Furzedown House And Attached Conservatory, Now Theatre

Furzedown House is a house, dating from 1800-1802, altered and extended between 1862 and 1867 by James Thomas Knowles, and now used as a theatre. The main block is of gault brick with hipped slate roofs, and stone dressings. The upper storey is said to have been refaced by Knowles. The house has three storeys with two-storey wings to the south-east and north-west. The garden front has five bays, with the central three bays projecting slightly. The central entrance has a pair of glazed doors, with full-height windows to either side. Some windows retain small paned sashes, others are French windows. The upper two storeys have casements with top lights in original openings. Windows are set within flat gault brick arches. A moulded stone band runs between the second and third storeys, and a modillion cornice supports the oversailing eaves. The house has plain brick stacks with stone copings. A continuous verandah, reached by a flight of stone steps, runs along the south-east return. This section has an elliptical bow of three storeys, with two original ground-floor sashes (one now a French window), and a slender iron balcony to the left floor of the bow. A rendered band runs across the second bay, and a flight of five elliptical steps leads to the ground floor. The entrance front has a similar design, with an added porch from the 1860s featuring a stone balustraded parapet. Ground-floor sashes with glazing bars have been retained. A two-storey wing to the south-east has tall ground-floor windows beneath semicircular arches with radial glazing bars to the north-west.

Inside, there is an open-well staircase with a cast iron balustrade from the 1860s and a moulded mahogany rail. Most ground-floor doors are of six raised and fielded panels, set within moulded architraves and topped with an entablature on moulded brackets. It is said that an original grate remains, set in a carved chimney piece.

The conservatory is a single-storey canted bay and a two-storey two-bay block, constructed of limestone with a felt-clad barrel roof. The garden front has seven bays, with a set-back single bay to each end. It is symmetrical, with a central entrance reached by a flight of seven stone steps. There are semicircular-headed full-height openings with plain glazed French windows, set between pilasters with rosettes at the necking and pierced circular motifs in the spandrels. Above the entrance is a segmental pediment, the tympanum depicting a crowned figure paying homage to a rustic belle, with supporting figures. A stone parapet has pierced circles. A single bay to the right mirrors this design, while to the left, the central bay is similarly detailed, flanked by blank panels between pilasters.

The interior of the conservatory has a cast iron barrel vault with latticed ribs tapering to the crown, supported on pierced brackets into pendentives that rest on piers between the windows. The end walls have three bays reflecting the exterior detailing, with a frieze of linked pierced circles and pilasters paired between arched openings.