Description

SP19NW SUTTON COLDFIELD BRACEBRIDGE ROAD
Four Oaks

2/10004 Number 12,
and attached walls

GV
II

House. 1902. Designed by Edward Haywood-Farmer for himself, and built by Isaac Langley. Thin, red, sand-faced Leicester brick laid in Flemish bond with sparing dressings of stone and lead, roof of tiles. The principal range runs roughly east-west with a cross-wing at the east end of the south front and a service wing at the west end of the north front. Two storeys and attic; irregular fenestration. All windows flat-arched, and generally with wooden casements. Flat-arched entrance in east front with a shouldered architrave of stone and a six-panelled door, the upper panels filled with leaded gazing; the entrance is set in a very shallow, two-storey gabled porch, the upper, two-light window having stone dressings and a pattern of stepped brickwork around its head; the gable of the porch has a pattern of stepped bricks as a cornice, and this motif is repeated on most gables, the rest having wooden barge-boards. To the right of the porch is the gable-end of the principal range, with a single-storey canted bay window with a lead parapet decorated with rosettes; to the left of the porch is the cast side of the southern cross-wing, with a similar bay window and an caves cornice having composite modillions and wrought-iron gutter brackets. On the south front the gable end of the cross-wing has a canted, single-storey bay window under a hipped roof, which is in keeping with, but not a part of, the original building, a flat-arched window above and a stone lozenge in the gable; the left-hand return has an external stack and caves as on the east side; the principal range has, chiefly, three cross-gables, under the smallest and easternmost is a garden entrance to the ground floor and a flat-arched window above between simplified brick pilasters terminating in a stone-coped gable with ball finials to the kneelers; under the middle gable are flat-arched windows to ground and first floors and attic, and a stack which breaks up through the left-hand side of the gable; under the left-hand gable is a single-storey canted bay window with lead guttering decorated with rosettes, and two flat-arched windows. The west front has had a door added in the service wing; the north front has two two-storey gabled projections of one brick's depth and, in the attic, three lead-covered segmental-arched dormers. The former washhouse, coalhouse etc form a single-storey wing round a courtyard at the north-west corner with a screen wall on the west side. End and ridge-stacks, all lowered. Low brick walls to the south side, with coping of brick and tiles, form a terrace in front of the house with steps down, the original ball finials now replaced. INTERIOR: Architraves and six-panelled doors survive generally. Hall panelled in oak to picture rail height with unmoulded framing; simple fireplace with one course of tiles by William De Morgan, the rest replacements; dining room panelled in the same way, with a fireplace set at an angle in a recess; drawing room with a panelled recess round the fireplace and simple plasterwork decoration to the ceiling; dog-leg staircase with square newels and balusters.

Listing NGR: SP1108997828

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26319971

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

• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook 2 Books Bundle Collection (Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair,Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability)
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5