Gates And Steps, Boundary Walls, Including Outbuilding, Westwood, Sunnyhill Road

Gates And Steps, Boundary Walls, Including Outbuilding, Westwood, Sunnyhill Road

A substantial Italianate villa designed by John Guthrie and dated 1880, with early 20th-century additions. The building is a 2-storey L-plan design distinguished by a fine cast-iron porch and brattishing, a belvedere tower, deep overhanging eaves and a multi-gabled roof. The main walls are constructed of squared, snecked, bull-faced yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings, with some brick and whinstone to the rear. A base course runs around the building, and the tower features shallow machicolations. The design includes corner pilasters to projecting bays and predominantly stone-mullioned windows, mostly round-arched with raised polished ashlar window margins. The tower displays round-arched bipartite and tripartite windows to its top floor.

The west (entrance) elevation presents 3 bays with a gabled centre bay. Projecting tripartite ground-floor windows flank the centre, with a bipartite window surmounted by a gable breaking the eaves at the left and a pedimented window to the first floor of the tower at the right. The entrance features a cast-iron porch to the outer right, with a recessed wall bearing a roundel of a cowled face beneath the porch and a panel carrying the motto "UT MIGRATURUS HABITA" (live as though you are about to leave) above.

The south (garden) elevation features a cast-iron porch to the outer left with 3 Corinthian colonnettes, a filigree frieze and decorative spandrels, and a 6-panel timber front door with rectangular fanlight. The belvedere tower rises behind, bearing the 1880 date stone. The right section comprises 3 bays with a recessed centre bay containing a projecting tripartite window at ground floor and a tripartite arched window at first floor. Projecting bays to left and right feature a 5-light bow window at ground floor of the left bay, a slightly advanced quadripartite window at ground floor of the right bay, and Venetian windows at first floor.

The east elevation comprises 3 bays, stepped back from south to north, with rectangular windows at ground floor and round-arched windows at first floor. The north (rear) elevation presents an advanced section to the right with a small single-storey lean-to, irregular fenestration and a gabled right end. The recessed section to the left features a timber-boarded back door with fanlight, a tripartite window to the right, and various small 20th-century extensions at first floor.

Predominantly plate glass fills the timber sash-and-case windows to the principal elevations, with predominantly 4-pane glazing in timber sash-and-case windows to the rear. The roof is Welsh slate. Ashlar-coped stacks with tall ornamental circular clay cans and cast-iron rainwater goods complete the external detailing.

The interior is distinguished by a geometrically patterned ceramic floor tiles and timber panelling in the entrance lobby, with a glazed inner door set in a timber Venetian architrave. The central hall features a striking 3-bay arcade with muscular, fluted Corinthian columns supporting the timber staircase, which has a blind arcaded timber-panelled balustrade and opens to a slender-columned, geometric-capitalled arcaded gallery at first floor beneath a stained-glass cupola. The drawing room displays a scrolled broken-pedimented architrave to its door, Lincrusta frieze, and ornamental cornice. Decorative cornices and ceiling plasterwork appear throughout. The building retains 4-panel timber doors, some working timber shutters and built-in timber furniture. Fireplaces are executed in marble, timber and cast iron. The pantry features timber and slate shelving.

An outbuilding to the east comprises a single-storey structure with a piend roof. It is constructed of squared, coursed, bull-faced yellow sandstone with polished ashlar dressings, with brick to the rear (north).

Boundary walls enclosing the gardens to the south and east are partly drystone and partly random rubble. A chamfered timber gate in a polished ashlar surround in the south boundary wall provides access to a curved stone stairway.