Deacon House

Deacon House is a villa built around 1830, probably remodelled and extended around the 1850s. It was constructed as a dower house to Mabledon Park in Southborough parish. The 1987 list description suggests the architect may have been Decimus Burton or more probably William Widdicombe. The house is built in yellow brick of two different types with some glazed headers and sandstone dressings, with a slate roof and brick stacks, in the Italianate style.

The house is built on a north-south axis with the entrance on the east. It has a double-depth plan with a south-east entrance into a stair hall. An axial corridor divides the west-facing principal rooms from the service rooms to the east, with a service stair at the north end of the corridor. Straight joints and variations in the brickwork and window forms suggest that the existing Italianate design is a remodelling of an earlier house.

The exterior is of two storeys. The roof has very deep eaves carried on brackets. The west (garden) elevation is asymmetrical, with a deep plinth and two three-light two-storey canted bays containing eight windows in total, plus a one-bay single-storey block at the left end with a verandah to the garden. All windows are round-headed with stone architraves and impost blocks. The first-floor windows are six-pane sashes with aprons and a sill band, while the ground-floor windows are two-pane plate glass sashes with a triple window between the canted bays. The left-hand single-storey block has a timber lattice verandah and a half-glazed nineteenth-century door with moulded panels below a round-headed recess with a keyblock. The brickwork of the left-hand canted bay is not tied into the front wall, and the brickwork of the bay and the main block to its north differs from the rest of the wall.

The three-plus-one window east (entrance) elevation has brick pilasters and a projecting brick porch to the left with rusticated brick pilasters, a brick frieze and moulded cornice. The round-headed doorway has a stone architrave, keyblock and impost blocks, with a heavily-moulded four-panel front door and fanlight. The left return of the porch has a round-headed recess. Above the porch is an elaborate chimney with divided shafts and moulded brackets to the eaves. The first-floor windows match those on the garden elevation, while the ground-floor windows are early nineteenth-century small-pane round-headed sashes with margin glazing. The south return has pilasters to the gable and a segmental arch above the first-floor segmental-headed six-pane sash and a two-leaf glazed door with a fanlight. To the left a divided chimney-stack rises on either side of a round-headed recess. The north return, overlooking a small service court, also retains nineteenth-century doors and windows.

The nineteenth-century interior is very complete, although one partition dividing two of the principal rooms has been removed. The principal rooms retain nineteenth-century plaster cornices, original joinery including shutters, doors and skirting boards, and nineteenth-century chimney-pieces and grates survive in almost every room. The kitchen and north ground-floor room preserve vertical shutters. The early nineteenth-century principal stair has stick balusters and a ramped mahogany handrail.

The house is said to have been built for the Deacon family, who made their money from banking. It was originally called Glensyde.

This is a very complete nineteenth-century Italianate villa.