Mowbray Almshouses Forecourt Walls And Piers

The Mowbray Almshouses forecourt walls and piers are located in Sunderland and were rebuilt in 1863 by architect E.R. Robson for Elizabeth Gray Mowbray. The forecourt walls were altered around 1980. The structure features thin courses of squared sandstone rubble with an ashlar plinth and dressings, topped with a Welsh slate roof and red ridge tiles. The walls and piers are made of similar stone. The building is L-shaped, with the forecourt walls forming two additional sides of a square, and is designed in the Gothic style.

The almshouses consist of two storeys with four houses, each having three windows. Each house has a boarded central door, with the door to No. 2 set in a canted angle bay, featuring a pointed arch and irregular block jambs. Above the doors are 2-light stone-mullioned windows with tracery. The bays flanking the doors have 2-light windows, and those on the first floor include plate tracery in pointed-arched surrounds, set in full-height pointed-arched panels that project from the gables, breaking the eaves. There is a floor string, and the gables are topped with stone copings and clove finials. The steeply pitched roof has tall ashlar ridge chimneys with shallow buttresses.

The left return gable features an irregularly-stepped chimney stack with a head-stopped drip mould above a Latin inscription commemorating the foundation by John Mowbray in 1727 and the rebuilding for Elizabeth Gray Mowbray in 1863. The right return gable has an external chimney stack adorned with the Mowbray lion in low relief beneath a drip mould, complete with flower stops and a fleur-de-lys finial. The forecourt walls are attached to the building, partly rebuilt, and have renewed plain railings, along with an ashlar plinth and coping. The square gate piers feature renewed coping, and an intermediate pier rising from the wall has Gothic coping.