Burnside

Burnside is a house built in 1860, formerly serving as the vicarage. It is constructed in red brick with polychromatic detail including black brick banding and diapering, together with some stone dressings. The roof is covered in peg tiles with pierced crested ridge tiles and brick stacks. The building is designed in the Free Gothic Revival style.

The house faces west and is asymmetrically arranged, with the principal entrance and main rooms located in the south block, while a service wing is set back at the north. The front door opens into an entrance passage with a stair hall beyond. Two principal rooms, probably a dining room and withdrawing room, are entered from the stair hall and overlook the garden to the south. A smaller west-facing room to the left of the entrance passage, possibly the vicar's study or library, features a corner window overlooking the gateway from the road. The north service wing contains the kitchen, unheated rooms and a service stair, with its own separate entrance on the west side. A second entrance in the left return from the service yard may have led to a carriage house and stabling. The 19th-century plan remains perfectly intact.

The exterior displays two storeys arranged in an asymmetrical five-window west front of three staggered blocks. The main block is three bays with two gables to the front at the right, while the left-hand bay is set back with a half-hipped front. The kitchen wing is set further back to the left. The gables feature sandstone copings and kneelers. Original windows throughout include arched heads with some featuring voussoirs of black and red brick banding. The original glazing preserves trefoil- and shoulder-headed lights. The brick stacks have moulded and cogged cornices, with one featuring clustered shafts. The front door, positioned in the middle bay of the main block, is original timber with ornamental strap hinges beneath a two-centred arch. The stone tympanum is carved with a quatrefoil. The left return wall of the entrance bay is battered with brick tumbling. Above the front door is a one-light window, with two one-light windows on the ground floor to the right. The first-floor window to the right is a three-light oriel on a sandstone corbel carved with a trefoil. The set-back bay to the left of the porch has a canted corner on the ground floor with brick corbelling above, featuring a one-light window in the corner with two one-light windows alongside to the right. The service block, to the left, is two bays with a lean-to porch in the right-hand angle with the main block, containing an original front door with strap hinges. An attic gable to the front in the service block contains a two-light window, with a four-light kitchen window below featuring a segmental arched head. A one-light first-floor window sits above the service porch. The right return of the house has two gables to the south, with a first-floor window and two ground-floor windows, the right-hand window being a canted bay with a hipped roof. The rear elevation shows four windows and includes a projecting lateral stack to the left, a three-light transomed stair window with a recessed doorway below containing an original door. At the right end is a gabled wing in plain red brick, possibly a slightly later addition to the service end.

The interior is very well-preserved, featuring intact joinery, original chimney-pieces throughout, and original floor tiles. An internal porch is formed by a glazed timber screen. The principal stair has a substantial timber Gothic balustrade with ramped handrail. The two principal rooms contain marble chimney-pieces and plaster cornices. The service rooms are also very intact, with the kitchen retaining a timber chimney-piece and built-in dresser. The service stair features stick balusters and a Tudor-style finial.

Burnside is an almost perfectly preserved Victorian house of considerable architectural distinction.