Chatham House

ATHERTON, Chatham Street, SD 60 SE, 2/74

Chatham House

II

Residential institution attached to Atherleigh Hospital. C1905 by J C Prestwich of Leigh. Red brick in stretcher bond with Sandstone dressings: partly rough cast. Welsh slate hipped roof with red ridge tiles; deeply overhanging eaves. Long range parallel to Chatham Street with central wing to front (containing offices flanked by stairs) and rear (containing services, with separate shallow service stair turret). Two storeys. Symmetrical front: roughcast, leaving central wing and stack, and ground floor to window lintel level all exposed. Wing, gabled with stone coping and parapet, the cornice band forming lintel to two 1st-floor windows with pronounced keystones; ground floor with 5-light window with stone surround, mullions and transom. To either side of wing, half-glazed doors (with flat-roofed open porches of C1960) connected by six single-light windows (in continuous stone surround) to canted 1:3:1 bay windows under tall roughcast parapets, the windows with stone surrounds and transom. First floor with distinctive tripartite windows that break through eaves to form half-dormers under segmented head, the side lights brought down to the level of the canted bay parapets. Tall 2-light windows above doorways. All upper windows with small panes and wooden transoms. Simple external end stack to right; gabled, partly external stack to left return (containing flues to original central heating system) treated as an architectural feature facing towards the main road (Leigh Road). Rear: four 2-light windows rear floor break through eaves line; casements throughout. Rendered except for rear wall and stack of service wing. INTERIOR: plain with some later internal partitions to 1st floor. An imaginative design with careful use of material (including roughcast) by an important local architect.

Listing NGR: SD6573301266