Stone House

This is a villa dating to approximately 1771-1773, designed by George Gibson the Younger for his own residence. The core of the building is brick, faced with Kentish ragstone and featuring stone banding, window surrounds and quoins. It has a hipped slate roof, with a lowered parapet and a rear bay extended around 1930. The building is arranged over two storeys with a set-back attic, incorporating hidden chimneys. It stands on a square plan at an angle to the road, with each side five bays wide. The first floor features a tetrastyle loggia over a built-out ground floor, with bow windows on the returns. The design incorporates a ground floor entrance hall and first-floor piano nobile. Stout buttresses curve out at the base of the angles on the ground floor. All windows are sash windows with glazing bars; the first floor windows are round-headed, while those on the ground floor are flat-headed. The front facing the road has blank space above with three round-headed windows within the bow; four ground-floor windows exist. The south-east entrance front has five windows, with the central one being higher. The four-panel door is set back within a moulded wood architrave with a cornice. The north-west front features a loggia with columns having capitals formed of leaves and florets, a design detail also used by Gibson in his St Mary’s Church in Lewisham. Wrought-iron railings are present to the loggia, and wrought-iron screens are fitted to the heads of the first-floor round-arched windows.

The interior is of particular interest. The ground-floor entrance leads to a circular vestibule, flanked by two small square rooms, one of which leads to the original kitchen and pantry. Some original shelving and latticed partitions remain, although some doors have been moved. The vestibule also leads to a tight, top-lit octagonal staircase with a vaulted ceiling and skylight. The sides of the stairwell feature raised panels and roundels containing neo-classical busts of the Hanoverian kings in low relief. A principal staircase rises to the first-floor piano nobile, while a secondary staircase continues to the attic bedrooms; both have wrought-iron balusters and a mahogany handrail. Patterned stone sets the floors on the ground and first floors. The first floor contains the principal drawing rooms, including a circular space separated by open Ionic columns from two square rooms with vaulted ceilings. The ceiling is domed and fluted, featuring some mid-19th century decoration, but also Adamesque and arabesque decoration to the late 18th century frieze. A handsome marble fireplace with cast-iron firebacks is included alongside other good late 18th-century fireplaces, panelled double doors, and dadoes. The villa is described as “a very personal interpretation of the villa form that had been revived by Chambers and Taylor in the 1750s”.