Highlands Gardens

An aviary by the name of the "Bird World Display Centre" existed on the northern edge of the gardens until the late 1990s.

Braithwaite was an amateur astronomer who had a copper-domed observatory built at the house with a telescope on rails offering 360 degree views of the sky.

[3] During the Second World War, the dome was painted black in order to prevent it being visible to enemy aircraft in moonlight.

His daughter, Joan Cochrane, recalled: "The windows were by Crittall, and some contained leaded lights; the staircase of oak; the ground floor parquet.

This was a substantial house, with the roof fully lined with wood beneath the tiles and the lofts boarded.