Northerwood House

Northerwood House is a large country house, now converted into flats. It was likely built around 1780, possibly by J Nash, and extended and stuccoed in the early 19th century. Further alterations and restoration occurred in 1973, including the addition of an attic. The house is primarily brick, later covered with stucco, and has a slate roof. It is two storeys high, raised on a basement and with an attic, and is broadly rectangular, five bays wide with a projecting bay on the entrance front. A section has been added to the left-hand side of the original front. This bay features a Doric porch with pilasters and entablature, containing double doors and a rectangular fanlight with a linked oval glazing pattern. A 12-pane sash window is located on both floors in the left bay. Other bays have tripartite sash windows; those on the ground floor have cornices supported by console brackets with a guilloche pattern. A raised band is present on the first floor. A moulded cornice and blocking course finish the facade. The main part of the house features a 20th-century mansard roof with a window in each bay. The garden front includes a basement and a main block of seven bays, with slightly projecting wings at each end. The basement has broad Doric pilasters, above which is a loggia to the ground floor, featuring plain columns encased in trelliswork rising to bulbous capitals. The end bays of the loggia are enclosed and include casement windows. Above the loggia is a first-floor balcony with an anthemion pattern railing. The garden front also has 12-pane sash windows with louvred shutters and blind boxes on the first floor. The wings have tripartite sash windows and pediments. The interior was remodelled in the early 20th century, retaining late 18th-century rooms on the ground floor facing the garden. An entrance hall contains a 20th-century staircase; a room adjacent to it has an Elizabethan-style ceiling. The attribution of the house to Nash is based on a sketchbook by G S Repton, which depicts an elevation of a house with a trellis verandah at first-floor level designed by Nash for Mr Mitchell in the New Forest at Lyndhurst, and held in the RIBA Drawings Collection.