Brook House (former Park View) and associated entrance walls and piers

Brook House (formerly Park View) and associated entrance walls and piers

A Gothick villa of around 1836 by Richard Lane, altered in the late 19th century and remodelled in 1897 by George Faulkner Armitage, with some later alterations. The house is constructed of stuccoed brick with a slate roof.

The two-storey house faces south and originally comprises four bays wide, with single-bay extensions to the east and west. At the left is a recessed two-storey bay with stepped parapet, containing two windows upstairs and one downstairs. The original house features projecting eaves and a projecting gabled entrance bay left-of-centre. To the left of the entrance bay are stacked timber mullion-and-transom windows. The entrance bay contains stone steps leading up to traceried double doors with leaded glass and an overlight with modern glass; the window above is a sash window with a Tudor-arched upper light. To the right are two bays, gabled at the right, both with ground-floor square bays. Each has three-light windows, with two-light windows above, all featuring Tudor-arched upper lights. The single-storey bay to the right has an eaves cornice with mutules and a large nine-light window.

The west garden front has a large gabled bay to the left of centre, with a two-storey canted bay window with Tudor-arched lights. To the right of this, the smoke-room extension projects, with an eaves cornice and two slender two-storey square bays with mullion-and-transom windows; the original west gable is visible above this extension. The blind wall at the far left has lost its render, revealing the brickwork in English Garden Wall bond.

The north rear elevation is of three storeys plus a basement. At the right is a wide gabled outshut with service-stair windows to each floor, flanked by windows on each side; most windows are multi-pane sliding sashes without horns. The lower-left window is obscured by a 20th-century access lift. Left of this is a two-storey gabled outshut which is blind at ground-floor level and largely concealed at basement level by a modern terrace. Between these two gabled outshuts is a flat-roofed passage to a recessed rear entrance in a three-storey gabled wall behind, which is largely obscured by these rear outshuts. The rear of the altered south-east corner is visible, set back at the left, with a modern fire escape.

The east wall features paired sash windows to each floor of the extension at the right and towards the rear of the original house. In the centre is an original flat-roofed bay with a traceried, four-centred-arched stair window with a stopped houdmould and leaded and coloured glass. This bay is obscured at ground-floor level by the billiard room extension, which is also flat-roofed. The cornice of the front returns along this side, and the billiard room has two large mullion-and-transom timber windows with leaded and coloured glass. Above this in the original east gable is a two-light window with a stopped houdmould, Tudor-arched heads and margin-lights.

The cellars retain quarry-tiled and stone-flagged floors, a fireplace, a brick vaulted ice-house, and stone tables and shelves on brick piers. Other original features in the principal living areas include at least one original four-panelled door with beading, plaster cornices and coving, basket-arched doorways, and the closed-string service stair with stick balusters, ramped handrails and skirting, and turned newels.

Armitage's interiors include work of high quality. The panelled walls and twelve-panelled doors have carved friezes of ivy. The entrance hall is divided from the stair hall by a room formed by later panelled and glazed timber screens. The entrance hall contains a fireplace with a glazed-tile fireback and a surround and overmantel in the form of a roofed colonnade with niche carvings. Above the door, the panelling is inscribed "TRUE FRIENDSHIP'S LAWS ARE BY THIS RULE EXPREST WELCOME THE COMING, SPEED THE PARTING GUEST". The stair hall has the same panelling. At the left above the smoke room door is inscribed "ALTERNATE REST AND LABOUR LONG ENDURE". The drawing room to the north has the inscription "WHEN FRIENDS MEET HEARTS WARM". The doorway from the stair hall to the service area is inscribed "WELL BEFALL HEARTH AND HALL". The stair newel forms a column to a splat-baluster fretwork screen spanning the stair and the passage east to the billiard room. The dining room doorway south of the stair is inscribed "SMALL CHEER AND GREAT WELCOME MAKE A MERRY FEAST", and on the south wall of the hall is a decorative window lighting the dining room's ingle nook.

The smoke room has a window with patterned leaded glass and a Lincrusta dado. The pronounced corbels to the chimney breast, also evident in the entrance hall, are characteristic of Armitage, but the cornice and coving are original. The drawing room has further cornice and coving. A giant, sumptuously carved sideboard and fitted cabinets with leaded glazed doors fill the east wall of the dining room, surrounding the chimney breast. They are faced across the room by a large ingle nook with a semi-circular arch carved with thistles in the spandrels and a row of beaten and studded brass panels above. The ingle nook has fitted glazed cabinets matching those opposite. Some William de Morgan fireback tiles remain. The ingle nook is lit by two three-light windows of leaded and coloured glass, patterned in a manner very similar to the carvings of the entrance hall chimneypiece. One borrows light from the entrance vestibule, and the other from the stair hall. The interior surfaces are covered with carved and painted decoration.

The other principal ground-floor room is the billiard room, reached by passing the stairs along a corridor retaining its parquet floor. The billiard room also retains its parquet. Heavy ceiling timbers, a pronounced low cornice and mock timber bracing in the frieze above are all in dark wood. The north wall has a panelled niche flanked by pilasters. The west wall has a fireplace flanked by full-height corbelled pilasters with a glazed-tile fireback and Minton hearth tiles. Several doors on this and the first floor have four panels of hand-carved foliage by Armitage.

The staircase has newels carved with anthemion and palmette, and barley-twist balusters. The first-floor landing has a skylight with leaded and coloured glass, and a door with two panels of foliate carving and a glazed panel matching the skylight. There are two basket-headed archways, one leading to the service stair. Other rooms retain some decorative joinery and hand-made window fastenings. Attic rooms are more altered and several rooms have, as of 2022, fire and water damage to ceilings, floors and decoration.

The boundary wall retains some original stone coping, entrance quadrant walls and stone piers with displaced caps.