Park House

Park House is a large house built in 1872 by John Usher of Bedford for James Howard, a Member of Parliament and iron-master. It was designed in a dark red brick Gothic style with stone dressings and a banded plain and fishscale tile roof.

The house is two storeys with attics. It has many narrow sash windows, generally grouped in twos and threes, most of which retain their wooden blind canopies. The north entrance elevation has a central, slightly projecting gabled section with a porte-cochere featuring a vaulted ceiling, arched openings, corner buttresses, a cornice, and a parapet with a frieze of recessed diamond patterns. The recessed doorway is flanked by side panels of blue and white glazed tiles by M.J. Cooper of Maidenhead. The central gable is flanked by two gabled dormers. Horizontal stone bands are present at window head level. The west front has projecting gabled wings to the left and right. The left wing contains a two-storey rectangular bay, while the right wing features a two-storey canted bay and a small attic hipped roof bay. A central gabled dormer is also present on the west front. The south garden front displays a full-height, large central canted bay with a polygonal roof and three gabled dormers. To the left of the bay is an octagonal turret supported by a first-floor stone canopy on brick columns; this canopy rests on a balcony above a projecting ground floor bay. The east elevation is interesting and asymmetrical, showcasing a central circular staircase turret with three stepped leaded casements. To the left of this turret is a projecting gable with a small bell turret. To the east extends a range of one-storey ancillary service buildings, including an octagonal game larder.

The interior remains largely original. A staircase of oak, with wrought iron flower motifs between the balusters, rises through the house. The hall is lit by a lantern supported on an arcade of Bath stone with red Mansfield stone columns (now painted white). One wall of the arcade is blind. Some ground floor rooms retain oak floors inlaid in geometric patterns. Most of the original carved oak doors are still in place, as are some moulded skirting boards. Many windows have interior surrounds of slender columns supporting Tudor roses.