Grey Gables, Southwood Road, Monkton

Grey Gables is a substantial English Arts and Crafts style villa built in 1909 for William Alexander Collins of the publishing dynasty. The main house is a large two-storey building with attic, designed in near-symmetrical form with an asymmetrical single-storey and attic service wing to the south, all set within a contemporary designed garden with associated features.

The architecture is characterised by capacious slated roofs with low swept and bracketed eaves, plain bargeboards at the gables, and slate-hung gable ends. Windows are mullioned and transomed with leaded glazing throughout. Tall corniced chimney stacks rise axially from the roof. The ground floor is constructed of cream ashlar, with vertical slating at first floor level. The attic is contained within a low swept, slightly bellcast roof.

The north-east entrance elevation has cream ashlar at ground floor, with vertical slating above slightly jetted from the plane of the wall below. The main entrance is positioned centrally in a stepped moulded ashlar doorcase with a recessed flat-arched tympanum featuring joggled voussoirs. Narrow transomed side lights with leaded glass flank the door. Above are three tripartite stair windows with painted metal mullions and decorative stained glass roundels, and a four-light attic window with timber mullions. Two outer gabled bays contain two-storey five-light polygonal bay windows. The ground floor windows are ashlar with transoms, while first floor windows are slated halfway to their cills as single lights. These bays have flat roofs with timber dentilled cornices; four-light horizontal attic windows occupy the slated gableheads.

The west (garden) elevation is symmetrical, featuring three broad gabled bays with the same horizontal divisions as the entrance elevation. Each bay contains two-storey three-light canted bay windows with mullioned and transomed ground floor windows and bipartites at first floor. Two-leaf leaded glass doors open from the left-hand bay window (formerly the dining room, now the lounge) to the terraced garden, with a second garden entrance to the right of centre. A date and inscription panel in mock medieval manner is positioned to the left of the elevation.

The service wing on the south is a two-bay single-storey and attic structure, recessed to the right. An attic window on the west elevation links to the first floor of the main block. The wing is L-plan to the east with a projecting gabled bay to the left, featuring tripartite mullioned windows at ground and attic on the west and east fronts, and a four-light window on the south. All gable heads are vertically slated. A small single-storey addition with a steeply pitched roof was built to the north in 1977.

The interior, although subdivided in 1977, retains much of the original scheme. Features include plasterwork at ceilings and cornices with naturalistic carving in the ground floor principal rooms, timber panelling in the north-west lounge (originally the dining room), and the original billiards room with full-height wainscot and ceiling with decorative plaster borders. The principal staircase has turned timber balusters, slightly altered at the foot. Nine stained glass roundels in neo-medieval style depicting historical and biblical scenes (including Henry V and Mary and Joseph) are set into the first floor stair landing. An oval lantern with decorative plaster cornice sits over the principal stair, though this has been infilled. Original plasterwork survives beneath the false ceiling of the original hall, now a bedroom.

The garden features snecked rubble terrace walls with ashlar coping and ball finials to the north of the house. A sunken garden on two levels is accessed from the west, north and south by ashlar steps with coping and ball finials in two stages. A square-plan single-storey summer house to the north-west is constructed of cream snecked sandstone rubble to a deep battering base, with cream ashlar above. Three sides feature tripartite windows and the roof is slated with a pyramidal form and swept overhanging eaves. An octagonal timber summer house with slate roof stands to the north of the garden wall.

At the south-west entrance, four square-plan polished ashlar gatepiers with moulded arrises, plinths, cornices and ball finials are linked on a concave curve by snecked rubble coped walls.

The inscription panel on the west elevation reads: "Domus Collinsorum Aedificavit MDCCCIX Nisi Dominus Aedificaverit Domus in Vanum Laboraverunt Qui Aedificant Eum" (The house of the Collinses was built 1909. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain).

The building is currently subdivided into four flats.