Cambrian House

This is an Italianate villa, built in the mid-19th century as part of a planned development in a suburb of Newport. The building is constructed of stone, rendered and painted, with a plinth of coursed rock-faced stone featuring tooled quoins. It has a Welsh slate roof with iron apex finials, overhanging eaves supported by moulded brackets, and decorative bargeboards. The villa is three storeys high, plus a basement, and features a slender, taller belvedere porch tower with a pyramidal roof.

Architecturally, the building exhibits typical Italianate details. Raised quoins and decorative banding are present between the floors, extending over the first-floor windows to form semicircular hoodmolds. Most windows are horned sashes with large panes; some are round-arched or have round-arched surrounds, frequently paired, with capitals and Corinthian columns separating them. The main south-facing facade comprises two bays, the right one gabled and projecting, with a single window range each. The porch tower is situated in the angle between them. A steep flight of thirteen nosed stone steps leads to the entrance, flanked by a ramped rendered wall that forms giant inverted brackets framing the porch. The round-arched entrance doorway has slender columns and a heavily bracketed cornice with carved enrichment to the brackets and spandrels.

To the left (west) of the porch and extending along the south frontage is a wide iron verandah with an arcade of slender columns and semi-circular arches, a rosette frieze, and decorative spandrels. This verandah has a shallow pitched roof with a boarded ceiling, swept eaves, and a front balustrade. The attic windows are small and paired, larger on the belvedere tower, which includes a small iron balustraded balcony at the main eaves level. First-floor windows are paired to the left and tower, and tripartite to the right wing, which also features a canted bay window to the ground floor with a heavy moulded cornice. A ground-floor window to the left, beneath the balcony, is also tripartite, with Corinthian capitals and incorporates a French door. The west garden frontage echoes the main facade with two bays, one gabled and slightly projecting; a recessed bay has a small canted bay window with a hipped roof. A hip-roofed two-storey service wing sits to the rear, along with later, smaller infill extensions.

The interior features an L-shaped central hallway, with reception rooms on either side, and a staircase rising at right angles to the rear. Original features retained include moulded plasterwork, marble fireplaces, and shutters. A reception room on the front right has a heavy ceiling rose and frieze with a convulvulus motif. The hall itself features bracketed arches, billet moulding, and a cantilevered dogleg staircase with cast iron balusters and a wreathed handrail. A large window with two round-arched lights, Corinthian capitals, ball-flower mouldings, and margin glazing is present. Eared architraves frame the mostly four-panelled doors.