Town Thorns

Town Thorns is a country house, now used as offices, built in 1873 by Alfred Waterhouse for Washington Jackson. The house is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and has a roof concealed behind a parapet. Brick axial stacks are topped with cornices. The original plan was square, double-depth, however the tower and service wing on the east side have been demolished. The style is Italianate.

The north front has three storeys and a 2:1:2 bay composition, featuring rusticated quoins, a modillion cornice, and a parapet with ball finials. The central bay is pilastered and topped with a pediment. A large stone port-cochere with paired Tuscan columns is located on the ground floor, flanked by canted bay windows. String courses divide the floors; the first-floor windows have moulded stone architraves with moulded cornices, while the second-floor windows have shouldered round arches. All windows are sash windows with margin panes. The south elevation mirrors the north, with a projecting bowed bay at the centre featuring Tuscan columns to the stone ground floor and pediments to the flanking ground-floor windows. The west elevation is arranged as a 1:2:1 bay composition, with projecting bays on the left and right containing two-storey canted bays. The east elevation has a three-storey bay on the left, and is plain on the right where a service wing once stood.

The interior retains many original features, including a panelled entrance hall, an open-well open-string staircase with an elaborate newel on a three-tier curtail and a lantern above. The house also boasts ornate plaster cornices and original joinery, including panelled doors and overdoors.

The Town Thorns estate was initially surveyed by Waterhouse for Edward Cropper, but the commission for the 1873 house was given to Washington Jackson.