Historic England Advice Report 07 September 2016 Case Name: Alston HALL, Longridge, Preston, Lancs, PR3 3BP

Case Number: 1433442

Background Historic England has received an application to consider Alston Hall for listing. The application has been prompted by the redundancy of the building and its marketing by the owners.

Asset(s) under Assessment Facts about the asset(s) can be found in the Annex(es) to this report.

Annex List Entry Number Name Heritage Category HE Recommendation 1 1434771 Alston Hall Listing Add to List

Visits Date Visit Type 11 April 2016 Full inspection

Context Alston Hall is mentioned in the ‘Lancashire: North’ volume of the Pevsner Buildings of England guide, but has not previously been assessed for listing.

Assessment CONSULTATION

Due to the impending sale of the building, a reduced consultation period of one week was agreed with the owners and the applicant. The applicant, the owners (Lancashire County Council) and their sales agents, the Historic Environment Record, and the local planning authority were invited to comment on the factual details of the case as part of the consultation process. The applicant confirmed that they had no additional information to add; no other responses to the consultation were received.

DISCUSSION

The statutory criteria for a building being included on the List are that it holds special architectural or historic interest. The general principles the Secretary of State applies when deciding whether a building is of special architectural or historic interest are set out in the Principles of Selection for Listing Buildings (DCMS, 2010). Further detailed considerations are published in Historic England's Selection Guides for specific building types, in this case the most relevant being Domestic 3: Suburban and Country Houses (2011). This highlights the need for progressively greater selectivity after 1840, and that key considerations will be the quality of elevational design, planning interest, the quality and survival of decorative elements, and innovation.

As described in the entry in the Pevsner Buildings of England guide, Alston Hall makes good use of the progression of elevations, in particular on its garden front (south elevation). In addition, the varying height of the different projecting elements on that elevation helps to create a harmonious composition and to identify principal internal spaces. This careful use of recession extends to other elevations; for example through the tower projecting from the east front, which in turn sits forward of the east wall of the north range. This lends the square house an aspect similar to the phased, courtyard-plan houses built when the style was new. The

Page 1 of 8 Historic England Advice Report 07 September 2016 overall Tudor Revival style is plain, but close inspection reveals substantial detailing beyond the obvious hoodmoulds to windows. This includes chevron courses and blind oculi in the gables, scrolls to the kneeler corbels, and even gablets to the shoulders of the tall chimney stacks and machicolations to their corbelled tops. The detailing to the tower is particularly fine, with machicolations, gargoyles and elaborate stops to the hoodmoulds of the (projecting) porte-cochere arches. The high standard of detailing is continued internally with Gothic details (mainly in the public spaces) mixing with what Darbyshire called the French-Italian style in the rooms. Together, the Entrance Hall, galleried staircase, Billiard Room, Dining Room, Drawing Room and Chapel make a very good suite of high-status spaces, with very finely-detailed plasterwork, good joinery and good use of high-quality stone such as marble and granite. Good detailing is also found in private and lower-status spaces such as bedrooms and the service stair, not just in the more prestigious areas. Overall, the design is carefully considered and well executed, and above the ordinary standard for its time. It compares well, for example, with the larger but similar-style Crookhey Hall (National Heritage List for England 1071793), of 1874 by Alfred Waterhouse, who was articled to the partner of Darbyshire’s mentor, Peter Alley. It is also of a similar style and standard to Shavington Hall (1877, NHLE 1258019).

The designer of Alston Hall, Alfred Darbyshire (1839-1908), was a notable theatre architect, in particular having improved fire safety for audiences. His work was chiefly around Manchester (including The Palace Theatre, Grade II, NHLE 1271227), but also in London and Exeter. Some of his domestic work is already listed, mainly at Lyme Park where he designed or altered several buildings. His authorship of Alston Hall is mentioned in his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was elected an associate of the Institute of British Architects in 1864, fellow in 1870, and vice-president 1902–5. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1894. From 1901 to 1903 he was president of the Manchester Society of Architects, and did much to encourage the foundation of a chair of architecture at Manchester University. He was also a notable figure in Manchester society, being one of the original members of the Brasenose Club, and well-known in theatrical circles. He published several books on heraldry, and The Booke of Olde Manchester and Salford, A Chronicle of the Brasenose Club, Manchester, An Architect's Experiences: Professional, Artistic, and Theatrical, and The Art of the Victorian Stage. The attribution of the design to Darbyshire adds to the special architectural interest manifest in the fabric.

Darbyshire’s work at Alston Hall is largely still extant, partly due to good stewardship of the building by its public-sector owners since 1949. Alterations have been carried out sympathetically, with much of the accommodation for residential courses being provided in the attics, and with partitioning of service rooms on the main floors respecting and preserving the elaborate cornicing and skirting. Some fireplaces have been replaced or altered, but few have been blocked and many are probably original. Good quality flooring, joinery and fittings are still found throughout the building, including quarry tiles on the cellar floor. In addition, the only extension, in the north-east corner, is single-storey and has been carefully designed to match the original. This extension is not of special interest, but equally has not detracted from the interest of the original building, or the ancillary buildings with which it links. There is no special interest in the interior of the stable block other than the probable original roof trusses, although the exterior contributes to the interest of the hall, as do the surviving remains of the walled garden (not including modern alterations and repairs) and glass-house. The loss of the original conservatory is a minor one, and its replacement has also not reduced the special interest of the hall; neither has the loss of the attached glasshouses from the north-west corner. The most significant loss externally is the removal of some of the stone mullions and transoms on the south elevation, which are shown in a historic photograph, and also not present in another photograph of uncertain, but historic, age. However, similar windows survive intact on other elevations, and some mullions remain on this elevation. The pattern of the replacement timber windows follows that of the original divisions. Overall the hall can still be read more or less in its original form, and the additions could be reversed with little negative impact. The survival of the walled garden, stable block and ancillary buildings adds to the interest of the house as these elements form part of its original setting and assist in understanding how the house was run.

In recommending the extent of designation, we have considered whether powers of exclusion under s.1 (5A) of the 1990 Act are appropriate, and consider that they are, which is clear in the proposed List entry.

CONCLUSION

After examining all the records and other relevant information and having carefully considered the architectural and historic interest of this case, the criteria for listing are fulfilled. Alston Hall is therefore recommended for listing at Grade II.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION

Alston Hall, a country house of 1876 designed by Alfred Darbyshire, is recommended for listing at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

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* Design quality: with highly decorative elevations and interesting planning including a porte-cochere beneath a tower, and comparing well with other listed examples of similar age; * Architect: as a good domestic design by the notable theatre architect Alfred Darbyshire; * Degree of survival: due to its little-altered appearance and interior, in particular the dining room, drawing room and galleried stair hall, but with historic joinery, plasterwork, fireplaces and light fittings throughout.

Countersigning comments:

Agreed. Alston Hall (and it's associated walled garden and stable block) designed by the notable theatre architect Alfred Darbyshire, is nicely massed, planned and detailed and survives in relatively intact form. It compares well to other country houses of this date and scale that are already on the NHLE and therefore merits its own place on the List at Grade II. V Fiorato, 5 September 2016

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Annex 1

List Entry

List Entry Summary This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

Name: Alston Hall

List Entry Number: 1434771

Location Alston Lane, Alston, Preston, PR3 3BP

The listed buildings are shown coloured blue on the attached map. Pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’), structures attached to or within the curtilage of the listed building (save those coloured blue on the map, the iron gateposts and gates at the entrance, and the iron hoop-top fence and gate enclosing the S lawn) are not to be treated as part of the listed building for the purposes of the Act.

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County District District Type Parish Lancashire Ribble Valley District Authority Longridge

National Park: Not applicable to this List entry.

Grade: II

Date first listed: Date of most recent amendment:

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

Legacy System: Not applicable to this List entry. Legacy Number: Not applicable to this List entry.

Asset Groupings This List entry does not comprise part of an Asset Grouping. Asset Groupings are not part of the official record but are added later for information.

List Entry Description

Summary of Building Country house by Alfred Darbyshire in a Tudor Gothic style, built 1874-6 of buff sandstone for colliery owner John Mercer.

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Reasons for Designation Alston Hall, a country house of 1876 designed by Alfred Darbyshire, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Design quality: with highly decorative elevations and interesting planning including a porte-cochere beneath a tower, and comparing well with other listed examples of similar age; * Architect: as a good domestic design by the notable theatre architect Alfred Darbyshire; * Degree of survival: due to its little-altered appearance and interior, in particular the dining room, drawing room and galleried stair hall, and with historic joinery, plasterwork, fireplaces and light fittings throughout.

History Alston Hall was designed by Alfred Darbyshire and built in 1874-6 for John Mercer, a Lancashire colliery owner. It passed down to his granddaughter and was then sold to the Eccles cotton-manufacturing family, who sold it in turn to William Birtwistle, another wealthy cotton industrialist. In 1949 the Hall and its immediate surroundings were sold to Preston Borough Council (the majority of the land associated with the hall was sold to the Church Commissioners), for use as a Day Continuation College. In 1974 the hall was bought by Lancashire County Council and converted to a residential training centre. The training centre closed in the C21.

The hall is shown on the 1:2,500 Ordnance Survey map of 1892, with gardens to the N and W of the building with associated glasshouses and outbuildings. Little change is shown by subsequent historic maps, but between the 1956 1:10,000 Ordnance Survey and the 1967 1:2,500 map, most of the glasshouses were removed and an extension was added to the NE corner. These changes probably relate to the change of use from a dwelling to a college. On the 1892 map a conservatory is shown in the same position as the existing one, but the current conservatory is a C20 replacement for the original. Some internal partitioning has taken place, particularly on the first floor, but respecting the original fabric. Historic photographs of unknown date indicate that some windows on the S elevation originally had more stone mullions and transoms.

Alfred Darbyshire (1839-1908) was born in Salford and trained as an architect under Peter Bradshaw Alley of Manchester, before establishing his own practice in 1862. He is best known as a theatrical architect, designing theatres in Manchester and Rawtenstall, Lancashire, as well as alterations and re-buildings of theatres in Manchester, London and Exeter. With Henry Irving, he developed the ‘Irving–Darbyshire safety plan’, which was intended to make the audience safe from fire by providing two fireproof escape routes from every part of the house. However he also designed Knutsford Library (Grade II, National Heritage List for England 1388310) and Disley Vicarage (Grade II, NHLE 1231678), as well as several buildings at Lyme Park, Cheshire for William Legh (all listed). He was elected an associate of the Institute of British Architects in 1864, fellow in 1870, and vice-president 1902–5. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1894. From 1901 to 1903 he was president of the Manchester Society of Architects, and did much to encourage the foundation of a Chair of Architecture at Manchester University.

Details Country house in a Tudor Gothic style built 1874-6 by Alfred Darbyshire.

MATERIALS: buff sandstone with banded slate roofs, cast-iron rainwater goods and timber and metal windows.

PLAN: a square plan ranged around a central stair-hall, of two storeys plus an attic and with a four-storey tower over the entrance. A single-storey range projects from the NE corner and along the N side.

DESCRIPTION: set in four acres including a walled garden, woodland walk and croquet lawn, on a building platform above a steep slope to the N of the River Ribble.

HOUSE:

EXTERIOR: Built of regular-coursed, rock-faced stone with ashlar dressings, with a banded slate roof laid in regular courses. The principal elevation is the E front, dominated by a four-storey tower with a porte-cochere at the base and a square turret in the NE corner. The tower has angle buttresses, and a central first floor oriel, with stone mullions and transoms, supported by a buttress that divides a pair of open pointed arches with hoodmoulds. The stages are separated by moulded bands and the tower and turret parapets are machicolated, with angled gargoyles. Third-floor windows on the front and side returns are mullioned with

Page 5 of 8 Historic England Advice Report 07 September 2016 quoined surrounds and hoodmoulds with stops. At the second floor is a pointed-arched niche containing the Mercer family crest with the motto ESSE QUAM VIDERI (‘to be, rather than to seem’), and on the S side two transomed windows and on the N side, a central cartouche with intertwined numerals 1876. The first-floor returns each have a mullion-and-transom window. The porte-cochere openings are elaborately gabled with grotesque stops, over two successive four-centred arches, the outer one on squat columns. The front elevation to either side has mullion-and-transom windows at ground and first floor, and steps back to the right. The eaves cornice is dentilled, with projecting kneelers to the gable copings to the right, and a corbelled gable stack. There is a single steep dormer to either side of the tower, and at the left the roof is hipped where it returns to the garden front.

The (S) garden front is of three bays, stepping forwards twice to the left with gabled bays with kneelers, finials and attic windows like those of the tower’s third floor. To the right are another small, steep dormer, a modern rooflight*, and a ground-floor canted bay window to the billiard room. The left-hand bay has a two-storey square bay window, narrower at first floor and crenellated. The windows retain a central mullion, as does the window over the canted bay, but the centre-bay windows have no mullion or transom. At the left is a tall, corbelled chimney, with a similar one close to the ridge to the right of centre. Attached at the left is a single-storey gabled, apsidal chapel.

The W elevation projects at the left with a hipped roof with central chimney stack and two windows at first floor, and one at ground floor (a scar at the left indicates where the greenhouses were formerly attached). In the angle with the main block is a two-storey turret with a frieze above the cornice and steeply-pitched hipped roof with a small modern dormer; behind this is another tall chimney stack. The first-floor window of the turret is mullioned and transomed, with a similar window in the S face of the projecting block, with two steep dormers above. The ground floor is partly concealed by a conservatory*, probably early C20, and the chapel. A scar on the face of the turret indicates where the pitched roof of the original conservatory was attached, with brickwork beneath this now exposed. At the right the large chimney stack visible from the garden front has a hoodmoulded cartouche with the initials JM (for John Mercer).

The N elevation has mullion-and-transom windows, one in a shallow square bay to the kitchen. In the centre is a gabled attic with pointed, transomed window, and a chimney stack to the right and a kneeler to the left. Beyond this is the recessed, gabled return of the front elevation, which is blind save for one small first-floor window, and with a projecting central chimney stack rising from the first floor. The gabled centre bay has a C20 single-storey extension*, with a shallow roof and tall gable stack, with a further, low extension projecting to the right of the chimney and returning to the right along the N elevation and linking with earlier, brick outbuildings. The extension is executed in materials and details matching the main house. The brick outbuildings are original, with stone dressings. The outbuildings and extension all have scored render on the elevations facing the house.

INTERIOR :The porte-cochere has a timber ceiling with moulded ribs and pendant bosses, and timber tiercerons to the corner corbels. The front doorway has a tall pointed arch with a drip mould and stops, and a door reached by four steps. The double doors match the arch, with four panels to each door. The details are very similar internally, where a small lobby leads via a painted stone archway to the hall. The floor throughout is of white marble with a diagonal pattern. A Porter’s room opens off the hall to the right through a pointed-arched door. The open-well stair has a barley-sugar balustrade with square newels and ramped banisters, and barley-sugar stair rods. At first floor is a fine gallery with Gothic arches on foliate columns. The ceiling is coved with corbelled ribs and a large skylight with leaded glass and a chandelier. Most rooms at ground and first floor have original doors and brassware, joinery, fireplaces, ceiling mouldings and light fittings; there are some fluorescent tubes* and electrical fittings* relating to the former teaching use. Particularly elaborate are the Drawing room (which has Grecian frieze, modillioned cornice and a very large arched, mirrored alcove) and Dining room, which is similar.

Windows are a mixture of timber and metal with historic fittings. A lift* has been inserted to one side of the gallery, and some rooms at first floor and attic have had partitions* inserted without damage to the original fabric. There are separate stairs to the tower and for the service staff, with ramped banisters and skirting. A large cellar has encaustic tiled floors, with a strong-room and safe at the top of the cellar steps, beneath the service stair. The kitchen has modern fittings*. The roof structure is largely original, with a large glazed timber lantern over the hall skylight, with a chandelier winch. There is some inserted steelwork* in the tower, supporting a large water tank*.

STABLE BLOCK: abutting the S wall of the walled garden is a linear former stable block of one and a half storeys, gabled at the E and W and roughly symmetrical, with a gabled dormer to either side of a central gable in the S front. This is in red brick in English Garden Wall bond. The W gable has what appear to be inserted windows*. The front openings are somewhat altered but appear to have originally served looseboxes

Page 6 of 8 Historic England Advice Report 07 September 2016 and a carriage house, with a hayloft door in the right-hand dormer. The E gable has a similar JM cartouche to the SW chimney of the house, for John Mercer. The interior is entirely modern* although what appear to be original roof trusses are visible in the first floor rooms.

WALLED GARDEN: the walled garden stands to the N of the house, with entrances in the SW corner (adjacent to which is a lean-to brick-based timber greenhouse), the centre of the N wall and towards the S end of the E side. The walls are of brick in stretcher bond with angled tile copings. The external skin of the N and W walls* appear to have been rebuilt with new bricks, but the internal brickwork appears original although the W side has been raised in height. The N and E walls have stepped buttresses and there are some openings into the garden in the N wall of the stable block. There are modern paths* and a fountain*.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: approached by a driveway leading from a set of iron gateposts and gates. The S lawn is enclosed by an iron hoop-top fence with gateway.

*Pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the aforementioned items are not of special architectural or historic interest

Selected Sources

Books and journals

Hartwell, C., Pevsner, N, in The Buildings of England, Lancashire, North, (2009), 85

Websites

Dictionary of Scottish Architects entry for Alfred Darbyshire, accessed 03/02/16 from http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=20682 2

Historic photographs of the hall, accessed 18/04/16 from http://townarchive.longridgestation.co.uk/

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Alfred Darbyshire, accessed 26/07/16 from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32712

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Map

National Grid Reference: SD6081233946

© Crown Copyright and database right 2015. All rights reserved. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100024900.

The above map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. For a copy of the full scale map, please see the attached PDF - 1434771_1.pdf

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