Eyot House

Eyot House is a large house dating from 1902, designed by Halsey Ricardo for Reginald Blunt, the general manager of De Morgan Pottery. It is constructed of pebbledash brick with a clay tile roof, featuring gabled and hipped ends and one gable end covered in weatherboarding. The building exhibits shaped rafter ends beneath deep eaves, and has axial and gable end stacks topped with brick caps and clay pots. The architectural style is Domestic Revival.

The building is L-shaped, incorporating a service wing to the north and an entrance porch situated within the angle of the ‘L’. The asymmetrical northwest front features a small single-story wing to the right and a projecting gable-ended service wing to the left, with a lean-to porch having a simple doorway with a cambered tile arch and a plank door with stained glass. The casement windows feature glazing bars, brick cills, and tiled cambered arches or straight heads. Tall, narrow windows are found on the northwest gable, while elsewhere, wider two, three, or four-light windows are present on both floors.

The southeast garden front consists of two gables. The left gable is jettied, projecting a bay, and the right wing has a hipped roof with a deep overhang sheltering a bow window. A French casement window with a cambered arch and glazed double doors is to the left, and a loggia occupies the corner to the right. The loggia is topped with a coved canopy that shelters a panel of William De Morgan tiles depicting a classical scene with sailing ships and a townscape. The loggia extends as a pergola, supported by stone columns, behind which are brick outhouses facing the kitchen garden.

The northeast elevation of the service wing has similar windows, with a first-floor window near the corner and a small terracotta grille with interlacing on the ground floor. A porch with a cambered canopy backs on to the outhouse.

The interior, accessed through a vestibule and cross-passage, includes service rooms and a dining room in the left wing. To the right of the entrance, a passage leads to a small and large sitting room, with a study off the larger room. A staircase rises above the entrance. The first-floor corridor runs along the front of the house, providing access to a bathroom and six bedrooms. Original joinery is throughout, including ledged board doors with original door furniture, picture rails, a kitchen dresser and relocated cupboard, and a staircase with a corniced board dado and rectilinear open-work balustrade. There are panelled wall cupboards and window seats to the first-floor corridor. Original fireplaces remain, with those in the principal rooms (including four bedrooms and the cross-passage) featuring polished fossil stone surrounds framing Delft tiles. The large sitting-room fireplace incorporates yellow brick, a corbelled stone mantelpiece, and an over-mantel of William De Morgan tiles. The original bathroom retains its tiled floor and walls, as well as the original bath.