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Summary

Description

R Thornton Shiells, 1862. 2-storey, 3-bay symmetrical rectangular-plan villa with service wing to rear. Stugged, squared and snecked contrasting sandstones; cream polished ashlar window dressings with droved margins and chamfered reveals; pink-coloured relieving arches to ground floor windowsw; steep piended dormerheads to 1st floor windows; bargeboarded timber porch; single storey engaged columns with carved capitals at principal elevation anges.

S (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: central steeplyv pitched gabled timber porch with 4 detached timber piers, curvilinear bargeboards, and contrasting bands of purple and green fishscale slates. Tudor-arched architraved doorway; 2 detached and recessed columns with foliate capitals; panelled door; plate glass fanlight. Single window breaking eaves above with shouldered-arched corbelled hood. Bipartite windows at ground floor flanking centre to right and left with disengaged column-mullions and foliate capitals (single windows in bipartite openings); single windows above at 1st floor breaking eaves with piend-roofed dormerheads.

E ELEVATION: single window breaking eaves.

W ELEVATION: single window at ground floor; single window breaking eaves.

N ELEVATION: single storey piend-roofed service wing adjoining to outer right; single windows to N and W return; secondary entrance to E return. Small single window flanking centre to left; 2 round-arched stair windows above; single window at ground floor to outer left.

Plate glass sash and case windows to S; 12-pane, 8-pane and 4-pane elsewhere. Purple slate piended roof with contrasting fishscale banding; lead flashing; wallhead stacks with sawtooth coping to E and W; wallhead stack to N.

INTERIOR: encaustic tiled vestibule; glass-panelled vestibule door; ornate plaster cornices; timber fireplaces in principal rooms; cast-iron barleysugar balustrade with oak handrail; twin painted stair windows deep set in archtraved round arched with decorative floral impost blocks.

Low retaining weall to street, rising to E and W; remnants of iron railing s with star-shaped castings at pedestian gateway. High mutual boundary walls.

Statement of Special Interest

The importance of this house was noted in Blackie's VILLA AND COTTAGE ARCHITECTURE, where it is thorougly documented (plans, elevations and a Description). At $826 10 8, Thornton Shiells' 3-bedroom villa at grange stood at the cheaper end of the exemples illustrated by Blackie. A Number of the features described are still in situ, including "Maw's encaustic tiles" In the vestibule, the "well relieved plaster cornices", The "iron balusters and handrail of polished oak", the "stone from Binny Quarry", and probably beneath paint the Baltic red-deal porch pillars and many of the Americal yellow-pine interior fittings. Unfotunately none of the exotic iron finials and brattishing has surved. Curiously, the ground plan of the house as built is reversed by Blackie.

The house bears considerable resemblance to No 3 Chalmers Crescent, particaularly in the treatment of the detached window mullions, the porch, the stacks, and the 1st floor dormerheads.

References

Bibliography

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