Swiss Cottage at Shrubland Hall

This is an ornamental Swiss Cottage, built around 1840 to the designs of Alexander Roos as part of the pleasure grounds of Shrubland Hall.

The building's construction combines a timber frame with a brick and flint base at ground floor level. The pitched roof is covered in pantiles.

The internal layout was not available for inspection, but the building stands two storeys high, with external galleries providing access to both floors.

The south-facing principal elevation is three bays wide and features a first-floor gallery. Windows flank a canted wooden bay on both floors. The external wall is deeply recessed behind a two-tier verandah, which is topped by a steeply pitched roof supported by three projecting brackets and finished with scallop-notched timber bargeboards. The gallery's underside has a notched lower edge, ornamented with a continuous chevron or zigzag moulding and a scalloped edge. The corner posts of the verandah are elaborately carved with a rectilinear barley twist design. The balustrade is composed of bottle-shaped splat balusters and a plain handrail. The base of the elevation includes a rendered plinth with a scalloped detail. The walls are covered in white-painted render with red highlights framing the principal openings and edges. Above the central bay, an inscription in German blackletter font reads "Seid mir wil[l]kom[m]en meine theuren freunde / zur guten stunde fuhre euch das schicksal" (Welcome my dear friends / fate will guide you at the right hour).

The west elevation is set back from deeply projecting eaves supported on tarred pine posts. It features a brick and flint base at ground floor and tarred weatherboarded walling above, with four ground floor windows and two first-floor windows, all in wooden frames.

The north elevation has a brick and flint base, a single window and door opening on the left at ground floor, and a brick coal-store on the right. A timber gallery, using bottle-shaped splat balusters, runs across the first floor, where there is a central door with vertical cover fillets and windows on each side. Above the wall plate, the walls are covered in render with painted red borders. Two projecting tiled pentice boards protect the wall from the weather.

The east elevation has a brick and flint base and, between the ground and first floors, a door with vertical cover fillets. A section of the timber gallery that would have led to this door is missing, although a surviving external flight of steps, located at the north-east corner, suggests its former presence. These steps are distinguished by an unusual set of diamond pattern splat balusters.

Access to the interior was not possible for inspection.