Cope House

Cope House is a house, originally built as stables between 1854 and 1856. It was designed by James Thomas Knowles Snr for George Moore, a lace manufacturer and philanthropist, with construction carried out by Lucas Brothers and Stevens of Lambeth. The building was converted from stables into a house in 1937-8, under the direction of architects J. Fooks and T. Ritchie. The structure is brick faced with stucco, featuring Welsh slate hipped roofs to the wings, with the central roof concealed behind a balustraded parapet. Stuccoed chimney stacks have modillion cornices.

The original central block served as stables, with tack rooms and lofts in the north wing and a coach house in the south wing. It is two storeys high and built in an Italianate style, matching the main house but on a smaller scale. The ground floor is rusticated and vermiculated, incorporating a pulvinated frieze and a modillion cornice at first floor level. The first floor has rusticated quoins. The ground floor features slit windows, while the first floor has arched openings, some blank, with modelled keystones and aedicules with segmental pediments carried on moulded consoles. A frieze and bold overhanging cornice with bracket modillions are also present. Modern windows have been installed in the centre.

A ground floor screen wall, continuing from the north wing, is surmounted by a balustrade and originally concealed a former stable yard from the garden of the main house. It breaks forward with an arched opening featuring a horse's head modelled on the keystone. This screen wall was later opened out to form a colonnade in the 1980s. A low screen wall, also surmounted by a balustrade, runs along the west side of the carriage drive and now serves as the property boundary. The interior has been extensively altered and was not inspected.

The house and stables were largely unchanged until 1923 when the lease was assigned to Daniel William Fooks. His widow surrendered the lease in 1938, with the condition that the property was divided and she received the lease of the stables for residential conversion. The main house was leased by Sir Alfred Beit and internally remodelled by Lord Gerald Wellesley and Trenwith Wills in 1937-8. The property was divided along the line of the old screen wall south of the house. Subsequent alterations occurred in the 1980s.