The Red House

THE RED HOUSE

House, now offices. Mid-18th century with 19th-century alterations. Red brick laid to Flemish bond with stucco dressings and wood cornice. Hipped old tile roofs with lead rolls above moulded modillion cornice and eaves gutter. Four multi-flue external brick chimneys with oversailing courses and earthenware pots. Central stair double-depth plan.

The exterior comprises three storeys with linked single-storey pavilion outbuildings with hipped Welsh slated roofs to left and right. The front elevation has chamfered corners with single windows left and right. The centre has a single sash window left and right on the first and second floors (12-pane and 6-pane respectively), recessed in brick reveals under rubbed flat arches with stucco sills. The centre features a canted bay with brick base, three sashes in an 8:12:8-pane configuration with moulded cornice and hipped lead roll roof to the first floor, and a Diocletian lunette with an arched 6-pane sash in the centre and blank stucco side panels on the second floor. The ground floor has single windows on the chamfered corners left and right, and single windows left and right on the main façade, all recessed 12-pane sashes. Those on the main façade are recessed in an arched recess with continuous stucco plat band and head level with triple keyblocks. A brick screen wall links to the pavilions left and right with stone coping at first-floor sill height on the main building, and the plat band running across and around the pavilions, each with one recessed 12-pane sash on the front elevation. The centre of the main building has a 6-panel door (upper four with leaded glazing in an Arts and Crafts pattern) recessed in an architrave surround beneath a central porch with Tuscan columns and responds, entablature with projecting cornice, supporting a bay window above.

The right-hand pavilion has an irregular plan and incorporates substantial beams from a 17th-century timber-framed floor structure internally. The right-hand flank elevation has two 4-light wood mullion and transom casement windows with multi-pane cast-iron upper lights. The left-hand pavilion has a Palladian window towards the rear of the flank elevation, with Tuscan pilasters, frieze and cornice, and sash windows with mid-18th-century quadrant profile glazing bars.

The rear elevation has irregular fenestration with flush ground floor and recessed sashes beneath segmental arches to the first and second floors on the left. There are canted bays on the ground and first floors (the latter raised above the ground floor original), with a single recessed sash on the second floor to the right. The centre has a 19th-century half-glazed door with four panes and margin glazing beneath a 20th-century flat canopy, and 12- and 6-pane sashes recessed beneath segmental arches to the first and second-floor landings. A single-storey brick lean-to with tiled roof stands to the left, and a single-storey weather-boarded outbuilding with Welsh slated roof to the right.

The interior features a narrow central entrance hall with an arch to the rear staircase hall now blocked by a late-20th-century fire door. The ground-floor right-hand front room has a heavy moulded architrave to the door with a carved leaf band and bead roll; similar window architraves; dado with moulded rail above panels, recessed, some with carved leaf surrounds, others plain quadrants; wood dentil frieze and cyma recta cornice; and a fireplace with an early-19th-century cast-iron grate with trellis pattern surround, white marble surround, and wood outer surround with egg-and-dart architrave, dentil frieze and egg-and-dart cornice. Early-19th-century 8-panel doors lead to the rear room. The front room left of the entrance hall has plain 19th-century joinery, with a white marble fireplace with a mid-19th-century cast-iron grate with modelled rococo scrolls around the arch; double doors lead to a rear room which also has a 19th-century gothic-pattern cast-iron grate. The rear left-hand (west) room has the Palladian window noted externally, which has a vaulted ceiling above the arched central window with a modelled cornice surround. The rear hall has an open well plan with a late-18th-century or early-19th-century staircase which rises to the second floor. The newels have narrow panels and Chinese Chippendale-style balustrades, open string, nosed treads with profiled brackets, curtail tread at foot, moulded handrail with caps to newels at foot of flights, ramped up at intermediate landings.

The first-floor landing has a double cyma profile wood cornice and an opening with panelled Tuscan pilasters and semicircular arch with keyblock. Former principal bedrooms opened left and right from a vestibule beyond the arch, now infilled with a fire door. The front left-hand (west) room has an Art Nouveau cast-iron grate in a 19th-century white marble surround; double doors lead to a rear room which has an early-19th-century cast-iron hob grate. A central dressing room, over the entrance hall, has a cyma cornice and a 6-panel door leading to the right-hand (east) bedroom, which has a 19th-century rococo-style cast-iron grate.

Four attics on the second floor feature an exposed heavy-section timber binder along the central spine wall; rear attic sash windows have heavy quadrant glazing bars. A double roof with peg-jointed king post trusses with carpenters' assembly marks; purlins supported on struts and butt-jointed common rafters without ridge board; coach nailing of valley rafters. The cellar has a concrete floor, plaster lining and brick columns to support the ground floor.

The house was occupied by the owner of Young's Brewery, whose premises lay to the rear and along South Street, from 1754 until 1897 when it and the brewery land were acquired by Christ's Hospital prior to their rebuilding after the turn of the century.