Spurfield

Spurfield is a rectory built between 1887 and 1889 by the architect J L Pearson for Reverend Stephen Willoughby Lawley. The contractors were Luscombe and Son. It is now used as a residential home for handicapped people.

The building is constructed of redbrick in English bond with some tile-hanging and plastered and shorn timber-framed gables. The steeply pitched gabled plain tile roof has plastered deeply coved eaves. Tall brick axial and lateral stacks with thin shafts and corbelled brick cornices complete the exterior treatment. The style is Late Victorian 'Old English' and 'Queen Anne'.

The plan is irregular and approximately square in form, double-depth with a central entrance and stair hall at the front. Set back to the left is a relatively small room, possibly the study. To the right of the entrance hall is a large drawing room, behind which is a third principal room, probably the dining room. At the centre at the back is the kitchen with service rooms to its left extending into a single storey wing.

The exterior is two storeys and attic with asymmetrical elevations. The south entrance front features a projecting gabled centre with tile-hanging on the first floor and a large plastered gable above. A round-arched doorway recessed to the left has stone voussoirs and large shaped timber brackets beneath the tile-hanging. A three-light window in a bay sits to the right, with a large six-light window on the first floor above. Set back to the left is a tall two-storey and attic section with a half-hipped roof and four-light windows on each floor. To the right of the central gabled bay is a tall lateral stack with a set-off and a two-storey tile-hung canted bay window beyond.

The east elevation has a wide two-storey tile-hung canted bay to the right with a large jettied timber-frame gable above, supported on two pairs of shaped brackets. To the left are four-light windows on the ground and first floors with a large dormer above featuring a broad tile-hung gable and deeply coved eaves.

The rear elevation features a timber-framed gabled dormer at the centre, to the left of which is a massive lateral brick stack. To the right is a half-hipped roof over the attic window.

The west elevation has an asymmetrical arrangement of small windows and two lateral stacks rising sheer from the top of the wall with a tile-hung gable between. At the back of the house to the left is the small single-storey hipped roof service wing.

All original windows survive. These are mostly ovolo-moulded mullion-transom windows retaining their glazing bars only in the top lights. The original round-headed front door retains cover strips and wrought iron hinges.

The interior entrance hall contains a polished red stone chimneypiece with two pairs of tapered pilasters and a cornice, and a large timber screen with debased Ionic bulbous columns and carved spandrels. One of the columns serves as the newel of the open-well staircase at the back of the hall, which has a balustrade with barley-sugar twist balusters. Doorframes to the principal rooms feature pedimented overdoors with volutes to their friezes. The front right-hand drawing room has an 18th-century style marble chimneypiece.