Cobblestones

Cobblestones

A detached house designed in 1937 by architect Blunden Shadbolt (1879-1949) in his picturesque Tudor Revival style with Arts and Crafts influences. The house incorporates attached 19th-century outbuildings that were modified by Shadbolt.

The house is predominantly built of yellow stock bricks on a projecting plinth, with occasional red or black bricks and stone blocks, mostly laid in stretcher bond. Timber-framing appears in sections where brick infilling is laid in horizontal, vertical and diagonal blocks. The roofs are tiled with brick chimneystacks. Windows throughout are metal-framed casements with leaded lights. The attached outbuildings are brick with pantiled roofs.

The building has an asymmetrical, roughly rectangular two-storey plan. The entrance porch opens into a staircase-hall with gallery. To the south-west is a large drawing room with connecting folding doors leading into the adjoining dining room. To the north-east are a den or study and cloakroom, and to the north-west the kitchen and scullery. The upper floor contains a master bedroom to the south-west, two smaller bedrooms, a bathroom and separate WC. The outbuildings form a single-storey T-wing with workshop and garage at the eastern end.

The southern bay of the south-west entrance front features a large projecting timber-framed gable with barge-boards and a pendant supported on brackets, with a four-light mullioned and transomed window on each floor. A projecting gabled brick porch interrupts the northern side of the gable and has a round-headed arch and semi-circular steps set with cobblestones—which gives the house its name—behind which is a studded oak plank door with ornamental ironwork. The central bay has an elliptical dormer with a tripartite window and a staircase window below. Set in a projecting chimney to the right, which has an S-shaped iron tie, are small windows on each floor. The northern bay has a tripartite dormer, a two-light window on the ground floor and an adjoining service entrance.

The south-west end elevation has the timber-framed return of the front gable, a brick chimneystack rising through a lower penticed section housing a large inglenook with two small windows, and further timber-framing with close-studding.

The southern bay of the north-west rear elevation has a three-light dormer and a sloping roof supported on brackets over a loggia, behind which are French windows strengthened with scrolled ironwork and flanked by side-lights. The central bay has a two-storey projecting gable, the upper storey timber-framed and possibly containing some reused timbers, with a three-light over a four-light casement window. The end bay has a three-light window on each floor and a further small window at the end.

The north-east side has plain brickwork and two small ground floor windows.

The outbuildings are brick; the northern wall forms part of an 18th-century garden wall listed at Grade II, while the other walls are 19th-century. Oak plank doors to the workshop and garage at the eastern end were added around 1937, with large iron hinges to the garage.

The interior contains a reused late 19th-century neo-Jacobean-style dogleg staircase with double handrail, carved newel posts and balusters, gallery and under-stair panelled cupboard. Cast iron scrolled panels with shields between the balusters were added in the 1930s. The ground floor corridor has an oak-panelled radiator case with scrolled ironwork. The gallery features a built-in wooden bookcase with curved end and sliding glass doors. There are flush oak doors with ornamental iron hinges throughout.

The drawing room has a massive open fireplace with a gnarled bressumer, containing two small windows and a round-headed arch, with a huge wrought iron hood with blank shield supported on corbelled bricks. Between the drawing room and dining room is a wooden folding screen. The dining room has an Art Deco-style ceramic fireplace with recessed floral panel and chrome electric fire. The study has a further electric fire. The kitchen retains 1930s cupboards, a larder and linoleum square floor covering.

The master bedroom retains an original circular fitting with electric bars. Built-in cupboards are shown in the architect's drawings; cupboard interiors may be original though mirrors and hinges are later. The adjoining bedroom also has possibly original built-in cupboards and an identical electric fire to the study. The bathroom has a black vitrolite Art Deco-style bath surround on a plinth with vitrolite and glass shelves and mirror surround, and a similar Art Deco-style vitrolite mirrored surround over the wash basin with original chrome and glass fittings. The bath and pedestal wash basin may also be original.