not accomplished enough for him anyway talk