Steine House And Attached Walls Piers And Railings

This is a house, built in 1804 and extensively remodelled in 1864 and 1927. It was originally built by William Porden for the Prince of Wales’s wife, Mrs Fitzherbert. The exterior is painted brick in English bond with stucco dressings, and features a 20th-century slate mansard roof.

The front of the house has three windows and a light well in the center. The raised ground floor projects, forming an enclosed porch with quarter-round pilasters and ball finials. The ground floor has floor-to-ceiling tripartite windows with moulded architraves and sills supported by corbels. First-floor windows open onto a balcony enclosed by cast-iron railings and piers. The central window range of the first floor projects one brick's thickness. An entablature with a projecting cornice runs across the front, and dormers with flat-arched windows are on the top storey, dating to 1927. Corner quoins are present on each floor.

The only surviving feature of the original interior design is a cast-iron staircase. The building has been heavily rebuilt, but a small, elliptical-plan chapel to the right rear of the first floor may date to the early 19th century. A plaque near the main entrance commemorates Mrs Fitzherbert’s residence in the house from 1804 until her death in 1837.

Originally, the house featured an Egyptian-style colonnade that was blown down in 1805 and subsequently rebuilt in an Italianate style with a verandah. The building was purchased by the YMCA in 1884 and refaced and extended in 1927, adding an upper storey for bedrooms and is now used as an emergency shelter.