The Bungalow

This is a late 1870s estate cottage, built as part of the Leigh estate. Constructed with Flemish bond brick on a ragstone rubble plinth, the gables appear to be timber-framed, and the roof is covered with peg tiles. The building exhibits details of the Vernacular Revival style.

The cottage is a single-storey roadside building, facing east onto Lower Street, arranged in an L-shaped plan. The living room occupies the south block and is heated by an axial stack backing onto an entrance passage. A crosswing serves as the kitchen, adjoining to the north and heated by a stack on that side.

The east front is asymmetrical. A timber porch with a gabled roof, curly bargeboards, and a pendant is centrally positioned, supported by chamfered spine beams with run-out stops and moulded pierced spandrels and sections of turned balustrading. The porch floor is laid with 19th-century tiles. A plain 19th-century plank front door has an overlight. To the left of the porch is a red terra cotta panel depicting pomegranates, set below a moulded brick hoodmould. To the right, the gable of the kitchen wing features deep brattished verges carried on trefoil-pierced moulded brackets, as well as a yellow terra cotta panel of peaches above a moulded timber cornice. A coved four-light transomed oriel window sits below.

The north side of the kitchen has a projecting lateral stack with set-offs, serving a fireplace and featuring two tall, showpiece, 16th-century style shafts; one octagonal with ornamental vertical shafts and one with barley-sugar moulding, both topped with corbelled brick cornices. Three windows are set into the north elevation, including a chimney window in the stack. The south gable end displays deep eaves on moulded brackets, a jettied gable clad with wooden shingles, a pendant, and a moulded fascia board. A three-light transomed window is set within the gable, with a brattished lintel and moulded brick shafts to the jambs.

The Leigh estate was developed by Samuel Morley, a Liberal M.P. and hosiery millionaire, and benefited from the design expertise of George Devey and George and Peto. This is an interesting example of a 19th-century bungalow.