Chatham House

Chatham House is a residential institution associated with Atherleigh Hospital, built around 1905 by the architect J C Prestwich of Leigh. The building is constructed from red brick in stretcher bond, featuring sandstone dressings and some roughcast areas. It has a hipped roof made of Welsh slate, topped with red ridge tiles and deep overhanging eaves.

The structure runs parallel to Chatham Street and includes a central wing at the front that houses offices flanked by staircases, as well as a rear wing for services, which has a separate shallow service stair turret. The building is two storeys high and has a symmetrical facade. The roughcast central wing and chimney stack are exposed up to the level of the window lintels, while the gabled wing features stone coping and a parapet. A cornice band acts as a lintel for two first-floor windows adorned with pronounced keystones, and the ground floor showcases a five-light window with a stone surround, mullions, and a transom.

On either side of the wing, there are half-glazed doors with flat-roofed open porches added in the 1960s, connected by six single-light windows within a continuous stone surround to canted bay windows that have tall roughcast parapets. The first floor features distinctive tripartite windows that extend through the eaves, forming half-dormers under segmented heads, with sidelights lowered to the level of the bay parapets. Above the doorways, there are tall two-light windows, all upper windows fitted with small panes and wooden transoms. The right side has a simple external stack, while the left return has a gabled, partly external stack that contains flues for the original central heating system, designed to be an architectural feature facing Leigh Road.

At the rear, there are four two-light windows on the upper floor that break through the eaves line, with casements throughout. The rear is rendered, except for the rear wall and stack of the service wing. The interior is plain, with some later internal partitions on the first floor. This building is noted for its imaginative design and careful use of materials, including roughcast, by an important local architect.