Turquoise

31/0/10424 THE BISHOP'S AVENUE 19-MAR-02 42 Turquoise

II

'Turquoise', 42 The Bishop's Avenue

Suburban house in the Queen Anne Revival style. 1913 by Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer. Brown brick with red brick dressings, white-painted woodwork, tiled roof. PLAN: Rectangular five-bay house of two storeys with attic, flanked by lower wings to either side; garage linked with courtyard to north side. EXTERIOR: entrance front with projecting canted entrance bay. Rusticated brick quoins to sides. Double doors set below a segmental hood carried on moulded consoles; oval windows to either side. Over door is a tall 28-pane mullion and transom window lighting the stair-well inside. Two windows to each floor on either side set within cut brick surrounds with keystones: those to ground floor with mullion and transom, 4-panes to upper, 6-panes to lower register. First floor windows are eight-pane casements. Eaves cornice; stone plat band to central bay. Hopper-heads with date of 1913 amid decorative scrollwork. Tall chimneystacks to either side and to centre; dormer windows either side of raised centre, which has a Venetian window surrounded by tile-hanging, behind railings to front of bay at parapet height. Garden bay with central door (with French Windows) set below shallow segmental hood with keystone. 9/9-pane windows with shutters to ground floor; similar 6/6-pane ones to first floor. Four dormer windows to attic. Kitchen wing to north, former (?) billiard room wing to south, each with gabled ends containing arched windows to entrance front, oval windows to garden front. Garage to north with weatherboarded gable, set behind tile-decorated gate piers. INTERIOR: altered, but retaining certain key features. Panelled oak entrance lobby; oak staircase runs over entrance, around sides of canted central bay: square newel posts, turned column and vase balusters, heavy hand rail. Panelled octagonal piers support floor above. Groin-vaulted passage runs through ground floor from entrance to garden door. Dining room is panelled with Jacobean-revival fielded panelling, incorporating a similarly styles fireplace with overmantel. Other principal rooms have been altered. Doors are mainly three-panel wooden doors. Top of stairs to first floor sports a pair of painted Doric columns carrying the attic above. Service quarters to north retain many features, including Arts and Crafts-inspired back stair with octagonal over-light. HISTORY: designed by the celebrated Edwardian practice of Smith and Brewer, this house embodies the leading tendencies in traditional house design at the top end of the market on the eve of the First World War.