Douro House And Attached Railings With Attached Wall And Gate Pier To Right

Douro House is a villa dating from the 1840s and 1850s, likely designed by R.W. and C. Jearrad. It stands with attached railings, a wall, and a gate pier, forming a group with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 Douro Road, all displaying a consistent Classical design with Italianate roof and dormer details.

The house is constructed of ashlar over brick, with the rear being stuccoed. It has a hipped slate roof with two tall chimney stacks featuring cornices and iron railings, and a verandah. The building is square in plan, with a double depth, incorporating a central hallway and a single bay to the rear. It has two storeys over a basement, with attics.

The exterior details include quoins to the angles, a continuous ground-floor balcony to the garden facade, and individual balconies to the entrance facade, featuring bulbous balusters and shaped copings on plinths. Windows have tooled architraves, eared on the first floor, and cornices on consoles to the ground floor. A moulded first-floor sill band and a frieze run along the facade. The entrance has a flight of steps leading to a solid porch with paired Ionic pilasters, round-arched openings, round-arched windows with keystones and imposts, a frieze, architrave, and dentil cornice. The entrance door is four-panelled with stained glass and a fanlight, all within a tooled surround. The windows are mostly 1/1 sashes, with tripartite sashes to the ground floor entrance facade. The eaves are wide and supported by brackets. Dormers break the roofline to the garden front, while others have 3/3 sashes and broken-pedimented gables. A round-arched staircase window with painted glass is located at the rear. Windows on the first floor of the garden facade have blind boxes.

The interior retains original features, including a tiled floor to the hall, an embellished cornice with scrolls and cherubs, two roundels, and a full-height open-well staircase with a wreathed handrail.

Subsidiary features include stick balusters to the railings alongside the steps. The continuous ground-floor verandah to the garden front has scroll motifs on the uprights and an openwork frieze. A wall extending approximately 3.5 metres long by 1.5 metres high stands to the right, and the pier at its end features a shaft with a carved panel and a shaped cap.