War Memorial Art Gallery

War Memorial Art Gallery

A combined war memorial and art gallery completed in 1925, designed by James Theodore Halliday of the Manchester architectural firm Halliday, Paterson & Agate, with sculpture by the nationally renowned Gilbert Ledward. The building is constructed in Portland stone and buff brick with slate roofs.

The building occupies a corner site approximately 4.5 metres above road level, accessed by a broad flight of 23 steps. Low flanking walls of Portland stone frame the approach, each bearing cast-iron lamp standards and dated plaques recording 1914–1918 on one side and 1939–1945 on the other.

The exterior is designed in Neoclassical Greek Revival style centred on a tetrastyle Corinthian portico whose order is loosely based on the Temple of Apollo at Bassae. A deep frieze carved with the words IN REMEMBRANCE is flanked by laurel wreaths. The pediment bears the arms of the Borough of Stockport in the tympanum. The central entrance has a cornice supported on scrolled consoles with paterae in the frieze. Double wooden doors with brass paterae and glazed lights are protected by brass balusters with Greek key bands. Niches flank the entrance. Ground-floor windows on each side have cornices and scrolled consoles, with balustrading supporting the sills, above which are rectangular cartouches of scrolled ornamentation.

The plan is a modified T-shape with two side galleries, a first-floor picture gallery, and a full-height memorial hall to the rear with dome and apsidal end wall.

The interior entrance gives onto a marble-paved hall with views through to the memorial hall to the rear and galleries to either side, each screened by paired marble fluted Greek Doric columns. Ceilings feature plasterwork with Greek key pattern detail. A foyer crosses the centre of the building, containing an open-well staircase with quarter landing lit by a tall round-headed window on the west side. The staircase has a brass handrail and ironwork balusters with wave scroll frieze.

The memorial hall is entered via a screen of two Cipollino marble columns with bronze capitals based on the Tower of the Winds in Athens. This is a top-lit space with a sail vault and saucer dome, its walls lined with Mazzano marble. White marble plaques record the names of 2,200 dead of the First World War, with additional marble plaques commemorating those who died in the Second World War and later conflicts. The skirting and frieze are of green Tinos marble, with a marble paved floor and four corner bronze pedestal lamps. A large sculpture of white marble is set back from the centre of the hall, framed by the apse. The work depicts a life-size draped figure of Britannia holding a sword of honour and a wreath, with a young man kneeling at her feet upon a shield crushing a serpent.

A first-floor landing overlooks the memorial hall through an open lunette with low ironwork balustrade featuring brass antefixes with anthemion motifs. The landing has a deep anthemion plaster frieze and a small glazed dome. The picture gallery runs the full width of the front of the first floor and is top-lit (now blocked) with paired columns at either end and an ornate door surround with acroteria and paterae. Double wooden fielded panel doors provide access.

The site is bounded along its street frontages by a stone retaining wall relating to the grammar school formerly on the site. A plaque on Wellington Road South records the location of the grammar school. The wall returns to the site of Stockport College of Further and Higher Education, where inset foundation stones record previous buildings of the Technical School that stood where the college now stands.

The idea for an art gallery was proposed in 1912, but it was not until 1919 that the decision was made to combine Stockport's war memorial with a commemorative sculpture and exhibition gallery. The site was donated by trustees of the late Samuel Kay J.P. Initial estimates put the cost at around £30,000, revised to £22,000 by 1923, with the final cost reaching £24,000, of which £2,100 was for the sculpture. The money was raised entirely by voluntary public subscription. In 1921 the architect James Theodore Halliday proposed five possible sculptors: Gilbert Ledward, William Dick Reid, Frederick J Wilcoxson, Jack Millard, and John Cassidy. The committee, advised by the distinguished war artist Francis Dodd, selected Gilbert Ledward's design. The foundation stone was laid on 15 September 1923, and the building was inaugurated on 15 October 1925 by Prince Henry, son of George V.

A late 20th-century single-storey curved extension on the east side linking the gallery to the college to its rear is not of special architectural interest.