Drake House With Attached Railings Piers And Garden Wall

Drake House is a villa dating from the 1830s to 1850s, built for the Drake family. The architects were likely RW and C Jearrad. The villa is constructed of ashlar facing brick, with a hipped slate roof, tall ashlar ridge details, and internal stacks.

Architecturally, it is a two-storey building with a projecting right bay and a central hallway plan. The facade features a first-floor band and a continuous sill band. The first floor has three-over-three sash windows in tooled architraves. A projecting porch with double four-panel doors and a fanlight is situated at an angle to the right, with a round-arched window nearby. The ground floor also features tall six-over-six sash windows in tooled architraves. The eaves are wide, supported by plain brackets.

The garden facade has a three-window arrangement, with a gable incorporating a projecting stack. It features four-, six- and eight-pane casement windows on the first floor, and tripartite and four-part French windows on the ground floor, all within tooled architraves. External sliding shutters are present on the first-floor casements.

The interior retains original features, including a tile floor in the porch, a four-panel inner door with etched glass and a fanlight with margin-lights and radial glazing bars, an open-well staircase with embellished iron balusters and alternately embellished rods, and moulded cornices.

The property is accompanied by area railings abutting the porch and returning to the left, featuring embellished spearhead railings and newels. A pier, approximately 1.5 metres high, has a shaped plinth, cornice, and cap. An L-shaped coped garden wall extends for approximately 30 metres.

RW and C Jearrad acquired the Lansdown development around 1829-30, dismissing the previous architect, JB Papworth. It is believed the house's design was influenced by vacations spent in Switzerland, although the design is not as purely Swiss as other examples such as Alpenfels. Key “Alpine” design elements include the broad eaves and the compressed upper storey with casements in louvred shutters.