Orchard House And Attached Walls

Orchard House is a house dating to the 1860s, with later 19th-century additions, likely representing a remodelling of an earlier building. The rear of the house is built into a hillside. It is constructed of painted stucco with a slate roof, featuring moulded rendered stacks at the gable ends and between the bays, and a double-depth plan.

The exterior is three storeys high, with a four-window front. The original early 19th-century two-window facade is flanked by late 19th-century canted bays, each with plate-glass sash windows and wide bracketed eaves. The main block has moulded architraves to the second-floor windows; a 6/6-pane sash window is located to the left of centre, and an 8/8-pane sash to the right. A first-floor balcony, supported by cast-iron columns extending to a swept lead canopy with a late 19th-century fretted fascia, features two French windows; the one to the right has margin panes. Below, the ground floor has banded rustication and a late 19th-century moulded plinth, with French windows to a canted bay on the right. The main block is flanked by buttresses to the ground floor, topped with heavy consoles supporting the ends of the balcony. A late 19th-century door to the left has coloured leaded margin windows and an overlight.

Inside, the hall has a semi-elliptical arch to the staircase, with roundels to the impost blocks and a late 19th-century polychromatic tile floor. The staircase itself is open string with late 19th-century turned balusters to the lower floors and early 19th-century stick balusters above. Six-panel doors lead to the first-floor landing. A room to the right of the hall has an early 19th-century moulded cornice and semicircular-arched recesses flanking a fireplace. The rear section features a fireplace against the rear wall and a hemispherical-arched niche to the right, now divided by a 20th-century screen.

The property is accompanied by painted rendered walls approximately 2 metres extending from each front corner, rising to about 3 metres. One wall has a segmental archway to the rear. A red sandstone rubble wall, approximately 4 metres high, is attached to the rear left corner, curving around the left return to meet the rendered wall at the front.

Historically, Orchard House may have been associated with the South Kensington Institute of Science and Art, established in Orchard Gardens in 1885.