9, Hartopp Road

Detached house built in 1920, designed by architect Edwin F. Reynolds, located in Four Oaks. The house is constructed of brick with rough rendering and stone and plaster dressings, with a tiled roof.

The principal part is rectangular in plan under a hipped and gableted roof, with a shallow gabled entrance wing projecting to the north. The building is two storeys with an attic storey and extends across a three-window range. The entrance front is symmetrical in composition, while the garden front is almost so. All windows are flat-arched wooden casements unless otherwise noted.

The entrance front features a segmental-arched entrance with moulded stone, architrave and keystone, leading to an inner porch with a flat-arched entrance and panelled door. The corners of the entrance wing are brought forward as if for pilasters, but only on the front face. A storey band of two projecting courses of brick runs completely around the house. Immediately above the entrance is a canted dormer with lozenge decoration in rough and smooth render on the front face of the spandrel. The roof is brought around the front of the gable and over an oriel, appearing as if the gable breaks through a hip, with a two-light slightly projecting window in the gable beneath its own small roof. One window appears on each floor either side of the entrance wing. A brick dentil cornice details the eaves and gable.

The garden front also displays a three-window range, with a single-storey canted six-light bay window to the centre under a hipped roof. The two central lights retain original segmental heads to the glazing. A four-light window to the left has the two central lights as French windows, with the lower panels now glazed. A three-light window to the right sits slightly to the left of a symmetrical position. The central window projects very slightly over the roof of the bay window below. A storey band of two projecting courses is repeated here, with one hipped dormer visible, and similar hipped dormers on the east and west roof slopes. Two ridge stacks feature recessed arcading in the brick of their sides.

Single-storey outhouses stand on the east side, linked to a later garage designed in keeping with the house. A semi-enclosed standing for a second car, added in the late twentieth century, sits between the garage and the house.

Internally, the house retains its original plan with only minor alterations, aside from the removal of a wall between the kitchen and the former maids' room. Original architraves, doors and door furniture survive generally throughout, and exposed timber beams feature in all the principal rooms. The entrance hall contains an open well staircase rising through three floors, with square newels, shaped rail and square balusters set lozengewise, with bare oak treads. The sitting room has a simply-moulded Classical surround to the hearth with panelling above, flanked by fitted cupboards, panelled below and glazed above. The dining room features a similar fireplace with flanking cupboards, of which only the lower parts remain. The middle room on the first floor, originally a day nursery, contains a simply moulded Classical fireplace inset with Dutch tiles. A similar fireplace, whose decorative tiles may date with the house, appears in the eastern first-floor room, originally a night nursery. The fireplace in the middle attic room may also be original.