Park Lodge

Park Lodge is a park-keeper's lodge, now a park office, built between 1865 and 1867 by John Douglas for the second Marquis of Westminster, and later used by Chester City Council. It is constructed from tooled, squared, snecked red sandstone rubble, with a timber frame and plaster panels, and has red-brown tile roofs. The design is High Gothic, transitioning to a Vernacular Revival style.

The building has a T-shaped plan with a single-storey office wing. The east front features an ornate timber-framed gabled porch with a boarded panel door hung on wrought-iron hinges; to the left is a two-light mullioned casement with stiff-leaf colonnettes and to the right a canted bay window projecting from the front gable. The upper storey is supported on a corbel table and includes a small six-pane casement above the porch, a twelve-pane casement in a hipped dormer to the left, and a twenty-pane cross-window in the front gable to the right. The window has four crowned figures bearing armorial shields, small framing details, a jettied gable with curved braces, shaped and carved bargeboards, and a finial.

The left wing has small panels and herringbone struts, and a chimney with six attached round flues where the ridges meet. The south side has a bay window mirroring the east front, with four crowned figures carrying shields, a cross-window in the gable, shaped and carved bargeboards, and a finial. The single-storey wing, originally containing public lavatories, has a boarded door, a pair of casements to the left, and a painted-arched window to the right, all within moulded surrounds. A small cross-gabled wing is attached to the left end. The north side, facing Union Street, has a two-light and a one-light casement to the ground floor, incorporating C13-style details, and a herringbone-strutted first floor. The rear gable has a cross-window to the first floor and a pair of C13-style lights to the stairwell.

The interior retains much of Douglas’s original detailing, including doorcases, most doors, a dogleg newel staircase, and some cornices.