Parrs Wood House

MANCHESTER

SJ89SE WILMSLOW ROAD, Didsbury 698-1/9/678 (East side) 25/02/52 Parrs Wood House

GV II*

Country house, now student hostel. Probably late C18; altered. Scored stucco, hipped slate roof. Square main block facing west with 2 unequal service wings on north side. Two storeys and 3 bays plus a 3-window service range to the left, with plinth, 1st-floor band, and cornice below eaves level, all carried round. The principal element is symmetrical, with a pedimented centre which has a prominent bowed porch at ground floor with engaged wooden Tuscan columns and antae, a triglyph frieze with oxen skull metopes, cornice with wrought-iron balustrade, a round-headed doorway with 9-panel door and plain fanlight, and curved sashed windows. These and all other sashed windows have margin panes. The ground floor has large tripartite sashes in segmental blank arches; the 1st floor has a sashed window in the centre flanked by coved niches, a similar window to the left and a blind window to the right. The service wing to the left, which breaks forward, has 3 similar sashes on each floor and a flat-roofed porch attached to the corner, with a round-headed doorway which has a fanlight with radiating glazing bars. Various ridge chimneys. The 5-window south front has a central 2-storey 3-window bow with a cast-iron balcony to 1st floor supported by very slender iron columns, and fenestration otherwise matching the front. The east side, a 7+4 window range, has (inter alia) a single-storey 3-window bow at the south end, a pedimented centre to the front of the service wing at the north end, sashed windows like the others (and a C20 external corridor attached at ground floor). Interior: entrance vestibule with diamond-pattern marble paving, 2 mahogany panelled doors in each side, and a principal doorway with classical architrave; central staircase hall illuminated by a domed skylight and containing a flying imperial staircase with half-landings carried on Tuscan columns, Ionic screens to the landing with rosette frieze and dentilled cornice, doorways with architraves including relief panels depicting classical scenes of rural life; fine decoration in south and east rooms, including fireplaces (one with Ionic columns, the other with herms), moulded plaster friezes and modillioned cornices; elliptical room at 1st floor formerly similar to Cupola Room at Heaton Hall, but decoration recently collapsed. History: may have been designed by a member of the Wyatt family; was owned by Richard Farington, brother of the diarist Joseph Farington, a frequent visitor until his accidental death in Didsbury church in 1821.

Listing NGR: SJ8564890302