Carfax Court

Carfax Court is a house, dating from 1853 and with detailing from 1873, which has been converted into retirement flats around 1980. It is constructed of snecked Carboniferous limestone and Brandon Hill Grit rubble, with limestone dressings, lateral and external stacks, and a fish-scale slate cross-gabled roof. The building has an irregular L-shaped plan and is designed in a Jacobethan style.

The house has two storeys, an attic, and a basement, with a six-window front. It presents an irregular composition featuring a projecting wing to the rear and an entrance set in the re-entrant angle. Ground-floor windows are cross-shaped, while those on the first floor have mullions, label moulds, stops, horned sashes with horizontal bars. The road front is divided into three sections. The left-hand section is symmetrical with two windows and a central external stack topped with ashlar, and a full-width stone balcony supported by stone brackets with a balustrade of linked rings. A projecting gable features a ground-floor three-light canted bow with a cornice and parapet, a paired first-floor window, and a two-light attic window with a triangular head and lozenge-shaped top light, all set under a Flemish gable with curved kneelers, moulded coping, and a segmental pediment containing an oculus. The right-hand projecting section has a two-storey, three-light canted bay with an ashlar parapet, which rises to a gable bearing a shield displaying the monogram CJT and the date 1873. The rear elevation has a two-storey, parapeted stair hall with a balustrade in the re-entrant angle between two gabled wings, positioned at an angle to the right of a single-storey porch with a shaped gable. The porch has a semicircular-arched doorway with carved voussoirs, a two-leaf six-panel door, and a small semicircular-arched side window. To the left is a three-section ground-floor bay with a pulvinated frieze and balustrade; the end sections are bowed, with the right curving forward to meet the stair hall. The right-hand projecting gable echoes the front, with a similar ground-floor bay, a projecting three-light central section, and a balustrade, beneath a first-floor window featuring a projecting bay and a central four-light bow, topped with a matching triangular window. The rear gable includes a cast-iron lattice basket balcony on the ground floor. Basement windows have plain surrounds.

The interior features a lobby, a stair hall with a large window featuring thin colonnettes, and a dogleg staircase with barley-sugar balusters, four to the curtail. A former drawing room has an elaborate lattice coved cornice, panelled plaster ceiling, end bays marked by thin colonnettes, and a fine marble fireplace with carved swags and figurines. A former dining room includes a similar ceiling, egg-and-dart cornice, and a bay, as well as panelled shutters and doors.

Carfax Court forms part of a group of three large villas with matching stonework; it is the best-composed of these, showing varied elevations and good details.