The Bill House

The Bill House is a house built in 1907 by M H Baillie Scott, designed in an Arts and Crafts vernacular revival style. It has an L-plan layout with a service wing to the north and the main wing to the south. The exterior features pebble-dashed and painted surfaces, with exposed stone dressings, some stone and flint chequer work, and exposed timber-framing on the tower gallery. The roofs are covered with graded slate.

The entrance front has one and a half to two storeys, with projecting wings on either side and in the center. The roof slopes down between these wings, forming buttresses with a catslide, and there is a further projecting half-hipped wing on the extreme right. The central gable displays diamond stone and flint chequer work. The façade includes various stone windows with mullions and transoms, fitted with iron casements. The central doorway is low and round-arched, featuring a recessed boarded and ribbed door.

The sea front is one storey with an attic and is almost symmetrical, featuring low gabled cross-wing projections at each end. The left projection has a glazed multi-light window with mullions and transoms, flanked by a similar window on the right. The right side has a five-light mullion window on the ground floor and a three-light window in the gable above. The center has triple arches glazed with French casements, and above is a brick and flint chequer pattern with a four-light window to the right.

On the service wing court side, there is a central yard entrance with two two-light mullion windows to the right and various one and two-light windows to the left, along with a pair of cart-doors and a smaller door beyond. To the left, a tower features a timber-framed gallery arch on brackets and a pyramidal bellcast roof topped with a weathervane.

The exterior side shows a gable projecting from the east end of the main block, with a central flat-headed dormer, two semi-dormers to the left, and a gabled dormer to the right. There is a deep catslide to the right of the courtyard entrance.

Inside, the house features a chalk-vaulted loggia with groin-vaults. The end of the living hall displays exposed framing and contains a very large tiled inglenook with a wood surround at the opening. Some Arts and Crafts style plasterwork depicting leaves and grapes is still visible.