Coombe Cottage

Coome Cottage is a house, later used as offices, built in 1863 and extended between 1870 and 1874 by George Devey for E.C. Baring, a banker. The building is constructed of red brick with purple brick diaper work, with weatherboarded gables, a gabled Welsh slate roof, and brick stacks. It is designed in a picturesque neo-vernacular style with an asymmetrical plan and two-story elevations.

The main west elevation features a three-stage tower with a staircase projection to the right. It includes flat brick arches over casement windows, a moulded brick cornice, and a battlemented parapet. A half-glazed door is set within a moulded basket-arched architrave, accompanied by a porch with wood mullions to glazed panels, a coved pilaster cornice, and a parapet with a late 17th-century-style balustrade. To the left of the porch are four asymmetrically-planned gabled projections, which include a quatrefoil gable light, a square bay window with a double-gabled roof, and another square bay window. Three of the nearest gables have weatherboarding, all feature bargeboards and wood-mullioned and transomed windows, and the gable to the left has segmental brick tympanum arches over the openings.

A range in a neo-Tudor style extends to the right of the porch, with two-story bays facing west and east, and a five-bay south elevation with gabled front cross wings. These have label moulds over chamfered stone mullioned windows. The east elevation features four gables in the centre, with bargeboards, weatherboarded upper gables, and a weatherboarded jettied first floor to the right, incorporating chamfered wood quoin blocks. A splayed oriel window is present to the left, with similar treatment. Flat brick arches are found over wood-mullioned and transomed casements.

A short brick screen wall with a keystone to an elliptical-arched doorway connects the multi-gabled range to the four-stage tower on the right. This tower displays similar casement windows with moulded brick string courses and cornices, shaped floating cornices over the ground and first-floor windows, and similar detailing. The interior retains original doors, panelling, and a staircase from the original design. This house is considered one of Devey's earliest commissions and is notable for its early application of the neo-vernacular style, which would influence later work by Shaw and Webb.