Darby House

Darby House is a house dating from the mid-18th century. It is constructed of brown/yellow brick with rendered dressings to the front, and has a hipped slate roof. The building stands two storeys high over a basement, with the basement being taller at the rear due to the sloping ground towards the river. The original rectangular plan comprised five bays by three, with extensions to the right.

The front of the house has a plinth, a plat band above the ground floor and to the eaves, and a panelled and part-balustraded parapet. Multiple brick stacks are situated to the right of the centre, topped by a stone cornice, with further stacks on the extension. The central three bays feature a pedimented break, with a keyed round panel in the tympanum above a stone sill resting on corbel brackets. The window arrangement is twelve-pane, sliding sash, with stone sills and gauged brick heads. There are five windows to the first floor and four to the ground floor. The central doorway has six fielded panels, set within a stone architrave and topped by a pediment supported by volute scroll brackets. A front flight of seven steps with iron handrails leads to an archway over the basement storey. A single-bay link, set back to the right, leads to a two-storey wing with two sliding sash windows on each floor, including a casement. A 20th-century six-panel door, approached by a flight of steps, is located on the ground floor of the link bay.

The right-hand return front is colourwashed and features blocked windows in the recessed flanking bays. The rear of the house, facing the river, has rendered plat bands and roundels in the parapets of the outer bays, and an oval panel to the centre of the parapet. The central three bays are bowed, with Gothic arched plate sash windows in moulded architrave surrounds, with sills resting on corbelled brackets. Some glazing-bars remain in the first-floor window to the left. There are five windows on both the first and ground floors, with casement doors approached by a flight of stone steps. The left-hand return front features a central Gothic arched head window with decorative glazing on the first floor, extending down through the plat bands. There is a blocked window to the right on the ground floor and a decoratively glazed window to the left. Gauged brick roundels flank the first-floor window, featuring low-relief classical busts.

The interior includes panelled shutters to windows, a fluted column screen wall to a ground-floor room on the right-hand side, some low-relief plaster panels on the walls, moulded cornices, panelling on the stairs, and a turned baluster staircase.