Merfield House

Merfield House is a country house built around 1810 for the Node family. It features brick construction with an ashlar front, moulded cornices, plain parapets with copings, and a hipped slate roof. The house has three ashlar stacks with moulded caps. The symmetrical garden front consists of three sections, with a three-storey semi-circular bowed center that has three bays, flanked by two-storey single bay wings on either side. There are panelled corner pilasters at each side and between the sections, sash windows with glazing bars, and tall three-light casement windows with marginal lights on the ground floor of the central three bays. A plain band runs along the first floor. The door opening is located in the left return of the three bays, featuring paired half-glazed doors with marginal lights. A single-storey projecting flat-roofed ashlar porch is supported by a pair of Grecian columns, which hold up an entablature adorned with triglyphs and a moulded cornice. Inside, the house retains many original features, including decorative plasterwork, especially in the stairwell where the cornice is decorated with triglyphs and guttae. The external bow of the central three bays is mirrored by a corresponding curve in the rear walls of the central rooms on the first and ground floors.