Details
BRISTOL
ST315874 REDLAND COURT ROAD, Redland
901-1/35/1719 (West side)
08/01/59 Redland Court (Redland High School)
(Formerly Listed as:
REDLAND COURT ROAD, Redland
(West side)
Redland Court)
II*
House, now school. 1732-5. By John Strachan. For John Cossins.
Limestone ashlar, render with limestone dressings, ashlar
stacks, Pennant steps, roof not visible. Axial, double-depth
plan. Palladian style. 2 storeys and basement; 13-window
range.
Symmetrical composition of a central 7-window block, with
flanking pavilions behind. The main block has steps up over
the basement to a slightly projecting centre, which has a
rusticated ground floor with three C19 French windows beneath
tented glazed verandah, beneath a tetrastyle-in-antis Ionic
portico to a modillion pediment with 4 putti around a
cartouche, and 3 windows with architraves beneath swag. Either
side has clasping pilasters, sill bands, cornices and
balustrade with 7 good urns; Gibbs surrounds to basement and
ground-floor windows, the latter with eared architraves with
prominent voussoirs over cornices, and first-floor windows
with architraves and cornices, all with plate-glass sashes.
The pavilions have rusticated pilasters to a cornice and
parapet, with plain urns; the ground floor has a Venetian
window with a shell-head niche flanked by narrow windows with
Gibbs surrounds and voussoirs, above a blind balustrade, and
plain first-floor sashes. C19 upper floor to the right
pavilion and an octagonal cupola to the left one. The
connecting ranges have 2 semicircular-arched ground-floor
windows and small plain windows under a cornice.
INTERIOR: 3 good front rooms fully panelled, modillion
cornices, and fluted Ionic pilasters to segmental arches and
4-fold doors connecting the central and E room, and good
marble fireplaces. A central stone-flagged hall to the rear
with decorative ceiling, Doric frieze and doorcase with a
broken pediment and a mahogany 6-panel door; either side are 2
good open-well stairs, that to left following the semicircular
wall to a quarter landing, with a semi-domed ceiling,
barleysugar column-on-vase balusters and fluted Doric column
newels, ramped rails and pedimented doorcases, Doric frieze
with bucrania; the right-hand open-well stair has quarter
landings and plainer column-on-vase balusters, and doorcases
with segmental pediments. HISTORICAL NOTE: an Elizabethan
house was demolished on the site in 1730, and some of the
panelling re-used. The house was built for John Cossins; the
design uses details derived from Colen Campbell, at Houghton.
(Ison W: The Georgian Buildings of Bristol: Bath: 1952-: 164;
Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural
History: Bristol: 1979-: 133; Dening C F W: The Eighteenth
Century Architecture of Bristol: Bristol: 1923-; The Buildings
of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London:
1958-: 471).
Listing NGR: ST5828574844