Cheswardine Hall, Entrance Forecourt Walls and Gate Piers

Details

SJ 73 SW
4/141


CHESWARDINE C.P
Cheswardine Hall, Entrance, forecourt walls and gate piers

GV
II
Country House. Started 1875 to replace an earlier house for C Donaldson Hudson. Architect unknown. Red brick with ashlar quoins and dressings; tiled roofs. Elizabethan Revival style with an asymmetrical plan, basically rectangular but with cross-wing to right and two service ranges to left. Two storeys and attics, with strings to each floor; irregular gabled frontage and varied roofline; although the principal rooms are to the centre and right, the composition is balanced to the left by the subordinate rooms, making the low four-storey tower-porch with its balustrated parapet roughly central. Mullion and transom windows of two and three lights, cornices to attic windows, moulded range copings and finials to the copings; linked octagonal chimneys in pairs and threes picturesquely disposed to the main, right-hand, part and more regular to the left hand part. Set back to right are three windows below and gable, a minor bay below a dormer (now with metal fire-escape from first floor) and then comes the projecting gabled wing; to the left is a lower part, flush with the porch with two gabled half-dormers, a minor gable (to the back stairs) and a lower 3-bay projecting gabled wing linked by a curved gable. Classical partico to entrance with paired Doric columns and strapwork parapet, rounded five-light stone bar window above. Return to right (south) equally gabled and varied. The principal feature is the ground floor bay to left of centre. Interior: panelled entrance hall leads to top-lit stair hall approached by steps and
skav doorway which suggests an earlier core (courtyard) at this point. Most of the decoration (panelling and ceilings) is of late C16/early C17 type with strapwork etc, but those are strong Queen Anne elements - in particular the rooms and the principal baroque library with its flutted pilasters and plaster wreath on the ceiling with high relief fruit and flowers; the best ceiling is in the drawing room. On the first floor, one of the bedrooms has Adam-Revival ceiling decoration and chimney piece. In general the chimney pieces are of good quality mostly in C18 English and French styles. One of the most spectacular features is the quoin-vaults cross-axis distribution corridor which terminates in an angled bay-window seat. Entrance forecourt: the house front is defined by low brick walls and two sets of rusticated brick piers with stone dressings and bell-finials; to the left an taller reverse quadrant walls with further gate-piers to the back drive. Impression-gardens particularly walled garden to N.W with clipped yews and Japanese garden to south. Peter Reid; Burke's and Saville's Guide to Country Houses (vol II 1080; BOE Building Accounts in Shropshire Record Offices.


Listing NGR: SJ7251130807

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

260156

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Shropshire, (1958)
Reid, P, Burkes and Savills Guide to Country Houses in Herefordshire Shropshire Warwickshire Worcestershire, (1980)

End of official list entry

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