Magnolia Cottage Stowford Cottage

WESTON C.P. WESTON ROAD SJ 75 SW Stowford and Magnolia 2/66 Cottages

20.1.75

GV II

Pair of semi-detached cottages. Dated 1865. By William Nesfield. Red English garden wall bond brick with tile hanging to the first floor walling and a roof of plain tiles. Two storeys. Entrance front: two mirror image cottages. Recessed centre with lean-to porch which has two lateral pointed arches behind which are the front doors and 2 glazed central arches with panes of bulls eye glass. Above these are two jointed 3-light hipped dormer windows with fishscale tiling to their apexes. Each has wooden mullions with a brick king mullion at the centre. To either side are projecting wings with two 2-light casements to each side at ground floor level. The first floors are jettied and have pargetted cement to the coving. The first floor windows are oriels and also have pargetted cement to their coving including the date A D 1865. These oriel windows have hipped roofs and the gable ends against which they are set are hung with fishscale tiles. The roof of the body of the house is hipped and the corners of this roof and the gable ends of the wings are each crowned with a metal vane bearing a lead penant. There is a massive chimney stack of four flues to the centre of the ridge with ribbed brickwork and there are further lateral stacks, flush with the sides of the houses each having 3 flues. Much of the tile hanging and roofing appears to have been replaced this century. In contrast to the Golden Gates Lodge designed in Nesfield's earlier manner these houses are interesting as one of the first examples of Nesfield and Shaw's Old English style and they show Nesfield's characteristic bulkiness of design and fluent combination of many elements of disparate origin. Also of interest is the fact that these are the first such houses designed in the style which is probably most widely associated with the term "semi-detached". Many of the features which were to become cliches of speculative developments in the early C20 appear here for the first time.

Listing NGR: SJ7323253346