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