Walford House

Walford House is a country house, dating from the late 18th century, and now converted into flats. It is constructed with a rendered façade, imitating ashlar over brick, with a rusticated ground floor and a bitumen-covered hipped slate roof. The central three bays project slightly, accentuated by a pediment, cornice, and string course. Rendered brick stacks are present. The building follows an L-shaped plan, with a main suite of rooms facing south, a cross-vaulted entrance hall and central stair behind, and a service wing located in the northeast corner.

The south front has three storeys and a 1:3:1 bay arrangement. A rosette is featured in the pediment’s tympanum. The attic storey has four-pane sash windows. The first floor has twelve-pane sash windows with moulded lintels, while the centre has a pediment. The ground floor showcases fifteen-pane sash windows in the outer bays, and two sixteen-pane sash windows in the centre, with a single sixteen-pane sash window in the second bay to the left, which has an inserted glazed door. This door is fronted by a Doric colonnade spanning two, three, and two bays, incorporating paired columns in the centre and at the angles, pilaster responds, a metope and triglyph frieze, a boarded soffit, and a low balustrade. A separate entrance is located on the three-bay left return, featuring a 20th-century half-glazed double door and a flat-roofed ashlar Doric porch with a frieze of rosettes and triglyphs, a boarded soffit, and a low balustrade. The long right return has a four and three bay arrangement. Some leaded iron casements are present in the service wing at the rear.

Inside, there is a dog-leg staircase with thin turned balusters. An Adam-style ceiling is found in the oval stair-light lantern, complemented by Adam-style plasterwork cornices, although other interior features are largely absent. The columns of the colonnade are significantly eroded due to the use of poor quality stone. Alongside the absence of interior decoration and the building’s early use of brick, this suggests the work of a country house builder focused on economy. The house was converted into flats around 1965.