Description

William Kininmonth & Basil Unwin Spence, 1934, and additions 1936.

House and offices in modernised traditional idiom with some Mediterranean references: cement render, originally cream, now white-painted, with revealed cream sandstone ashlar dressings, and distinctive blue-grey pantiled roofs, lost at house, but retained at offices. House set low in slope of ground, behind 2 symmetrical office blocks, in turn behind screen walls, giving impression of large expanses of roof and little wall to W (road), but full 2 storeys to E (garden).

HOUSE (No 3): 2-storey; simple plan with single room to bright, and 2 rooms to left of central entrance hall. Pitched roof with modern replacement tiles circa 1980, end stacks with concrete-bay end additions, 1936, in similar style, originally flat-roofed, piended roofs clasping gables of main house added circa 1980.

W (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: 3-bay, central entrance with simple cream ashlar doorpiece with tiled top, inner door recessed, glazed, with 15 square panes in grid of thick astragals, as at front gate; single windows either side, with 8 lying panes. 1st floor: central single window now altered with single pane, originally with 6 lying panes, flanked by 2 horizontal windows, each with 2 mullions and 9 lying panes. Single-storey additions flanking.

E (GARDEN) ELEVATION: 3-bay, with single bays at later additions flanking. 2-leaf glazed doors to centre, 6 lying panes vertically-placed to each leaf; long v-plan stair window over, with 7 square panes either side of central mullion. Ground floor flanking windows of 12 lying panes, 4-panes deep; 1st floor windows now altered to be the same as ground, originally 9-pane, only 3-panes deep, cills droped to improve day lighting. Single window in left-hand addition, 2-leaf glazed doors (leading from kitchen) in right-hand addition, originally (1936) window also.

All windows originally with shutters, as at offices but now removed.

INTERIOR: staircase with original baluster and broad pine handrail at inner angle, aluminium handrail fixed to wall at right; some original fitted cupboards in hall; yellow and grey tiled fireplace with detached mantel shelf in dining room (to right/S of entrance, ground).

House linked by archways to offices: harled, arches slightly pointed with contrasting edge-on grey pantiles as 'voussoirs' giving effect of waves; single row of tiles at wallhead.

'OFFICES': 2 identical mirroring blocks, flanking gate to road, and centred on house entrance behind; narrow on plan. Deep snecked and squared bull-faced sandstone rubble plinths, white-painted harl above; glazing pattern as at house, with vertically-disposed lying panes; original blue-grey pantiles and shutters retained. Single-storey, with slightly lower projecting garage bays at centres, to right (No 5) with modern garage door, to left (No 1) with 2-leaf boarded and glazed original garage doors; inner bays at main blocks, W elevations (to right on left-hand block) with prism oriels.

Rear (E) elevations with canted windows projecting at outer bays, entrance in S block at inner bay. Single tiny ridge stacks over main blocks towards centres.

SCREEN WALL TO W (ROAD): earlier, 19th century rubble-built with wounded copes; 1934 square-gridded low wooden gate, in style of Spence's doors elsewhere.

Statement of Interest

Compares with Spence's house at Frogston Road, Edinburgh, and with unexecuted designs for a house for the MacWhannels on Commiston estate (designs at NMRS), 1934.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17795271

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)