Wynlass Beck

Details

WINDERMERE

781/0/10008 Wynlass Beck
22-APR-03

II

Villa. 1854, with minor late C20 alterations. By Joseph Stretch Crowther, architect of Manchester, for Mr Peter Kennedy. Rubble Lakeland greystone with with ashlar sandstone dressings, quoins, moulded kneelers, coped gables and a Westmorland slate roof covering, laid to diminishing courses. Gothic revival style.
PLAN: Extended L-plan, with main domestic range to south, service range and attached glasshouse to north and west.
EXTERIOR: Entrance (east ) front formed by paired gables of different widths, both steeply-pitched with a massive square chimney between. Main entrance off-centre within right- hand gable to right, with stepped chamfered ashlar surround, and a shouldered and joggled head to recessed double doorway, below a blind quatrefoil. Double plank doors with elaborately decorated strap hinges and door fittings. Above, 3 lancet windows with pointed heads below hood moulds. Left- hand gable with single pointed arch window with quatrefoil head.
South elevation to garden of 2 storeys with attics, 4 bays, with wide gable to left-hand end, narrow gables which break through the eaves to bays 2 and 4, and a full-height projecting bay window to bay 3 with a faceted pitched roof rising to a point. Multi-light mullioned windows in quoined surrounds, the individual lights mostly with trefoil heads. Cill bands to all storeys. Late C20 conservatory added at east end. West elevation with wide truncated stack to right, with flanking ground floor 2-light windows, and, further left, a 2 storey entrance porch with a shallow pyramidal roof. Extending westwards from the porch, a low glasshouse with curved roof pitches, behind which is set a single storey L-shaped service range extending from the north end of the west elevation. North elevation with advanced gable to west end, and various 2-light windows, including a stair window to east end.
INTERIOR: Entrance vestibule gives access to arcaded stair hall with moulded pointed arches, one now infilled. The main stair is dog-legged with octagonal newel posts with crenellated caps, interrupted splat balusters and moulded
handrails. Principal reception rooms and bedrooms with 9-panel doors,moulded architraves and skirtings and moulded plaster cornices. Most rooms retain original ashlar or marble hearth surrounds. Service rooms retain built in cupboards. Extensive cellars, some modified to habitable rooms.
HISTORY: J.S Crowther was a specialist church architect, favouring the Gothic revival style, and had also designed houses in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. He was associated with the Rev. John Aspinall Addison, who had built a Gothic revival villa in Windermere shortly after the completion of the Kendal and Windermere Railway in 1847. Addison funded the building of a chapel (which later became Windermere's first church), a junior school and a residential college. Crowther designed several more houses for wealthy clients in Windermere, and is thought to have worked to Addison's direction on other projects in Windermere in the 1850's and 60's including additions to St Mary's church.

A distinctive and little- altered detached villa of 1854 for Mr Peter Kennedy by the architect J.S. Crowther of Manchester, part of an important group of Gothic revival style buildings which helped create the distinctive architectural character of Windermere village in the decades following the completion of the Kendal and Windermere railway in 1847.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

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490062

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LBS

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