Sira Main Building (Originally Called Sitka)

Large detached house built in 1883, designed by architect Ernest Newton (1856-1922) for Emil Teichman. The house was originally called Sitka, named after the capital of Alaska, reflecting the original owner's fortune in the Alaskan fur trade.

The building is constructed in Old English style with ground floor red brick and upper floors tile-hung beneath a plain tile roof. It comprises two storeys and attics with seven windows. Windows throughout are timber mullioned or mullioned and transomed casements.

The north east entrance front features three projecting gables to the left, with the central gable containing a second floor four-light window supported on a wooden jetty and brackets. The first floor has three windows including a central four-oriel. The ground floor displays a large porch with round-headed arches and pilasters, now enclosed though formerly open. The round-headed doorcase is dated 1883 and bears the incised inscription "Welcome by day, welcome by night the smile of a friend is a ray of light". The other gables contain four-light casements to ground and first floors with three-light windows to the attics. A setback service wing of two bays projects to the right, with two gabled dormers and three-light windows.

The rear or south west elevation features two central gables with elaborate fretted bargeboards, two attic windows, three first floor windows, an oval window and a canted bay window to the ground floor. This elevation is flanked by two most unusual two-storey curved bays with conical roofs and wooden balconies. To the left is a projecting gable with fretted bargeboards and a five-light mullioned and transomed casement to the first floor Billiard Room. A twentieth-century brick extension to the ground floor is not of special interest. The south east elevation has three gabled dormers with mullioned or mullioned and transomed windows and a later twentieth-century lean-to extension to the ground floor. The north west elevation follows a similar style but includes a twentieth-century conservatory to the ground floor.

The staircase hall contains a most unusual full-height oak staircase with arched galleries, a pierced screen and a first floor "pulpit" from which the owner led household prayers. A top-lit lantern with coved cornice illuminates the space. The ground floor front room has a cornice with ovolo moulding and brackets. The rear former Drawing Room features good quality Adam-style plastered ceilings with fasces, swags, urns and four oval medallions with nymphs, with moulded plastered cornices of plumed design. The former Dining Room contains an oak fireplace with fluted pilasters, a reeded frieze and coloured tiles, two built-in cupboards, and a bracket and ovolo-moulded cornice. Another elaborate oak fireplace in the former Dining Room features brackets, round-headed arches and carved floral panels with a ceramic surround incorporating reeding and a sun pattern, dado panelling and bracket and ovolo-moulded cornice. The former first floor Billiard Room may retain a gallery with round-headed arches. An original elaborate cast iron radiator screen survives on the first floor of the main staircase. The service staircase has diagonally placed stick balusters and turned column newels.

After Emil Teichmann's death, the main house was used as offices for the Southern Railway during the Second World War and in 1947 became the headquarters of SIRA. A sketch drawing of the house is held in the RIBA drawings collection.

This is an early and interesting house by the eminent architect Ernest Newton, notable for its unusual full-height curved bays to the garden front and its possibly unique staircase design.