WOODCROFT (Streatlam Cottage) c.1867

Architectural description - a smaller 2-storey Victorian Gothic house built in red "compressed" bricks, finely jointed with cream stone dressings. Main block faces West with two joined wings running East, roof patterned with lozenge shaped slates. North entrance with gable end chimney stack emphasised with shield, bargeboards in upper third of gable. (Porch is later). Garden front (West) has 2 bay windows with double French doors with side lights and brick cheeks. Windows are sashes, with rounded off top corners, of varying widths or grouped in pairs with a slender shaft. Staircase window is round with 4 spokes above such a pair.

Style - So far the most thoroughly High Victorian Gothic we have seen with such expected features as polychromatic brickwork (the very choice of brick is itself High Victorian), polychromatic slating and bold massing and has a relieving arch, though not expressed polychromatically. However it was not designed by an architect who was a true follower of the Butterfield-Street-Webb domestic parsonage style tradition who would not have allowed the chimney stack to punch through the roof ignoring the bargeboards, both on the entrance front and at the other end of the wing; though such rogueishness is a High Victorian trait. Nor would the three masters named have accepted the artless distribution of windows on the South East front.

The Porch is a later addition, in the Perpendicular style, out of keeping with the style of the house; though there is an attempt with the bricks and especially the slating to tie it in with the design.

The Stables are High Victorian with polychromatic, though basically and appropriately less expensive, brickwork and slating to be in keeping with the house.

Gate Piers characteristically High Victorian in their boldness and with ornamental detail ubiquitous at that time,

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