Details
LITTLE NESS C.P.
SJ 41 NW
5/133 Adcote and adjoining
forecourt walls (formerly
2.7.71 listed as Adcote)
GV I
Country house. 1876-81 (dated 1879). By Richard Norman Shaw for Mrs.
Rebecca Darby. Red sandstone ashlar with some timber frame to north.
Plain tile roofs. Irregular plan with great hall and staircase behind
entrance range. In a free Elizabethan style. West (entrance) front:
2 storeys and attics. Plinth, moulded string course over first floor,
and gabled parapet with chamfered coping with gabled kneelers, running over 3
regularly arranged gables. Gable parapet to left-with stack consisting
of tall paired brick shafts with oversailing cap and right-hand gable
end has projecting stone stack with gabled crowsteps rising to taller paired
brick shafts with oversailing caps. Various further tall brick stacks
to rear of range. Very small 2-light blind windows with chamfered reveals
and mullions in apices of gables over paired 3-light windows with chamfered
surrounds and mullions, and dripstones. Irregularly arranged to first
floor below are, to right, paired 3-light chamfered mullioned and transomed
windows, and to left 2 canted oriels rising from string course with carved
foliate ornament, 2:6:2 lights, and moulded parapets; paired cross windows
between. Ground floor with large 5-light mullioned and transomed window
to right, paired 2-light windows off-centre to right and small cross window
to left. Moulded Tudor-arched doorway off-centre to left with pair of
panelled doors, carved spandrels, square surround and hoodmould and paired
2-light overlights. Hall range set back to right with huge full-height
square bay consisting of 8-light mullioned and transomed window (with king
mullion and 2 lights to right-hand return), moulded cornice and battlemented
parapet with hipped roof behind. Forecourt walls adjoining entrance front.
Red sandstone ashlar with chamfered coping. Gateways to front and left-
hand side, each with pair of square piers and pair of wright-iron gates.
Garden gateways adjoining house at each end of wall, each with Tudor archway,
wrought-iron gate and superscribed datestone above: "18 RD 79". South
front: gable end of hall range to left with chamfered plinth, stepped
string course, and 3 tall buttresses with chamfered offsets. Tall 2-
light mullioned and transomed windows flanking central buttress, with blind
panels below and continuous stepped hoodmould. Paired 2-light attic windows
in gable with cill moulding and pair of small ground-floor windows, each with 2 ogee-
headed lights. Shallow-gabled range set-back to right, with 3-light attic
window, paired first-floor cross windows, and large ground-floor 7-light
mullioned and transomed window with dripstone. East front: the principal
features of this front include: brick end stack to. left with tall paired
shafts and projecting lateral stack to front off-centre to right with chamf-
ered offsets and 3 brick shafts, the centre one square; 3-storey canted
bay to left with string courses, dripmoulds, battlemented parapet and mull-
ioned and transomed windows of 2:2:2 lights; 2 large gabled dormers to
right with mullioned windows, and 4 mullioned and transomed windows to
ground and first floors. Arcaded garden loggia in angle to left of 2
+ 2 bays, with panelled parapet. Extensive service range to north.
Windows with leaded lights throughout, those to the hall bay of a lattice
pattern. Fine interior including entrance hall with steps, leading to
vast 4-bay full-height hall: large moulded transverse stone arches, springing
from moulded stone corbels and supporting a crown post roof construction.
Stone fireplace consisting of short colonnettes with foliate capitals and
tall tapered hood. Passage at north end and wooden screen, with gallery
over, incorporating embossed leather panels and continuous bench with balus-
trade. Jettied timber framed wall in gable to north, with leaded wooden
attic casements. Tall moulded arch to bay at south end. Plain dog-leg
staircase rising from screens passage and returning on the axis of the hall.
Panelled dining room with fitted dresser, and large stone inglenook with
moulded arch springing from foliate capitals, smaller fireplace set inside,
and de Morgan tiles in reveals. Further rooms with complete fixtures and
fittings, including library, drawing room and billiard room. First-floor
rooms not inspected. The house stands within a landscaped park. Adcote
is "recognised as Shaw's maturest house of the 1870s" (Saint). B.o.E., pp.
52-3; Andrew Saint, Richard Norman Shaw (1976), pp. 100-2, 110-11 and 416;
Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House (1979), pp. 359-365; Country Life,
Vol. XXVI, 25 December 1909, pp. 912-921.
Listing NGR: SJ4184719391
