Swiss Cottage

The Swiss Cottage is a house dating to approximately 1830. It is built of rendered material with limestone dressings, has ridge stacks, and a slate roof. The house is designed in a Picturesque Gothic style and has a double-depth plan. It is two storeys high, with an attic and basement, and has a two-window front. The house has a T-shaped plan; the left-hand entrance has been blocked, while the right-hand side features a Tudor-arched doorway with a ribbed door, now located inside the house and covered by a conservatory. The windows are casements with horizontal glazing bars and cambered heads, featuring raised label moulds. The attic gables contain arrow slits beneath the gable apex, with a moulded basin directly below. The gables have scalloped barge-boards with quatrefoil-pierced rounded ends. A later, shallow bay with French windows sits on a verandah supported by slender cast-iron stanchions. A C20 timber conservatory is located at the rear, with buttresses at the angles and a hipped, felted roof. Inside, the house features a central hall with pointed arches and a dumb waiter, a dogleg staircase with a brass rail, a full basement, and a principal bedroom with a coved ceiling. The design is likely based on a pattern from P.F. Robinson's 'Designs for Ornamental Villas.' The house was originally built as part of the Brislington House Asylum on the Bath Road and was later known as Carysfoot Cottage, after the peer of that name who resided there.