High House

High House is a house, originally a pair of attached dwellings, dating back to approximately 1820 in Harwich. It is located on King’s Quay Street and includes attached railings and lantern holders. The building is constructed of Gault Flemish-bond brickwork, with a rendered ground floor, and features parallel gambrel Welsh slate roofs. It stands three storeys high with a basement and attics, and has three flat-roofed dormers containing 20th-century small-paned casement windows.

The front elevation has rusticated rendered work at ground level, a plain rendered parapet, and an entablature with slightly projecting edge pilaster strips. It presents a three-window range of recessed double-hung sashes with small panes, stone sills, and flat rubbed brick arches. Ground floor windows are set under segmental moulded arches supported by a simple cornice. The main entrance is approached via a flight of four stone steps to a segmental-headed fanlight with margin glazing and double-leaf, contemporary varnished pine doors featuring six raised-and-fielded panels. Wrought-iron spear-headed railings enclose the basement area, supported by rendered piers with shell-headed niches flanking the entrance. These piers incorporate large wrought-iron lantern holders with diagonal console-shaped supports, along with backstays, strengthening panels, and cast-iron anthemion crestings. The southwest flank and rear of the building are constructed of red-brown brick with small-pane double-hung sash windows. A second dwelling entrance is located on the southwest flank, accessing a passageway and featuring a segmental Roman cement arched recess, five stone steps, and double doors with two raised-and-fielded panels. This entrance has sidelights between console-like doorposts and a large rectangular, three-light fanlight with margin glazing, accompanied by an iron shoescraper.

The interior is largely complete and unaltered, featuring two similar, simple cantilevered open-well staircases with semicircular landings, column newels, and stick balusters. One ground-floor room retains a moulded cornice and an early 19th-century fireplace. A principal first-floor room has an elaborate plaster cornice, contemporary skirtings, and doors with reeded architraves, paterae at corners, and moulded over-cornices. Another first-floor room features a contemporary marble fireplace with roundels. The second-floor fireplace has a cast-iron Art Nouveau surround and a projecting moulded timber overmantel. Rear basement areas are lit by small-pane double-hung sash windows, and there are two internal borrowed lights, one into the stairwell. A small slit window on the first floor of the rear elevation provides a view of the church clock. Brick barrel-vaulted coal cellars are located beneath the front terrace. The houses were likely built as two unequal dwellings for members of the same family.