Garden Wall, Attached Outbuilding Incorporating Mushroom House And Corner Outbuilding At Great Moreton Hall

MORETON-CUM-ALCUMLOW NEW ROAD (off) SJ 85 NW 1923-/7/10000 Garden wall, attached outbuilding incorporating Mushroom House and corner outbuilding at Great Morton Hall

• II

Garden wall enclosing former kitchen garden, attached outbuilding incorporating Mushroom House and corner outbuilding. Mid C19, probably by Edward Blore, for George Ackers. Rectangular garden wall, enclosing three acres of kitchen garden, with diagonal angle walls at the corners, which formerly supported greenhouses of which one, the former Fern House survives in restored form at the north-east corner. Red brick, laid to Monk bond, approximately 3.5 metres high, and capped with a shallow pitch ridged coping. Cavity construction designed to incorporate flues to heat the facing wall. North and South side walls complete approximately 140 metres in length. West end wall breached to accommodate C20 buildings, and east end wall breached to form full height opening, but retaining southern jamb of single doorway. North and south side walls retain single doorways with shouldered heads and ashlar lintels and dressings. South doorway with planked and cross braced door. Lean to outbuilding to north face of north side wall, now 13 bays in length, but formerly longer. Brick walling below plain blue tile roof. Blind end walls. From west end bays 1 to 7 are storage areas. Bays 8 and 9 from the Mushroom house, incorporating 36 arched recesses, each inset as a mushroom bed. These beds are arranged in three tiers either side of the service walkway down the centre of the building. Each bay has three arched beds, the upper tier of beds below a raking barrel vault, breached by asymmetrical arches over the central walkway. Beyond the Mushroom house is a further enclosed bay, then an open bay, roofed over to give covered access to the central doorway into the kitchen garden. There are two further enclosed bays on the east side of the doorway. At the north west corner diagonal wall, the reconstructed Fern House with coped raking side walls and rear wall raised above the coping level of the adjoining garden wall, and a single doorway below a shallow segmental arch to the north east side. Remains of former greenhouse to south-west angle , formerly the Cineraria House, below which was sited the boiler house for heating the wall. The C20 buildings erected within the area enclosed by the garden wall are not of special architectural or historic interest.

Listing NGR: SJ8408459563