The Elms

The Elms comprises two houses, originally built in 1903 as a combined house and surgery by Edward Swinfen Harris for Dr. John Harvey, who served as medical officer for the London and North-Western Railway company and Works Surgeon. The building is constructed of red brick in English bond with Bath stone dressings, topped with plain-tile hipped and gabled roofs and brick ridge details.

The house's complex plan is based on a double-depth layout. The front elevation presents an asymmetrical and picturesque design, contrasting with the more regular form seen from the garden. A prominent semi-hexagonal staircase projection sits to the left of the centre, featuring a single-light ground floor window with stone sills, jambs, and lintel, and is partially covered by a single-storey projection. The first floor of the stair turret has two-light leaded brick mullion windows with stone sills and lintels. The windows’ sills extend as a band, and the moulded stone corbelling above them creates a circular moulded eaves detail over the domed roof of the stair turret, which is covered in oak shingles. The original principal entrance, now to No. 1, has a plank door with decorative wrought-iron hinges, a stepped door surround, a three-light overlight, and a moulded segmental stone head. A secondary surgery entrance, now to No. 2, is positioned to the right of the stair projection with a stepped brick head and stone lintel. The right side of the house features paired roof gables framing brick stacks with corbelled caps. A former billiard room, inset from the street, has a four-light mullion window, a gable with a checker pattern of brick and stone, and a garden front that shares the same plane as the rest of the garden front. This front has a lattice pattern of stone to the gable, with a Caernarvon-arched stone doorway and part-glazed door projecting over the middle lights of the four-light stone mullion windows. An open doorway leads to an internal porch on the garden front, featuring an elliptical-arched brick head and 2, 3, and 5-light stone mullion windows.

The interior of No. 1 retains much of the original principal living rooms. A painted stone two-bay arcade, with moulded segmental arches dying into the walls and supported by a central circular pier on a moulded octagonal base, stands between the hall and staircase. The stair features stop-chamfered square newel posts and turned balusters. The drawing room has moulded and stop-chamfered ceiling beams borne on painted stone corbels and an open fireplace. The former billiard room is now subdivided but retains an original stone corner fireplace with a moulded, ogee-arched stone surround and a tie-beamed roof.