Prescott'S Almshouses (Including Associated Boundary And Garden Walls, Gateways And Gate Piers, And Outbuildings)

Prescott's Almshouses

A row of six almshouses built in 1882 by architect James Hunt, founded through the bequest of W W Prescott, a drysalter who left £5,000 in 1878, with £2,072 spent on construction. The almshouses were built for tenants over the age of 60 from Reddish, Bredbury, and Denton.

The building is constructed of speckled bricks with red brick detailing and red sandstone dressings, topped with a banded tile roof. The design employs a vernacular gothic style throughout.

Plan and Layout

Each of the six houses follows a two-up two-down plan with stairs rising from the back room. The houses are arranged to form a symmetrical composition: five houses (numbers 395, 397, 399, 401, and 403) create the main facade, while the house at the north end (No. 405) is set slightly back. Each house has its own individual yard with a privy and gateways opening onto a private alley with high boundary walls and a wide gateway at the north end.

Exterior Features

The row sits on a plinth with chamfered stone coping and features a broad stone string band running between the ground and first floors. The steep roof has deep overhanging eaves, half-hipped to the left (south) end, with a step down to a lower hipped roof covering the north end house. Decorative ridge tiles run along the roofline.

The projecting central house (No. 399) is gabled and contains decorative timbering to the apex of the gable, topped with a terracotta finial. A tall panelled brick chimney stack rises to the left.

The shallow gabled porch features stone coping, tumbled brickwork to a battered base, and red brick quoining. Over the door is a stilted stone arch with a stone tympanum containing a portrait relief of the founder inscribed with "PRESCOTT'S ALMSHOUSES" below. Two corbels carved with the date 1882 flank the doorway. String courses on either side of the porch are inscribed with the names of trustees Mark Taylor and Joseph Edwin Ward on the left, and James Hunt, Architect on the right.

Each side of the porch has a timber transom casement window, with paired first-floor windows featuring pointed heads above. The arrangement of two flanking houses to each side mirrors this pattern. Paired gabled dormers with terracotta finials break through the eaves, with shared tall panelled brick stacks between them. Both the dormers and ground floor beneath contain mullion and transom timber windows. Doorways in the outer bays are topped with tiled sloping canopies. The north end house has a similar doorway to the left, with a dormer window and ground-floor window to the right, plus a tall end wall stack.

All windows throughout feature coloured glass with flower motifs in the upper lights. All doors are battened with iron thumb latches.

The rear elevation of each house contains a doorway with an adjacent window, all now fitted with replacement uPVC window frames. Stone lintels and sills are retained. Single small timber casement windows occupy the first floor of most houses, except the north end house, which has a window in its end wall.

Interior Features

Battened doors remain throughout. House No. 399 retains original features including a cupboard and drawers beside the chimney breast in the ground-floor front room and an original chimneypiece in the front bedroom. The back bedroom has been converted to a bathroom. Other interiors were not inspected.

Boundary Walls, Gates and Outbuildings

Low boundary garden walls of brick with moulded stone coping enclose the property to the south, front (Reddish Road), and north (Greg Street) sides. A pedestrian gateway is located at the south end, with another gateway on Greg Street. Brick gate piers with shaped stone coping feature foliate carved bands on those facing Greg Street.

A high pier and panel brick wall with stone coping abuts the north-west corner of the north end house, incorporating a wide gateway with a depressed segmental arch and giant keystone at the west end. Replacement double timber gates hang from this gateway. The wall returns along the west boundary in English garden wall bond, returning at the south end to meet the south-west corner of the end house.

Behind each house is a yard with low brick walls topped with chamfered stone coping and a gateway opening into an enclosed cobbled alley. Each yard contains a brick privy (now converted to a water closet) with a mono-pitch tiled roof and battened door with iron thumb latch. The yards have stone flag paving, and some retain vertical shaped stone partitions, probably designed to contain coal heaps.