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House, still in residential use, built by George Wilson Murray in circa 1870, closely flowing the design for a Villa built by John Gordon, and with 20th century additions. It is a tall Italianate house of 2-storey and attic over a raised battered basement, and is roughly L-plan with the south re-entrant angle infilled in the early 20th century with glazed conservatories. The house is white harled with self-coloured painted ashlar dressings. Glazing is mainly in timber sash and case windows, with modern windows to the dining room. Shallow slate roofs have deep plate glass eaves, exposed rafters and end and ridge stacks. There is an ornamental urn with anthemion and decorative detailing that masks the chimney stack above the attic room as an apex finial, and there are tall hand-thrown chimney cans elsewhere. The main south-west entrance front is square corniced and ashlar and has slender pilasters and a round-arched entrance porch that is reached by steps with decorative shallow urns on corniced dies at the head. The remainder of the re-entrant angle are infilled at the raised ground floor and also first floor by the glazed conservatories with original cast-iron glazing bars, those in the ground floor incorporating mask decoration, but with renewed roofs. The attic floor rises as a single view-room, served by a taller slender square Italianate campanile-like stair tower. The principal stair is lit by a round-headed three-light arcade, and there is a decorative cast-iron apex finial to the south-west gable. The south-east elevation has a shallow bowed bay front dining room at the ground floor and the drawing room above. There is a four-light square-headed window to the dining room and four-light round-headed windows with blocked imposts to the drawing room above, a pair of oculi below a tall round-arched stair window in a taller bay to the left and a two-light arcade to the attic. The rear and north-east elevations have plain fenestration. A single-storey, three-bay service wing extends at the north-east with small round-headed windows. The house interior has an entrance porch floored with coloured encaustic tiles that leads to the entrance/stair hall. The dining room has original wooden chimneypiece, a deep plaster ceiling frieze and a centre ceiling rose with oak-leaf detailing. There are original wooden balusters to the staircase leading to the first floor landing and drawing room. The drawing room has a decorative plaster freize, a white marble chimneypiece, decorative cast-iron detailing to the window frames and outer reveals in the bowed bay faced with a bevelled mirror. A cast-iron spiral stair serves the attic view-room, and the upper portion of the tower is constructed of bolted iron plates. A former laundry in the basement where a stove to heat flat irons survives as a fitting. Two-leaf decorative cast- and wrought-iron gates to the house are supported by panelled square-section gatepiers with pyramidal caps.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)