Upton House, entrance gates and gate piers, garden structures and garage

Upton House is a detached neo-Georgian house with Arts and Crafts influences, designed by A. Winter Rose and built in 1912. The house faces east onto the road and has a rectangular double-pile plan with a loggia extending from the south gable end.

Materials and Construction

The house is built of gault brick with occasional red brick, laid in a variation of English garden wall bond. Dressings are in red tile, yellow and red brick. The roof is covered in plain tiles of variegated colours, mostly brown and red, with bonnet tiles.

Exterior

The house has two storeys and an attic under a deep hipped roof with sprocketed eaves. Four tall red brick chimney stacks rise somewhat erratically from the roof, each with oversailing brick courses and varying degrees of decoration. The north gable end has a ridge stack; the north end of the east pitch has a panelled stack rising from a base; the west side has a transverse ridge stack; and the south gable end has a panelled stack on a stepped base with chevron decoration of tiles laid on edge, which rises straight through the dormer window.

The east façade has eight regularly spaced but irregularly treated bays. The front door, positioned in the third bay, has a large single panel and is entirely coated in sheet lead with a cast door knocker in the form of a clenched hand holding a circular wreath. It has a delicate fanlight with a batwing pattern and an oversized elaborate classical doorcase with panelled soffit and jambs, fluted square pilasters with Corinthian capitals supporting a segmental pediment, and a frieze embellished with a festoon bearing the date 1912 underneath a female head flanked by rams' heads. The two bays either side of the front door have oval windows with a delicate batwing pattern, whilst other windows are six-over-six pane sashes set flush in the wall, some beneath gauged red brick arches.

The three bays to the right are lit by sashes, though the window in the sixth bay may have been replaced with a door when the house was converted in the 1980s (this section was not accessible for inspection). The first floor has two sashes, followed by a two-light casement in a lugged architrave decorated with margents (a vertical line of husks), squeezed between the doorcase and eaves. The fourth and fifth bays have two sashes positioned lower than those in the first and second bays, whilst the former height of the windows is resumed in the last three bays, the middle one being blind. A lead downpipe between the fifth and sixth bays has a rainwater head embossed with the architect's initials 'A. W. R' and 'aedificavit' (meaning 'built').

The attic is lit by four irregularly spaced hipped dormers of different sizes with swept valleys and casements with leaded lights, all positioned wholly in the roof space. Rising behind is a belvedere-attic with splayed edges, constructed of red brick with diaper work, surmounted by two ball finials of tiles laid on edge, and lit by a row of four small windows with leaded lights. The coped loggia wall extends from the south-east corner of the house with a wide semicircular archway having an archivolt of three rows of chamfered red brick and an Arts and Crafts square-panelled door, flanked by low raked buttresses.

The seven-bay west garden front has a symmetrical composition dominated by a central three-storey canted bay that rises through the eaves. It has a band of zigzag decoration of tiles laid on edge around the top and is surmounted by two ball finials made of the same material. In front of the bay is a recessed multi-pane glazed door and delicate fanlight in a classical doorcase with fluted half-columns, a frieze embellished with a festoon and egg-and-dart, and a shaped canopy. The ground-floor windows, including those on the canted bay, are tall nine-over-nine pane sashes with gauged brick arches; first-floor windows are six-over-six pane sashes, except for the second bay from the left which is blind on both floors. The attic floor of the canted bay has an oval window flanked by two-light casements with leaded lights. There are four regularly spaced hipped dormers similar to those on the east pitch but of uniform size.

The south gable end has a central pair of double-leaf, multi-pane glazed doors beneath a canopy supported by shaped brackets, with an oval window above. To the right, the original pair of double-doors beneath the loggia has been replaced. The loggia has a pitched pantile-clad roof and a wooden cornice supported by four pairs of replica Tuscan columns, the space between now glazed. (The original columns are in storage.) The north gable end was not accessible for inspection.

Interior

The Georgian character continues in the finely detailed interior, which has remained little altered despite conversion. The entrance hall and staircase hall have a unified architectural scheme incorporating a deep moulded cornice, square pilasters with moulded capitals which support raised and moulded sections on the ceiling, and a bolection-moulded fireplace (converted to a central heating convector) with framed panel above.

The elaborate open well staircase has square corner columns and slender fluted columns along the first-floor landing. Twisted balusters and thick twisted newel posts rise from an open string and support a heavy square handrail. It is lit by a circular light within a large oval moulded frame, located in the belvedere-attic.

The joinery, fixtures and fittings are of high quality and craftsmanship throughout, more elaborate in the reception rooms and principal bedrooms. These have two-panelled doors with brass lock cases and drop handles, bordered parquet floors (laid over original boards) or floors laid in narrow boards, deep moulded cornices, dado rails and picture rails. The three reception rooms on the garden front are divided by sliding doors set within a panelled frame with large raised and fielded panels, the upper one longer than the lower one, with a fluted surround with square corner roundels and a cornice.

The drawing room and dining room have reeded and roundel fireplaces with a pulvinated frieze, elaborately moulded mantelshelf, and small grates surrounded by grey marble. The boudoir has a corner stone bolection-moulded fireplace with a fluted entablature and side hermes, tiled cheeks and back, and a framed panel above.

The first-floor and attic bedrooms retain numerous fireplaces, notably two with a pulvinated frieze, jambs with roll mouldings, grey marble slips, and salvaged hob grates and delft tiles. Another bedroom fireplace has tiles depicting various birds and a delicate plaster surround with a scroll pattern which is repeated above to form an overmantel. The two bathrooms retain their original white wall tiles with black tiled border, and these rooms, together with the secondary bedrooms, have plank and batten doors with applied fillets, H-hinges and upright handles. The north part of the house, containing the former smoking room and service rooms, was not inspected but is thought to retain some fixtures and fittings.

Gates and Gate Piers

There are two pairs of square brick gate piers in front of the house. The principal pair, aligned with the front door, have stone plinths and moulded caps surmounted by ball finials on high circular bases. Fixed to the piers is the original metal lettering 'VPTON HOVSE' and the number 'II'. The decorative wrought iron gate has plain section top and bottom rails, the latter with a dograil of arrowheads, and an overthrow incorporating an oval bearing the initials 'SMB' (of the original owner) embellished with scrolls. The second pair of piers, to the right, are shorter and have plain stone caps. The pair of gates has vertical rails and cross rails, surmounted by small finials and a plaque inscribed 'TRADESMEN'.

Garden Structures

In the corner between the loggia and house is a square sunken garden with a square pond. It has four steps on the east side, flanked by square capped piers constructed of ashlar, rubble stone, red brick and red clay tiles. These are mirrored by a pair on the west side which flank a wall fountain spouting water from a pair of cherubs' heads. Two sides of the pond retain the original square paving, and the surrounding paving is the original York stone, two sides of which have recently been relaid.

At the west end of the herbaceous walk is a circular feature laid in zigzag brick, at the centre of which is an octagonal base and octagonal sundial plinth with a moulded cornice (the sundial has been removed). Curving around the western side is a segmental bench constructed of roughly dressed ashlar and red clay tiles laid in a decorative pattern.

The pergola along the western end of the garden consists of eight pairs of square piers constructed of ashlar, red brick and red clay tiles, with capitals of tiles laid on edge which corbel out on each face and are capped in terracotta. The path underneath, laid in crazy paving and partly edged with rill-shaped brick plant boxes, extends westwards to the end of the garden, and terminates on the east side in three shallow semi-circular steps, aligned with the canted entrance bay of the house.

To the south-west of the pergola is an original weather-boarded shed with a tile-clad roof, wide plank door, and internal wooden lining.

Along the southern half of the west garden front of the house is a narrow terrace of crazy paving (it is not known if this extends to the northern half), terminating in a pair of gate piers constructed of ashlar and red clay tiles, one of which is surmounted by a stone thistle finial, added recently.

Garage

There is a flat-roofed rectangular building to the north-west of the house, shown on the 1927 Ordnance Survey map, which is probably the original garage, since extended on the west end. It was not possible to inspect the building but it appears to be constructed of gault brick with tiled saddleback coping.