Willow Cottage (Number 8)

Willow Cottage (Number 8) is a pair of attached estate houses dating to 1870, designed by John Birch for Edgar Francis Egerton Curtis of Caynham Court. The houses are built of stone rubble with freestone dressings, with some brickwork at the rear. They have steeply pitched gabled tile roofs with alternating blue and red crested ridge tiles. A large central brick stack features blue brick shafts and bands, with a stone tablet inscribed “C 1870.”

The houses share a similar plan, with a living room at the front, an entrance lobby and stairs to one side, and a smaller service room at the back. Rear outshuts are likely later 19th-century additions.

The symmetrical two-bay front features two large gables. The windows have chamfered dressed stone frames; the ground floor windows are larger with three-light mullioned casements with transoms and glazing bars. The first floor windows are smaller two-light casements without transoms, though the window to the left has been replaced with a 20th-century casement. There are square ventilation holes above the ground-floor windows, and small slits in the gables. The side gables have similar windows, with a three-light first-floor window and a single-light ground-floor window. Porches are positioned at the front angles, each with shaped bargeboards to the gabled canopies and chamfered stone depressed 2-centred arched doorways leading to plank doors. A smaller gable is present at the rear, with a brick outshut below.

The interior of Number 8 is plain, although some of the joinery has been replaced.

A similar, but not identical, pair of houses by John Birch won a prize from the Society of Arts and was illustrated in The Builder in 1864. An illustration of an almost identical pair appears in a book written by John Birch on estate buildings.