Coach House Court North Of Stable Court With Riding School And Yard Walls

This complex comprises a coach house, covered court, gatehouse range, and riding school with walled yard, dating to the 1870s. It was designed by Alfred Waterhouse for the 3rd Marquis and 1st Duke of Westminster. The construction incorporates banded sandstone, stone-dressed brick, timber framing, and shaped red tile roofs.

The courtyard itself has buff and red banded sandstone walls, a stone-paved floor, and a glazed roof formed with three ridges supported by two lines of four cast iron columns carrying lattice girders. The east range functions as a coach house, containing the Westminster coaches. It features six ornate, cross-braced, and boarded sliding doors in camber-arched openings onto the yard. The interior walls are glazed brick with stone corbels supporting a two-ridged open roof. Two cast iron columns support a lattice girder under the central valley. The roof is clad diagonally with boards, carried on timber trusses of fine workmanship. The south range has a stone-ribbed brick vaulted arched carriageway running under the north range of Stable Court. The west range contains the riding school, with a walled yard to the north. A pair of tall, six-panel pine doors with ornate wrought iron hinges and bronze furniture lead from the yard into the riding school. Inside, a small viewing gallery is located at the far end, with sloped boarding to protect a rider’s legs; the roof is glazed and rests on plain steel trusses. The north range acts as a gatehouse and features a carriage entrance of two bays carried on three pointed stone arches.

The north (gatehouse) front exhibits a lower storey of stone-dressed red brick and timber-framed upper storeys in a complex, asymmetrical composition. Two storeys incorporate an expressed stairway to the left of a central archway. Wings flank each side; the wing to the right has two bays with a jettied gable, a half-dormer, and a boldly shaped stone chimney on the ridge. The wing to the left is simpler, with a gable chimney. Outer wings are of 1½ storeys, with projecting front gables and a central hipped projection. Two stone camber archways are present, now blocked. Stone and oak windows feature shaped surrounds, mullions, leaded glazing, carved bargeboards, and ornate stone and oak finials.

The west (riding school and yard) elevation features a stone buttressed, plinthed, banded, and coped yard wall and the back of the riding school with stone walls and corbelled roof parapets. A jettied, oak-framed gabled penthouse viewing gallery with a shaped circular chimney projects from the roof. The east (back of coach house) elevation is simply expressed in stone-dressed brick.