Beaufort House And Attached Railings

Beaufort House is a villa dating from approximately 1851-1852, with later additions and alterations including attic dormers added in the 1970s. It is located on West Approach Drive in Cheltenham and was originally part of the Pittville development. The construction is stucco over brick, and features a hipped slate roof with end stacks topped with cornices, alongside an iron balcony and railings.

The villa is two storeys high, with a basement, and has three first-floor windows. It incorporates a single-storey porch on the right side. Architectural details include quoins to the corners, tooled architraves to the windows (eared on the first floor and with a frieze and hooded cornice on console brackets to the ground floor), a tooled first-floor sill band, a moulded band over the first-floor windows, and a crowning dentil cornice. The ground floor windows are tall 2/2 horizontal-pane sashes, with a tripartite window on the left; the first floor has 1/1 sashes, while the basement has 4/4 sashes. All windows are set in plain reveals. The main entrance is on the right side, accessed by a flight of steps leading to a solid porch with a round-arched opening supported by tooled arch detail and double four-panel doors. The rear of the property retains some 6/6 sashes, a 9/9 staircase sash, and a tripartite window with 1/1 sashes. The interior remains uninspected.

External features include embellished rods and balusters to the railings alongside the steps, a ground-floor balustrade with embellished oval and rod motifs set on short plinths, and blind boxes beneath the ground-floor windows. Originally planned as Beaufort Place and laid out as West Approach in approximately 1844, the villa was not part of John Forbes's original estate plan. It originally comprised part of a group of villas known as Nos. 1-4 Beaufort Villas, and it groups with Mount Sorrell, Cleeve House, Homewood, and Park Gate.