Peper Harow House

Peper Harow House is a country house, later used as an approved school and now subdivided into apartments. It was designed between 1765 and 1768 by Sir William Chambers for the Third Viscount Middleton, with completion in 1775-77 by the Fourth Viscount. A north porch was added in 1843 by C.R. Cockerell, and a third storey and north wing in 1913 by the First Earl of Middleton. The house is constructed of yellow stock brick with stone window dressings, a balustraded parapet, and rusticated angle quoins. The roofs are hidden by the parapets and are likely low-pitched and hipped with slate.

The original house comprises a main block of five bays by seven, with a wing to the right. The entrance front has two storeys over a basement, with an attic above a stone cornice. A balustraded parapet runs along the top, with the brick parapet raised higher over the originally central three bays, which project slightly. The parapet features four pilaster strips topped with urns and a central cartouche. The attic floor has five sixteen-pane glazing-bar sash windows; the first floor has four twelve-pane glazing bar sash windows. There are two "Venetian" windows on the ground floor, each with a projecting entablature over the side lights. Glazing bar sash windows flank a two-storey stone porch with a balustraded parapet, and there's one first-floor window above, between the angle pilasters. The porch has Doric columns, a triglyph frieze, rosettes and coronets to the cornice frieze metopes, and arched windows to the sides. The double doors are of four fielded panels, with a projecting hood supported by console brackets. A 20th-century range of three bays is attached to the right, with three windows on each of the first and attic floors, and a Venetian window on the ground floor. A single-storey service wing is also attached to the right.

The south return front (left hand) has seven bays with quoined angles, and architrave surrounds to the first-floor windows. Ground-floor windows have glazing bar sashes under architrave hoods. A cartouche with human figure supporters dressed in armour sits centrally on the roof balustrade.

The garden front (west) features the central three bays projecting under a brick parapet with crowning urns; a balustraded parapet runs to the flanking bays. Each floor has five glazing bar sash windows, with Venetian windows in the outer bays of the ground floor. The central three windows on the ground floor have projecting hoods, the centre window being pedimented.

Inside, the hall displays six doorways with doors of fielded panels in egg and dart mouldings. A fireplace in the Adam style incorporates marble, festoons, ox skulls, drapery swags and three portrait medallions on the chimney breast. A simple iron staircase is lit from above by lunettes in a narrow wall. Two plaster ceilings designed by Chambers are located in the south-east and south-west corner rooms, accompanied by fine chimney pieces also designed by Chambers and carved by Wilton. The Drawing Room ceiling is oval, decorated with a Greek key and entwined rose pattern. A painting on the dining room ceiling is potentially by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.