Southern Cross Guesthouse Including Garden Walls Adjoining To North West

The Southern Cross Guesthouse, along with its adjoining garden walls, is an early 18th-century building that has been modernised in the 19th century and extended in the 20th. The construction consists of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and a thatched roof with asbestos slate on the 20th-century extension.

The house has a double-depth plan, featuring a central passage with front and back rooms on either side, with the original main domestic rooms located on the front and served by end stacks. The arrangement suggests the house may have evolved from two or more original builds, possibly beginning as an L-shaped building comprising the front rooms, a service room to the rear, and a wing at right angles to the main block. A mass wall separates the right service room and the front room, and parallel roofs run at right angles to the main block. A gap between the two rear rooms, originally open behind the through passage, was later filled in. A two-room block was added in the 20th century, set back from the front on the right (north-eastern) end, aligned with the main block and connected only at ground floor. A conservatory was also built at the same time, situated within the angle formed by the original house and the extension.

The main facade has a regular, but not symmetrical, three-window arrangement with mostly 19th and 20th-century casement windows, including a horned four-pane sash window on the first floor left end. All windows, including those with glazing bars, are fitted with lattice patterns of leading. The front door is located left of center and stands behind a contemporary gabled, tile-roofed porch and a late 19th or early 20th-century part-glazed four-panel door. The roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left. The rear elevation features a 2:1:1 window arrangement with 19th and 20th-century casements, again largely with leaded glass and some glazing bars. All roof ends are hipped. The conservatory on the right end is glass-walled, with a curved, hipped roof. The 20th-century extension features a two-window front with leaded glass, and its first-floor windows are half-dormers with raised roof sections; this section has a gable-ended roof.

Internally, the 18th-century structure appears largely intact, along with joinery from the 19th-century modernization. The right-hand room has a crossbeam with a broad, chamfered soffit and no stops and a stone rubble fireplace with a roughly-finished oak lintel, forming a segmental arch. The left-hand room features a three-bay ceiling with soffit-chamfered crossbeams and run-out stops. The framed crosswall between the front and back rooms is exposed in this space. Both left-end fireplaces are blocked by later grates. The roof was not inspected. Extending north-westwards from each rear corner are relatively high garden walls constructed from local river cobbles, returning to enclose the rear garden.