Reasons for Designation
Prescott's Almshouses is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* The row of six almshouses is designed in the vernacular gothic style with careful attention to both composition and detailing to produce an attractive façade which is also appropriately styled to emphasise the long almshouse tradition in England
* The row retains its original subsidiary features such as the garden wall and gate piers to the front communal garden, individual yards and privies, and private rear alley, again emphasising the care taken to design a complete setting with regard to the elderly occupants of the almshouses
* This is a late C19 example of secular almshouses, where the prominent position afforded to a chapel in former centuries has been superseded by a more elaborately detailed central house with a good quality relief portrait of the benefactor displayed over the door
Details
701/0/10078 REDDISH ROAD
09-DEC-09 PRESCOTT'S ALMSHOUSES (INCLUDING ASSOC
IATED BOUNDARY AND GARDEN WALLS, GATEW
AYS AND GATE PIERS, AND OUTBUILDINGS)
II
Almshouses. 1882 by James Hunt. Speckled bricks, red brick detailing, red sandstone dressings, banded tile roof. Vernacular gothic style.
PLAN: Row of 6 houses each with two-up two-down plan with stairs rising from back room. Each house has individual yard with privy and gateways onto a private alley with high boundary walls and wide gateway at north end.
EXTERIOR: 5 houses (Nos. 395, 397, 399, 401, and 403) form symmetrical composition, with the house at the north end (No.405) set slightly back. Plinth with chamfered stone coping, broad stone string band between ground and first floors, steep roof with deep overhanging eaves, half-hipped to left (south) end, step down to lower hipped roof to house at north end, decorative ridge tiles. Projecting, gabled central house (No.399) with decorative timbering to apex of gable, terracotta finial. Tall panelled brick stack to left. Shallow, gabled porch with stone coping, tumbled brickwork to battered base, red brick quoining, stilted stone arch over door with stone tympanum containing a portrait relief of the founder with the inscription PRESCOTT'S ALMSHOUSES below, and 2 corbels carved with the date 1882. String course inscribed TRUSTEES MARK TAYLOR, JOSEPH EDWIN WARD to left and JAMES HUNT, ARCHITECT to right. Timber transom casement window to each side, and paired first-floor windows with pointed heads. Mirror arrangement of two flanking houses to each side. Paired gabled dormers with terracotta finials breaking through the eaves, with shared tall panelled brick stacks between. Mullion and transom timber windows in dormers and beneath on ground floor. Doorways in outer bays with tiled sloping canopies. North end house has similar doorway to left, with dormer window and ground-floor window to right and tall end wall stack. All windows have coloured glass in flower motifs to the upper lights. All doors are battened with iron thumb latches. Rear elevation of each house has doorway with adjacent window, all with replacement uPVC window frames, stone lintels and sills. Single small timber casement window on first floor, except north end house, which has window in end wall.
INTERIOR: Battened doors. No.399 has original cupboard and drawers next to chimney breast in ground-floor front room, original bedroom chimneypiece in front bedroom. Back bedroom converted to bathroom. Other interiors not inspected.
SUBSIDIARY ITEMS: Low boundary garden wall of brick with moulded stone coping to south side, front (Reddish Road) and north side (Greg Street), with pedestrian gateway at south end and gateway on Greg Street. Brick gate piers with shaped stone coping, those on Greg Street with foliate carved band. High pier and panel brick wall with stone coping abutting north-west corner of north end house, incorporating wide gateway with depressed segmental arch with giant keystone at west end. Replacement double timber gates. Wall returns along west boundary in English garden wall bond, returning at south end to abut south-west corner of end house. To rear of each house is a yard with low brick walls with chamfered stone coping and gateway opening into enclosed cobbled alley, and brick privy (now w.c.) with mono-pitch tiled roof, and battened door with iron thumb latch. Yards have stone flags and some have vertical shaped stone partition, probably to contain coal heap.
HISTORY: This terrace of almshouses was founded through the bequest of W W Prescott, a drysalter who left £5,000 in 1878, of which £2,072 was spent on building the almshouses. They were built for the use of tenants over the age of 60 from Reddish, Bredbury, and Denton.
REASON FOR DESIGNATION
Prescott's Almshouses is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* The row of six almshouses is designed in the vernacular gothic style with careful attention to both composition and detailing to produce an attractive façade which is also appropriately styled to emphasise the long almshouse tradition in England
* The row retains its original subsidiary features such as the garden wall and gate piers to the front communal garden, individual yards and privies, and private rear alley, again emphasising the care taken to design a complete setting with regard to the elderly occupants of the almshouses
* This is a late C19 example of secular almshouses, where the prominent position afforded to a chapel in former centuries has been superseded by a more elaborately detailed central house with a good quality relief portrait of the benefactor displayed over the door
