The Poplars

The Poplars is a detached house built in the Alpine Chalet style. It is constructed of red brick with stone dressings, a stone plinth, and a ground floor cill band. Decorative timberwork painted white provides ornamental detail. The roofs are slated, half-hipped with lead rolled hips, deep projecting eaves, and moulded rafter ends. Tall brick chimney stacks with decorative ridge tiles and finials rise prominently, and a tower in the south corner with a decorative finial and slating breaks through the roof of the two-storey ranges.

The building is arranged on a rectangular 'C' plan on a gently sloping site, oriented north-east to south-west. It comprises a long two-storey garden range facing south-east, gabled two-storey end wings at the north-east and south-west ends, linked by a single-storey block which encloses what may once have been an internal courtyard, closed off by an entrance screen wall.

The south-west entrance elevation is dominated by a large full-height projecting two-tier timber veranda on a brick plinth, which wraps around at first-floor level to the left-hand elevation. The gabled end of the garden wing breaks forward. The veranda has moulded posts with bracing, arched on the ground floor and shorter on the first floor with incised and scalloped detailing. The posts are irregularly spaced to the left but grouped into three bays on the garden wing gable, with a wider central bay. The first floor projects and is supported by corbels. Low close-boarded panels with pierced decoration enclose both ground and first floors, with the same applied as gable boarding. Behind the veranda are three windows to the garden wing. The central window retains stained glass depicting Alpine folklore scenes in the central panels with text below, surrounded by floral designs. Doors in the outer bays open to the ground floor. The end wing displays three windows, with central French doors with leaded glass featuring oval stained glass cartouches of female figures. A tiled floor rises to the ground floor and a timber-boarded floor to the first floor.

The north-west elevation displays gable ends of the two end wings with a shallow timber veranda, decorative rather than functional and positioned close to the façade. The north-east end wing has two windows; the south-west end wing has five windows to the ground floor and four to the first floor, irregularly spaced. A single-storey range between them contains a wide central door with flanking windows.

The north-east elevation has a single window to the return of the end wing and a blind door to the ground floor. A projecting lean-to two-storey block on the garden range has a window in its right return and a door in its left return, with a blocked door and low opening in the main face.

The garden elevation facing south-east displays five paired window bays (ten windows total), with projecting chimney stacks between the second and third pairs and between the fourth and fifth. A first-floor cill band and projecting cills mark the ground-floor windows. The left-hand ground-floor windows are blind, with a small lean-to structure to their right. A modern entrance porch has been added in the fourth bay with a boarded door.

The interior retains substantially its original layout, with doors, skirtings and other features surviving. The main entrance from the south-west front opens into a large entrance hall featuring a single-flight oak staircase with moulded newel, balusters, and handrail. The hall is fitted with raised and fielded four-panel doors with veneered panels and door surrounds. Full-height panelling lines the walls; a fireplace on the left-hand wall has been removed and tiled over. The hall floor is tiled, and a cupboard beneath the stairs provides storage.

The windows are segmental-headed six-light casements with the ground floor having two upper lights.