No 20 (The Rectory) Including Garden Walls

No 20 (The Rectory), Church Road, Caversham

A detached villa built in 1843 with late 19th-century and early 20th-century alterations and additions. The building is constructed of red brick with slate roofs and includes an iron verandah.

The main house is rectangular in plan, three bays wide with a hipped slate roof. A single-storey flat-roofed extension to the east and a verandah on the south elevation, both probably dating to the late 19th or early 20th century, extend the original structure. An adjoining two-storey building to the west, originally a self-contained flat, is linked to the main house.

The north elevation facing Church Road is the principal frontage, presenting two storeys across three bays. A central half-glazed front door is decorated with a fanlight and is framed by brick piers with moulded stone capitals and a cornice embellished with scroll work. A stone plat band separates the ground and first floors. Shallow, wide brick pilasters articulate the building line. The windows are original hornless sashes with flat brick arches; blind windows maintain the symmetry of the façade. Brick chimney stacks with stone caps rise from the hipped roof. To the west, a linking two-storey bay and further two-storey bay under a hipped roof form the adjoining flat at first-floor level. The south elevation mirrors the north with three bays but features French doors at ground-floor level opening onto an elegant decorative iron verandah. The east elevation comprises two bays and includes the single-storey flat-roofed extension which forms a balcony at first-floor level, reached by wooden steps leading to ground-floor French doors.

The interior is entered from the north into a hallway with a decorative plaster ceiling and central staircase. Original features survive throughout, including some fireplaces in black marble on the ground floor and wood on the first floor, the main staircase with stick balusters and wooden handrail, cornices, moulded door surrounds, broad four-panelled doors, and some shutters. Both drawing room and dining room have been extended eastward, with the position of the original end wall still visible. A brick-subdivided cellar lies beneath the kitchen and stairs, with service and storage rooms to the west. The first-floor landing lacks natural light, as a blocked round-headed arch formerly provided access to the now self-contained adjoining flat. This flat, accessed from the stable yard and occupying largely the first floor, contains a staircase lit by paired ceiling lights but is otherwise devoid of noteworthy interior features.

Brick outbuildings to the south-west include a coach house and garage. Dwarf garden walls to the north have lost their iron railings. Earlier garden walls of brick, probably 17th-century, bound the property to east and west.

The building occupies the site of the former Old Rectory, which had pre-Reformation origins, though it may have been partially rebuilt following damage during the Civil War. The old rectory was rebuilt around 1840 when the family engaged Augustus Pugin to design a Gothic mansion, renamed Caversham Court. The present rectory was likely built when the old rectory ceased to function as such. Caversham Court was demolished in 1933, but its 17th-century gardens survive to the west of the present rectory. The rectory appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1879 in a plan similar to the present building, including the adjoining flat to the west and outbuildings to the south-west. The garden walls bounding the rectory are of considerably greater antiquity than the house and may date to the 17th century, possibly associated with the adjoining Caversham Court gardens.

The rectory is of special interest as a high-quality villa of the 1840s, with attractive features including the handsome door surround with scrolled decoration and the iron verandah. It retains many original interior features such as the main staircase, fireplaces, the hallway plaster ceiling, and cornices. The earlier garden walls are also of particular note.