Lower Eaton House

Lower Eaton House is a house dating from the mid-18th century, with alterations and additions made in the mid- to late-19th century. It is constructed of brick with Bath stone stacks and includes a cellar and two storeys. The house has a rectangular plan aligned north-west/south-east, with a smaller block attached to the south-east.

The south-west elevation features a 2:3:2 window arrangement. The windows are 19th-century plate glass sashes with dressed, shouldered heads and chamfered jambs. Ground floor windows have shafts with fillets and dog-tooth decoration to their heads. The gabled central section has brick relieving arches with 2-centred heads, topped by a stone Lombard frieze with trefoil-headed corbels. The wings have cornices with dog-tooth decoration. A 19th-century porch has a semi-circular arch supported by shafts with foliated capitals. The sides of the arch are finished with joggled brickwork, and it has a two-leaved door with six panels to each leaf, surmounted by a spherical lamp on a wrought iron bracket. A stone foliated frieze runs along the top of the porch. Below the arch are shouldered windows with 2-centred super-arches to each return. A mid-20th century doorway has been inserted into a lowered window opening to the right, with a six-panelled door and a mid-20th century canopy above. Brick quadrant walls are attached to either side of the porch, the one to the right featuring a 20th-century steel 2-light casement window. A two-storey 19th-century wing extends to the rear right, behind the quadrant wall.

The rear elevation has a 3 + 3:3:3 window layout. The upper floor of the left-hand section has trefoil-headed openings; below these is a canted ground floor bay window. The main central section features a loggia with three trefoil-headed arches supported on columns. The spandrels of the arches are open trefoils, and above them are four heads within roundels. Within the loggia are four turquoise plaques depicting putti in various scenes, including pyramids, steam engine locomotives with punkahs, and a jungle with a tiger. The south elevation has trefoil-headed first floor windows and a late 19th-century wooden conservatory with pedestals supporting five Corinthian pilasters.

The interior of the house includes an 18th-century two-flight newel staircase with turned balusters, incorporating square lower sections. The ceiling above the staircase has egg and dart mouldings to the cornice, while the flanking walls have two eared surrounds with egg and dart decoration, presumably to previously accommodate paintings. There are six-panelled 18th-century doors, an Art Nouveau brass lamp on the landing, and early central heating panels beneath some windows and in the staircase lobby, finished with marble tops and cast iron lattice grills with twisted columns. The principal central room has an 18th-century cornice, a mid- to late-19th century plaster fireplace, 19th-century polychromatic tiled floors, a glazed pine front door, and late 19th-century curtain rods with brass concealed runners. The library north of the central room has 18th-century panelling with later insertions and a large late 19th-century curtain rod with carved wooden garlands at each end.