The Lydiate

The Lydiate is a mansion in Willaston, built in 1857 for Duncan Graham and now in use as a Medical Centre. It has undergone alterations in the twentieth century.

The building is constructed of yellow brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings. The roof is slate with timber bracketed eaves, rooflights and stone corniced brick stacks.

The entrance front presents a 2-storey, 3-bay elevation with giant sunk-panel pilasters at the outer angles. The centre bay projects as a 3-stage square tower, each stage pilastered and crowned by a pyramidal roof. The ground floor contains a keyed round-arched doorway with 2-leaf moulded panel doors and a plain fanlight. A moulded cornice carried on console brackets supports a first-floor balcony balustrade to 2/2 sashes in moulded keyed surrounds with cornice hoods. Flanking pilasters support a wide modillion cornice. The tower's upper stage has coupled pilasters with moulded cornices flanking two round-arched openings (now glazed) with blind balustrading beneath moulded sills. The tower is flanked on the ground floor by square bays with moulded cornices and balustraded parapets, each containing three 1/1 sashes with channelled lintels and defaced mask keyblocks. First-floor windows are tripartite 1/1 sashes in moulded surrounds with moulded cornices forming segmental pediments over the centre light.

The garden front is 2 storeys with attics and comprises 4 unequal bays. The centre left and right end bays are open-pedimented cross-gables; the right end bay is flanked by giant sunk-panel pilasters. The garden entrance is positioned to the right of centre within a fully glazed screen recessed behind a Tuscan diastyle in antis screen with a segmental centre arch. A pierced parapet forms a balcony balustrade to the first-floor window above, which is a 2/2 sash in an architrave with a carved keyblock and segmental pediment. On the ground floor, the cross-gabled bays contain tripartite windows in moulded surrounds with balustraded parapets over moulded cornices that project centrally as carved bracket-supported balconies. The first-floor window in the left of the centre bay is tripartite as on the entrance front; in the right end bay stands a pedimented 2/2 sash as above the garden entrance. Each gable contains a round-headed sash window beneath a keyed semicircular moulded arch. The left end bay has plain sashes on both floors, the lower one featuring a stone apron and blind balustrade. One gabled dormer rises above the entrance. Balustrading throughout is pierced by keyed roundels.

The interior contains several notable features. The principal room has a mantel of fretwork with eaves architraves of untraditional mouldings but high quality workmanship. The ceiling features roundels and squares based on floral designs with a similar cornice. The Oak Room possesses a chimney piece of Flemish strapwork in Jacobean style with flanking Jacobean pilasters and semicircular-headed panels, together with a Jacobean frieze and 4-panel high panelling to the walls and an ogee moulded plate rail. The sitting room contains a cast-iron grate in 18th-century style with a mantel featuring an eaved architrave, festoon frieze and beading. The entrance hall is fitted with 2-panel high oak panelling with a Jacobean fluted frieze and 4-panel pitch pine bolection moulded doors with wide architraves. An open newel staircase features a bullnosed step, ramped handrail, large square newels and turned balusters.