Nazareth House

Nazareth House is a Roman Catholic girls' school dating from 1905-1906, designed by E. Goldie of London. A chapel, constructed in 1894 by Weatherill and Whipham, is incorporated into the north-east wing. The building is now used as a home for the elderly. It is built of smooth red brick in English bond, with painted stone dressings, and has Lakeland slate roofs with a lead tower roof. The layout is roughly U-shaped, with the chapel in the north-east wing and a tower connected to the north-west wing. The architectural style is Queen Anne.

The entrance front, two storeys high and 13 bays wide, features a slightly projecting three-bay centre with a dentilled, open-pedimented attic storey. A mock porch projects slightly, with three-panel double doors in a segmental-pedimented Roman Doric doorcase and an overlight with glazing bars. The first floor of the porch has enriched scrolled shoulders and a shaped window apron. Narrow sash windows with glazing bars, moulded sills, and gauged-brick flat arches (keyed on the first floor) flank the porch. A band runs between the floors, with chamfered quoins and a continuous moulded cornice. A mid-to-late 20th-century sun lounge extension partly obscures the ground floor on the left. The attic storey has a central niche with a fluted surround, containing a figure of the Virgin and Child. A ball-and-cross finial sits atop the pediment, and iron rainwater heads are dated 1906. Dormer windows are set into the steeply pitched, hipped roof. The tower has similar windows in the lower stages and a keyed oeil-de-boeuf in the third stage, topped by a swept ribbed hipped roof with an ogee-domed cupola containing two-bay wood arcades on each face, finished with a turned wood finial.

The north-west wing has a ten-bay garden front, the north-east return has two bays, and the left return has five bays. The single-storey chapel features two-light mullioned windows with cusped heads in chamfered openings under hoodmoulds. A niche in the north end contains a figure of a saint sheltered by a swept gabled hood. North-east and north-west porches and vestries are also present. The interior has been largely altered. Extensions from the mid-to-late 20th century, a sun lounge extension, extensions adjoining the rear angle of the north-west wing, the south-west corner of the tower, and the remains of a mid-19th century house adjoining the east end are not considered to be of special interest.