Walmoor House

Walmoor House, built in 1896, was designed by John Douglas for his own residence. Originally a house, it later served as a girls' school and then as headquarters for the County Fire Service. Constructed of snecked red sandstone with tooled surfaces, it has a grey-green slate roof. The building is arranged in a "T" shape, built in an Elizabethan style and situated atop a steep slope overlooking the River Dee.

The east, or entrance, front is dominated by a squat, three-storey tower to the left, with a corbelled, octagonal stair-turret projecting from it. A two-storey projecting porch, featuring an oriel window above a basket-arched entrance, is set to the right of the tower, with a two-storey range connecting the porch to an incomplete servants’ wing. A crenellated tower marks the junction of the wings. The front features stone-mullioned, leaded windows, parapets (some crenellated), and hipped roofs. Stringcourses are used sparingly. The north face of the servants’ wing presents a simpler design.

To the west, facing the Dee and set on a precipitous bank, are canted bay windows to the north wing’s basement and three storeys. An octagonal tower rises to four storeys at the junction of the wings. Further features include a three-window range spanning two storeys, and a three-storey south bay with a large, canted projection at the outer corner, containing large mullioned and transomed windows to the ground and first floors, and smaller windows to the second floor.

The interior retains numerous original features, including the principal reception room, now used as a conference room, the staircase, and notably, an oratory located in the chamber above the main entrance. The plan of the house anticipates a smaller-scale design previously conceived for the former rectory of St Thomas's Church, Parkgate Road, dating from 1880, and Douglas’s unexecuted ideal design for a larger residence, resembling a schloss, was published in 1907.