Summary
A Gothick villa of around 1836 by Richard Lane, altered in the late C19 and remodelled in 1897 by George Faulkner Armitage, with some later alterations.
Reasons for Designation
Brook House, a Gothick villa of around 1836 by Richard Lane, altered in the late C19 and remodelled in 1897 by George Faulkner Armitage, with some later alterations, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as a villa of around 1836 enhanced by additions of 1897, with both phases of high quality for the period;
* as a rare surviving example of domestic work by Richard Lane, and a good example of the work of George Faulkner Armitage;
* surviving with relatively little alteration and retaining substantial internal features of interest, in particular the suite of work by Armitage.
Historic interest:
* as a surviving early villa of Victoria Park, one of the earliest gated planned suburbs in the country, developed in response to the flight of professionals from the centre of Manchester, the world’s first industrial city.
Group value:
* with other surviving early villas of the suburb, thought to be by Richard Lane, in particular the listed 2 Conyngham Road, Victoria Park Hotel (2, 4 and 6 Park Crescent) and Park House (2 Lower Park Road).
History
Brook House (originally named Park View) is one of the original houses of Victoria Park. This gated suburban residential park was the first in Manchester, and one of the earliest in the country. The notable architect Richard Lane was one of the company’s founders and built his own house (originally named Park Villa, demolished 1963) around 1836 on the corner opposite Brook House. Both houses are marked as complete on an 1836 plan of the laying out of the park. By the 1860s it appears that the house was owned by the Arning family (who lived on Upper Park Road), but let to their friends the Leiberts.
Probably in the 1860s or 1870s, the house was extended by two storeys to the north-west (retaining the original service stair) and (single storey) to the south-east. The original north-east corner (probably single storey) also appears to have been removed. After the last of the Arnings died in 1896, the Leiberts moved to Brook House. The next year they commissioned George Faulkner Armitage to alter the house. Armitage’s work included: an eastern, single-storey extension housing a billiard room; a new entrance hall and remodelled stair hall and dining room, and a smoke room with bedroom and bathroom above that replaced an original canted bay in the south-west corner. These interiors were of a medieval Gothic, Arts and Crafts character. However certain elements of the original interior, such as plaster cornices, arched doorways and panelled timber doors, were allowed to remain in some of the rooms and circulation spaces, as well as some features in the cellar. Elements of the Gothick exterior also remained, such as the traceried front doors and stair window. Elements sympathetic to Lane’s original style were also included in the extensions, such as square bays, a stepped parapet and Tudor-arched windows.
Manchester Corporation’s education committee bought the house in 1930 and it became the municipal day trades school for girls, an annexe of the college of domestic economy. This later became Elizabeth Gaskell college, and in 1976 this amalgamated with others to become the Manchester College of Higher Education, whose centre of administration was the Elizabeth Gaskell campus. This eventually became part of Manchester Metropolitan University, but closed in 2014. During this use changes were largely limited to the insertion of fire prevention screens, replacement lighting and redecoration, and a lift was added at the rear. Hoodmoulds with label stops also appear to have been removed from some of the windows on the east side, and above the door, probably indicating that the house was re-rendered.
The building has remained empty since 2014. Planning permission was granted in 2017 for a new hospital on the site of the campus. Brook House was to continue in office and administration use. However, the building of the hospital was delayed and in the interim the condition of the house has deteriorated. Some theft has taken place, including: the beaten copper hood and painted city coat of arms of the billiard-room fireplace; most of the probable William de Morgan tiles of the dining room’s ingle nook, and decorative hand-made Armitage brass door handles. Some items have been removed but remain in the house, including one of the leaded lights of the ingle nook, and a leaded glass door of the dining room cabinet. Fire damage and water ingress however now (2022) threaten the loss of the entire building, with several partially-collapsed floors and ceilings.
Richard Lane (1795 to 1880) was raised in London but became Manchester’s leading architect during the 1820s and 1830s, when he built or remodelled some of the city’s most important public and institutional buildings. As well as Greek Revival style classical buildings he also designed neo-Tudor and Gothick buildings during this period, before fully embracing the Gothic Revival style in the 1840s (notably at Cheadle Royal hospital, Heald Green, Greater Manchester). Victoria Park (Rusholme, Manchester) was the most ambitious project of his career. Lane designed the layout and the handful of villas which were erected in the first few years following the founding of the company in 1836 and before its financial failure in 1842. The latter are among the few known examples of his domestic architecture. Lane was an architect who made an important contribution to the spread of the Greek Revival style in the provinces. He helped to shape early-C19 Manchester and was the city's first truly professional architect. At least a dozen listed buildings are securely attributed to him, and several more probably attributable on stylistic grounds.
George Faulkner Armitage (1849-1937) was an accomplished artisan craftsman and designer of interiors and furniture. He never trained as an architect although he also designed buildings and was listed in the Directory of British Architects 1834-1914. He studied wood carving on the continent and established a partnership and studios in a former coaching inn at Altrincham by 1878. The form, methods and ideals of his work influenced the work of other well-regarded designers. These included the architect Richard Barry Parker (who was Armitage’s assistant or apprentice from 1889 to 1891) and Arthur Simpson (who later worked with CFA Voysey). He exhibited and designed the interiors at the Manchester Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition (1882) and the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition (1887) and won a gold medal for the council chamber of the British section offices at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. His billiard room at Stoneleigh, Kirklees (National Heritage List for England – NHLE - entry 1134337) had internal joinery of such high quality that it was accorded a double page illustration in the ‘British Architect’ of February 1891. He is accredited with work at several listed buildings.
Details
A Gothick villa of around 1836 by Richard Lane, altered in the late C19 and remodelled in 1897 by George Faulkner Armitage, with some later alterations.
MATERIALS: stuccoed brick, slate roof.
EXTERIOR: the two-storey house faces south. The original is four bays wide, with single-bay extensions to the east and west. At the left is a recessed two-storey bay with stepped parapet, two windows upstairs and one downstairs. The original house has projecting eaves and a projecting gabled entrance bay left-of-centre. To the left of this are stacked timber mullion-and-transom windows. The entrance bay has stone steps up to traceried double doors with leaded glass and an overlight with modern glass; the window above has a sash window with a Tudor-arched upper light. To the right are two bays, gabled at the right, both with ground-floor square bays. Each has three-light windows, with two-light windows above, all with Tudor-arched upper lights. The single-storey bay to the right has an eaves cornice with mutules, and a large nine-light window.
The west garden front has a large gabled bay to the left of centre, with a two-storey canted bay window with Tudor-arched lights. Right of this the smoke-room extension projects, with an eaves cornice and two slender two-storey square bays with mullion-and-transom windows; the original west gable is visible above this extension. The blind wall at the far left has lost its render, revealing the brickwork in English Garden Wall bond.
The north rear is of three storeys plus a basement. At the right is a wide gabled outshut with service-stair windows to each floor, flanked by windows on each side; most of the windows are multi-pane sliding sashes without horns. The lower-left window is obscured by a C20 access lift. Left of this is a two-storey gabled outshut which is blind at the ground floor and largely concealed at basement level by a modern terrace. Between these two gabled outshuts is a flat-roofed passage to a recessed rear entrance in a three-storey gabled wall behind, which is largely obscured by these rear outshuts. The rear of the altered south-east corner is visible, set back at the left, with a modern fire escape.
The east wall has paired sash windows to each floor of the extension at the right, and towards the rear of the original house. In the centre is an original flat-roofed bay with a traceried, four-centred-arched stair window with a stopped houdmould and leaded and coloured glass. This bay is obscured at ground floor level by the billiard room extension which is also flat-roofed. The cornice of the front returns along this side, and the billiard room has two large mullion-and-transom timber windows with leaded and coloured glass. Above this in the original east gable is a two-light window with a stopped houdmould, Tudor-arched heads and margin-lights.
INTERIOR: the cellars retain quarry-tiled and stone-flagged floors, a fireplace, a brick vaulted ice-house and stone tables and shelves on brick piers. Other original features in the principal living areas include at least one original four-panelled door (with beading), plaster cornices and coving, basket-arched doorways and the closed-string service stair with stick balusters, ramped handrails and skirting, and turned newels.
Armitage’s interiors include work of a high quality. The panelled walls, and twelve-panelled doors, have carved friezes of ivy. The entrance hall is divided from the stair hall by a room formed by later panelled and glazed timber screens. The entrance hall has a fireplace with a glazed-tile fireback and a surround and an overmantel in the form of a roofed colonnade with niche carvings. Above the door the panelling is inscribed TRUE FRIENDSHIP’S LAWS ARE BY THIS RULE/ EXPREST/WELCOME THE COMING, SPEED THE PARTING/ GUEST. The stair hall has the same panelling. At the left above the smoke room door is inscribed ALTERNATE REST AND LABOUR/ LONG ENDURE. The drawing room to the north has the inscription WHEN FRIENDS MEET/ HEARTS WARM. The doorway from the stair hall to the service area has the inscription WELL BEFALL/ HEARTH AND HALL. The stair newel forms a column to a splat-baluster fretwork screen spanning the stair and the passage east to the billiard room. The dining room doorway south of the stair is inscribed SMALL CHEER AND GREAT WELCOME/ MAKE A MERRY FEAST, and on the south wall of the hall there is a decorative window lighting the dining room’s ingle nook.
The smoke room has a window with patterned leaded glass, and a Lincrusta dado. The pronounced corbels to the chimney breast (also evident in the entrance hall) are characteristic of Armitage but the cornice and coving are original. The drawing room has further cornice and coving. A giant, sumptuously-carved sideboard and fitted cabinets with leaded glazed doors fill the east wall of the dining room, surrounding the chimney breast. They are faced across the room by a large ingle nook with a semi-circular arch carved with thistles in the spandrels, and with a row of beaten and studded brass panels above. The ingle nook has fitted glazed cabinets matching those opposite. Some of the William de Morgan fireback tiles remain. The ingle nook is lit by two, three-light windows of leaded and coloured glass, patterned in a very similar way to the carvings of the entrance hall chimneypiece. One borrows light from the entrance vestibule, and the other from the stair hall. The interior surfaces are covered with carved and painted decoration.
The other principal room of the ground floor is the billiard room, which is reached by passing the stairs along a corridor retaining its parquet floor. The billiard room also retains its own parquet. Heavy ceiling timbers, a pronounced low cornice and mock timber bracing in the frieze above are all in dark wood. The north wall has a panelled niche flanked by pilasters. The west wall has a fireplace flanked by full-height corbelled pilasters and with a glazed-tile fireback, and Minton hearth tiles. Several doors on this and the first floor have four panels of hand-carved foliage by Armitage.
The staircase has newels carved with anthemion and palmette, and barley-twist balusters. The first-floor landing has a skylight with leaded and coloured glass, and a door with two panels of foliate carving and a glazed panel matching the skylight. There are two basket-headed archways, one leading to the service stair. Other rooms retain some decorative joinery, and hand-made window fastenings. Attic rooms are more altered and several rooms have (in 2022) fire and water damage to ceilings, floors and decoration.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the boundary wall retains some original stone coping, entrance quadrant walls and stone piers with displaced caps.
