Greater Manchester Police Training School Sedgley House

SD 80 SW, QUEEN'S DRIVE,

10/201

Greater Manchester Police Training School (Sedgley House) Prestwich

II

Former house, now a College. 1850s, extended and refurbished between 1875 and 1900 for the Petrocokino family. Red brick in Flemish bond with brick dressings; Welsh slate roofs. Plan: the 1850s house has a central entrance hall flanked by dining and drawing rooms (to S) with open-well stair hall to rear, and an office and garden room along E side. Services form a NW wing with service stair tower built into the angle thus formed. Parallel service and private corridors connect this building with the later extension which is not of special interest. Billiard room to rear. Two storeys and attic. Exterior: Front: three bays, all steeply gabled, the outer bays projecting to form shallow wings with canted storeyed bay windows. Porch with wide arch, buttresses with set-offs, and pierced parapets. Bay windows of 1:3:1 lights with stone mullions and transoms; all other windows of two lights. Bargeboarding to wings, stone coping to central gable. Right return, also of three bays, all under gables with varied detailing; asymmetrical but regular fenestration of two, three and four lights (mullions and transoms), one (to study) recessed behind wide arch. Left return with one gabled window bay (treated as to other elevations) and a 3-stage stair tower to junction with services. Rear: 2:1:2 bays, treated similarly to other elevations, the centre bay projecting with corbelled angles to attic. Stacks truncated. The exterior is compressed and competently handled.

A remarkably intact and elaborate late-Victorian INTERIOR. Entrance hall: glazed and panelled porch screen; Minton tiled floor; bulky wooden fire-surround with lamps and clock bearing the monogram of Themistocles, Petrocokino. Dining room (left, SW): panelled doors and walls, buffet recess, panelled ceiling and Gothic fire- place all of 1850s; elaborate brass chandelier. Colour scheme and curtain pelmets later C19. Dining room (right, SE): with the exception of the panelled door, all late C19 and designed in an Adamesque fashion. Elaborate overmantel and mirror surrounds, wooden, by James Lamb (an important Manchester cabinet maker); stencilled ceiling with 2 oil paintings contained within lunettes; coved cornice. An important room for its date. Study with 1850s fireplace and Art Nouveau hearth tiles and light fittings. Garden room: marble Gothic fireplace of 1850s. Sumptuously decorated ceiling (dated 1883) with painting on canvas of cornucopia, ribbons, garlands and birds. Some minor alterations of c1900 do not detract from the quality of this scheme. Stairs with cast-iron balustrade, complex pierced tracery panels containing the Petrocokino monogram. Two statue niches on lower landing. Billiard room with late C19 fittings.

Listing NGR: SD8212802699