Banqueting House with added gatehouse and other extensions

Banqueting House with Added Gatehouse and Extensions

This complex comprises a banqueting house built between 1860 and 1862 to designs by John Dobson for Sir William (later Lord) Armstrong, extended in 1869 and 1870 by Richard Norman Shaw to provide a gatehouse, reception hall and display room.

Materials and Construction

The original banqueting house is constructed of rock-faced yellow sandstone on a rubble plinth with two courses of pecked ashlar. The interior is buff brick with red brick and yellow sandstone detailing. The extension and gatehouse are also of rock-faced yellow sandstone with ashlar plinth, quoins and dressings. All parts have Welsh slate roofs with stone gable copings.

Plan and Setting

The complex is built against the steep west slope of Jesmond Dene. The gatehouse sits at the top of the slope facing Jesmond Dene Road, with a complex staircase descending the steep slope to the lower levels. At the bottom on level ground are the banqueting hall, display room, reception hall and vestibule. The banqueting hall has a cruciform plan oriented north to south, while the gatehouse, stairwell, reception hall and display room are oriented west to east with an irregular plan.

Exterior of the Original Banqueting House

The 1860 banqueting hall is a tall, roofless, Italianate building with wall-tops shaped and capped. The long east elevation has seven bays with three tall round-arched window openings at each end; the central bay projects and is taller and wider than the others. Both short sides feature the wide projecting bay with a double door with fanlight and substantial glazing bars set between Tuscan pilasters; side lights are positioned in a high rusticated round-arch with a quoined roundel above. All window and door joinery is original.

Exterior of the 1869–70 Extension

The elevations of the extension, which climbs the steep slope to the west, are largely obscured. A four-bay two-storey flat-roofed range is attached to the west of the south gable. The ground floor has four blocked full-height segmental windows; the first floor has four windows each with a central mullion in the form of a column with foliated capitals.

Exterior of the Gatehouse

The gatehouse at the top of the steep bank has two storeys and four bays in Tudor and Gothic style. The dwelling to the right has a ledge-boarded door with elaborate hinges under a Tudor arch, with a stone mullioned and transomed window to the left and a central gabled half-dormer. The gabled bay to the left features a wide two-centred-arched porch with head-stopped drip mould; above are carved panels bearing shields reading WGA to the left and 1870 to the right, with a tall mullioned and transomed window to the first floor. The steeply pitched roof has roll-moulded coping and finials and tall paired octagonal chimneys. The left return has a narrow pointed-arched entrance into the porch with a large round-arched opening to the left and a cross window within a gabled half-dormer above.

Interior of the Banqueting Hall

The long west elevation of the banqueting hall, now internal to the complex, is blind with three niches either side of a central bay that formerly contained statuary. The projecting bay on this side is enclosed by a full-height roofed timber link to the reception hall's vestibule. The banqueting hall has concrete screed flooring with a geometric tiled border, replacing the raised timber floor shown in a film of the building from the 1950s.

Interior of the Gatehouse Dwelling

The gatehouse dwelling has a partitioned basement, three main rooms to the ground floor and a winder staircase leading to four bedrooms, one partitioned to provide a bathroom. Most original features including fireplaces, joinery and plasterwork have been removed. The stair balustrade is also gone.

The Porch and Stairwell

The porch element to the left has a stone coffered ceiling. A second two-centred arch leads to the main stair, comprising a barrel-vaulted stairwell with four landings and three straight flights (the third set at ninety degrees to the former) descending the slope to the lower rooms. The stairwell has moulded plasterwork and stone detailing, with evidence of an early decorative scheme in browns, creams and green.

The first landing has a rib-vaulted ceiling and a round-arched timber window. The rib vault has been removed from the second landing, but both retain a round-arched timber window. The third landing has lost most of its original plasterwork, has twentieth-century replica windows and an altered roof with a hatch. The main stair continues to the fourth landing; a spur of steps leads up to the display room, which has a modern twentieth-century interior including plasterboard-lined ceiling and walls, though exposed surfaces show loss of original plasterwork. The fourth landing, reached through an arched opening with red-brick detailing, has been divided into two by an inserted wall and partially converted to a store lined with plasterboard. Original rooms beneath the stairwell were not inspected.

The Reception Hall and Vestibule

An arched brick opening fitted with modern double doors leads from the stair into the reception hall, an ante-room to the main 1870 banqueting hall. It comprises two parts: the reception hall and a narrow vestibule with gallery above. These spaces retain extensive original plasterwork, joinery and tilework.

The reception hall has a full-height sub-cruciform plan, top lit by a glazed roof with a re-set, shallower outer pitched structure replacing the original. The roof retains an original moulded timber barrel vault on an iron frame but has lost original glazing and surrounding plasterwork; a central metal feature is of uncertain function. Each wall has a moulded plaster architrave of floral bosses, and three walls retain a full-height round-headed and moulded arched opening above. The opening to the east leads onto the gallery; those to the north and south are deep alcoves. The north alcove has a large segmental-arched window, now covered, and both contain light timber modern staging. The west wall has a similar blind opening, thought to have originally housed the large painting Prince Hal.

The vestibule forms the link between the Dobson and Shaw phases. It comprises a colonnade of square pillars and pilasters with composite foliated capitals and Greek key below, each face different to the next. It has a keyed blocked stone entrance at the north end, formerly leading to the service range. The gallery above has a decorative iron balustrade.