Chester House

Chester House is a villa-town house built between 1925 and 1926 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott for his own use. It features grey brick with minimal stone detailing, ferro-concrete floors, and a pantile roof. The design is a restrained, well-proportioned stripped Renaissance style. The house is set back behind a shallow garden area and is low at two storeys, although it appears as one and a half storeys in the center, with the wings having a reverse proportion.

The building is seven bays wide, including broad wings with hipped roofs that slightly project from the ground floor. The first floor between the wings is set back to create a terrace. A central doorway is dressed in ashlar stone and topped with a shallow pediment. The windows are slightly recessed box-framed glazing bar sashes under flat gauged arches, with tripartite windows on the ground floor of the wings and a more developed arrangement of three separate sashes on the first floor leading to "pergola" balconies. The returns of the wings to the terrace feature two-light windows, and there are two tripartite windows in the recessed center. The house has a stone plinth, a ground floor sill band, and a fluted brick and stone coped terrace parapet. A moulded stone cornice crowns the building, with eaves resting on blocking, and elegantly proportioned chimney stacks topped with shallow stone cappings.

Inside, the house features a very restrained use of simplified classical details and mouldings. The ground floor is functionally planned, incorporating a garage in the northeast corner, a kitchen, a former servants' sitting room, and a former playroom and nursery. The only reception rooms are the off-centre T-plan hall to the right of the entrance lobby and the dining room to the left of the kitchen. The staircase rises along the cross axis of the hall to serve the main reception rooms and principal bedrooms, which open onto the terrace. The interior has seen some redecoration but remains largely unaltered.