81 Village Road

Detached house, 1910, in vernacular style, designed by Messrs Percy Tom Runton and William Ernest Barry, with Leonard Sharp. Built of painted rough-cast rendered brick on a fair-faced orange brick plinth. The house features timber-framed casement windows with leaded glazing, gabled roofs with barge-boards and exposed soffits clad in plain tiles, and cast-iron rainwater goods (with some modern plastic replacements).

The plan is L-shaped with a porch filling most of the re-entrant angle.

The north-west front elevation is two-storey and three-bay. A projecting gabled north-east bay contains a canted two-storey bay window beneath a flat leaded roof, with a seven-light mullioned casement window to the first-floor and a fourteen-light transom and mullion casement window to the ground-floor. The central bay is occupied by a porch with a catslide roof featuring exposed painted rafter ends, and a three-light mullioned box dormer window to the first-floor. The ground-floor wall breaks forward and is entered by a plain three-panelled front door with a lead-glazed upper panel, flanked by small lead-glazed windows resting on thick tile cills. A painted cast-iron plaque attached to the wall commemorates William Dent Priestman (1847–1936), inventor of the world's first commercially successful oil engine in 1885 and founder of Priestman Brothers Ltd, grab crane and excavator makers in 1870, who lived here from 1910 to 1936. The porch is fronted by a pair of timber segmental arches supported by square posts with a lattice panel beneath the handrail. The side elevation has a similar but narrower arch flanked by a single casement window. The porch floor is laid with red bricks in herring-bone pattern.

The south-west side elevation is two-storey with a projecting gable occupied by a canted two-storey bay window beneath a flat leaded roof, with a seven-light mullioned casement to the first-floor and a fourteen-light transom and mullion casement to the ground-floor. The southern side wall of the rear range breaks back slightly from the line of the gabled wall and has a single plain doorway to the ground-floor.

The north-east side elevation is two-storey and lacks architectural detail apart from a pair of single square lead-glazed casement windows flanking the centre point of the ground-floor, and a four-light transom and mullion stair window set centrally above. A tall rough-cast chimney stack with an orange brick cornice rises through the roof above an internal chimney breast at the northern end.

The south-east rear elevation is two-storey with a central bay flanked by a pair of gabled bays with late twentieth-century fenestration. The northern bay is wider and taller than the remaining bays, with a five-light timber casement window to the first-floor and a three-light glazed folding French door to the ground-floor. A tall rough-cast chimney stack with an orange brick cornice rises from the roof ridge over the bay. The central bay has a pair of low timber casement windows at first-floor level lighting the toilet and bathroom respectively, and a single two-light casement window to the ground-floor. The southern gabled bay has a single three-light casement window to the first-floor and an exposed orange rubbed brick round arch doorway to the ground-floor, closed by a late twentieth-century three-panelled timber door with an upper glazed roundel, flanked by a single casement window. A tall rough-cast chimney stack with an orange brick cornice rises from the northern slope of the roof over this bay.

Interior

Ground floor: the front door leads directly into an entrance hall with two doorways in the south-western wall opening to the former cloakroom and water closet, and to the drawing room, which has a moulded ceiling cornice and a canted bay window beneath a shallow arch in the southern wall. The hall turns ninety degrees in L-plan; a door in the south-eastern wall leads to the former kitchen and a doorway in the north-western wall enters the dining room, which has a moulded ceiling cornice and a canted bay window beneath a shallow arch in the north-western wall, with a square single-light window in the southern alcove to the right of the chimney breast in the north-east wall. The former kitchen is roughly square in plan with the former scullery leading off to one side. A projecting chimney breast in the north-west wall is flanked by a door into a walk-in cupboard in the northern alcove, lit by a single square-light window in the north-east wall. A door in the south-west wall gives access to a further cupboard and is flanked by a modern open round arch doorway leading into the former scullery. An electrical servants' bell board is situated above the arch. A doorway in the south-western wall of the former scullery gives access to a small passageway leading to the rear door, the former coal store, and servant's water closet.

First floor: a dogleg stair with half-landing rises from the hall to the first-floor landing. The stair has widely spaced plain splat balusters and is lit by a four-light leaded glass mullion and transom window in the north-east wall. The first-floor landing gives access to the master bedroom and a secondary bedroom in the northern range. A round-arched open doorway leads from the landing into an axial first-floor corridor, which gives access to a single bedroom over the porch, a principal southern bedroom, the former servant's bedroom, a bathroom, and a water closet. All bedrooms are plain decoratively apart from the master bedroom, which has a plaster cornice. Each bedroom has a built-in cupboard closed by either a single or a pair of panelled doors. The master and secondary bedrooms in the northern range have cast-iron mantelpieces and grates with coloured tile panels and Adams-style decoration. The principal southern bedroom has a taller cast-iron mantelpiece with a pulvinated fire hood, coved mantelshelf, and a lower semi-circular shelf.

The majority of doors throughout the house are six-panelled with three narrow vertical panels above and below the lock rail. The remainder include some four-panelled cupboard doors and framed ledged and braced doors in the service area.