Grey Towers House (Poole Hospital) And Attached Wall

Grey Towers House, now Poole Hospital, and attached wall

A country house built in 1865-67 by the Darlington architect John Ross for W.R.I. Hopkins, an ironmaster. The house was converted to a sanatorium in 1932 and now serves as a residence for hospital staff. It is constructed of squared random ironstone rubble with sandstone quoins and dressings, and has Lakeland slate roofs. The design is in the High Victorian Gothic style.

The building is of two storeys with an attic storey. The east entrance front is asymmetrical, with six bays featuring a slightly-projecting gabled right end bay and a projecting tower in the third bay. A projecting one-storey open porch with chamfered corners, clasping buttresses and stilted segmental-pointed openings with moulded heads on short nook shafts with carved capitals precedes the entrance. A low parapet is ornamented with blind quatrefoils and shields in shaped gables. Beyond this lies a deeply-recessed three-bay arcaded screen with moulded heads, octagonal colonnettes with carved capitals and ornamental cast iron panels in the right and left openings. This leads to an inner porch with carved lower and traceried glazed upper-panelled double doors and sidelights, approached by four steps.

The four-stage tower has offsets between its upper stages and chamfered corners on the fourth stage. A canted bay window occupies the second stage. The third stage features a balcony with a fancy iron balustrade fronting a tripartite window in a segmental-pointed recess, flanked by grotesques. A trefoil light in a triangular opening with curved sides sits on the fourth stage. An arcaded frieze and cornice with grotesques at the angles lies below a shaped shallow parapet and recessed spire with a weather vane and compass finial.

A two-storey, five-light square bay window occupies the right end, with a relieving arch between floors and a hipped stone roof with a gabled dormer window. The left end bay has blind windows, the ground floor bearing a carved shield. Throughout, sash windows appear paired and in groups, some with cusped heads, set in pointed, Caernarvon and cusped openings, all with carved-stopped hoodmoulds and sill strings. Shaped-gabled half dormers with blind foils in the gables flank the tower bays. A shallow quatrefoil-ornamented parapet sits above, with a steeply-pitched roof featuring ornate transverse ridge stacks.

A one-storey, one-bay service wing with an end stack adjoins the right side, containing a three-light cusped window. A lower wing with a Caernarvon-arched door and circular window adjoins further right. The similar five-bay left return has an enriched oriel window between the third and fourth bays, and a hipped roof at the left end. The stacks are truncated and partly rebuilt.

The similar west garden front has six steps leading to a projecting porch with glazed doors and an overlight in a wide basket-headed opening, beneath an eight-light mullioned window and a shallow shaped parapet. The ridge stacks are truncated. A one-storey, two-span left service wing has two tall stacks. The north elevation displays a plaque in a half dormer with a raised intertwined monogram reading W.R.I.H., and a gabled bellcote with a bell.

An ornamental garden wall adjoins the south-east corner of the house, featuring hollow-chamfered copings and a basket-arched gateway with intermediate and terminal piers bearing ball finials. The wall curves ninety degrees to run east for approximately thirty metres.

Interior

The porch has a Tudor-style panelled ceiling. The entrance hall is lined with wainscoting featuring linenfold centre panels and a Jacobean-style ceiling with geometric panels enriched with roundels, fruit and flowers. Panelled doors and reveals sit within architraves. Carved wood chimney pieces with mirrored overmantels and Tudor-arched hoods are present. The staircase string is enriched with carved and moulded ribs and shields, and features a wrought-iron balustrade. At the time of resurvey, the interior was largely disused and dilapidated.

The house was originally built for Hopkins, an ironmaster. In 1873-74, Hopkins employed the London interior decorators Collinson & Lock to produce interiors designed by the architect E.W. Godwin. These interiors were in the revolutionary Aesthetic style. Though much of this scheme has been covered over in later years, recent research has established that substantial portions survive today beneath later alterations. Most decoration consisted of hand-stencilled paper in soft pastel colours with simple decorative motifs influenced by Japanese design.

The entrance hall, now partly panelled, retains rose pink paper walls with leaf and rose decoration and a darker dado with a diamond pattern frieze. The staircase hall contains fragments of original paper decoration beneath the dado rail, partly cream with a green and russet lattice pattern featuring roundels, and partly pink with shishi motifs, plus a naturalistic frieze. The drawing room and attached ante room, now partly panelled, have beige walls covered with a gold lattice pattern of roundels filled with peacocks, a motif much employed in Aesthetic decoration. The dining room retains fragments of original pink paper with painted lines to the wall perimeter above and below the dado, decorated with a cockerel's comb motif. The library and breakfast or morning room preserves fragments of pale blue paper with a single stencilled flower dado and botanical frieze. Upstairs, the boudoir has sage grey walls with painted lines to the wall perimeter and a pink dado with a Japanese flower frieze. Bedrooms to the west display similar decoration with various patterned friezes. The tower room above the entrance hall contains a fragment of another gilded decorative scheme. Though often highly fragmentary, this represents the best-preserved internal decorative scheme designed by the celebrated Victorian architect E.W. Godwin.

Historical note

The house was the home of Sir Arthur J. Dorman, co-founder of Dorman Long & Co. Ltd., from 1895 to 1931. The building has been extensively vandalised, with many interior fittings removed. It also suffered a small fire in the summer of 1994.