Trafalgar House

Trafalgar House is a house, later offices, dating from around 1830. It is constructed of limestone ashlar with a rendered ground floor, featuring lateral stacks and a hipped and gabled roof covered with slate to the front and pantiles to the rear. The building follows a double-depth axial plan and is executed in a Neoclassical style.

The symmetrical front elevation presents three storeys and a five-window range. A large, two-storey, three-window central section projects forward, topped by a pedimented portico. This portico is supported by four banded square piers, leading to an entablature with moulded semicircular arches, featuring fluted keys resting on moulded corbels. A distyle-in-antis Tuscan colonnade sits above, with panelled square columns at the corners, and extends to another entablature with metopes. Below this is a balustrade with dies. The ground floor has plain, segmental-arched windows with architraves above, housing 6/6-pane sashes. Flanking towers of three storeys have pyramidal roofs and are set back; they feature rusticated quoins to a banded frieze and a bracketed overhanging cornice. Loggias project to the front and sides, consisting of three square columns and responds with a balustrade above. The left-hand doorway has a raised, battered surround and a two-leaf, eight-panel door, while a C20 door and glazing are set to the right. The upper floors have narrow windows: console cornices on the first floor accommodate 2/2-pane sashes, and architraves and sill blocks on the second floor frame 1/2-pane sashes. The left return includes a rear section with surrounds to blind first- and second-floor windows, with a semicircular-arched attic window above and a pair of lateral stacks. To the right is a three-storey, rendered wing with C20 windows. The rear elevation is rendered over a Pennant stone basement.

The interior features an entrance lobby with marble and slate flags. A two-storey stair hall is on the left, containing a stone cantilevered open-well stair with foliate cast-iron balusters and a large curtail. Windows are framed by architraves and rope-moulded cills. An axial passage has semicircular arches. The first-floor landing leads to a short stair with curved sides and cast-iron balusters, ascending to a front lobby with eared architraves and niches, and a principal front room with a large modillion cornice, coved eaves, and a fine marble fire surround with paired Ionic columns. A rear central dogleg service stair utilizes cast-iron railings. Other features include panelled shutters and reveals to 6-panel doors.

Trafalgar House is an imaginative and imposing composition and is part of a remarkable group of houses including Engineer's House, Taylor Maxwell House, and Promenade House, extending northwest from Litfield House, Litfield Place. It was possibly designed by Charles Underwood.