7 And 8, Union Road

7 and 8 Union Road is a probable former staging post, now used as a house and office, likely built in 1836 and refenestrated around 1988. The building has a roughcast exterior and a gabled slate roof, with end stacks featuring brick shafts and old pots. It has a double depth plan, two rooms wide, with a central carriageway.

The structure is three storeys high and includes a cellar. Originally, it had a symmetrical four-bay front. The central carriageway and flanking doors are designed as one composition, featuring a segmental-headed archway with a moulded arch supported by brackets and slender engaged shafts with capitals. There are small carved heads, likely added later, on the jambs. The carriageway has a pair of ledged and braced boarded doors with segmental arched heads. Above the archway, there is a fascia and moulded cornice that projects over the flanking doorcases, which originally had pilasters with sunk panels, moulded consoles, and an entablature, along with a guilloche frieze over the lintels. The reveals are panelled with roundels, and the doors also feature roundel panels, although the right-hand doorway and door have been somewhat altered.

The ground floor window on the right is a 20th-century plate glass shop window with small panes above the transom. The other windows, including one on the ground floor left and four on both the first and second floors, are unfortunately top-hung plastic windows, although they are in the original embrasures and maintain the same number of panes as the early 19th-century timber sashes they replaced: 16 panes for the ground and first floors and 4/8 panes for the second floor.

The interior has only been partially inspected, but original features noted include panelled doors and an early 19th-century plaster cornice. Other interesting features may still be present. Extensive stabling and coach houses were located at the rear but were demolished when Newcombes Meadow, behind the building, was converted into a municipal park. Union Road was cut through in 1836.