Pigeon Tower, staircases, stone arches, stone screen and two gate piers in Rivington Gardens at SD 6397 1433

Pigeon Tower, Staircases, Stone Arches, Stone Screen and Gate Piers, Rivington Gardens

A Gothic-style pigeon house and lookout tower of four storeys, built around 1910 by R Atkinson to a design by Thomas Mawson for Lord Leverhulme. The building forms part of a larger composition that includes associated stone staircases with flanking walls, stone arches, an attached arched stone screen, and two stone gate piers from the former Belmont Lodge. All elements are constructed in rock-faced gritstone with stone dressings. The pigeon house itself has a steeply pitched stone slate roof.

The pigeon house is square in plan with an attached semi-circular stair tower on its west side. The south elevation has a basement entrance beneath a round-headed gateway of thin gritstone slates with a matching keystone. The arch springs from moulded imposts above a surrounding frame of thin stone slates. A west buttress rises to first floor level. The three upper floors each feature chamfered mullion windows: two lights on the first and second floors, and four lights on the top floor. The elevation terminates in a plain gable.

The west elevation displays the attached stepped stair turret, which has three loop lights set beneath semi-circular relieving arches. The turret terminates in a steeply pitched roof swept over the eaves and carried around the roof in conical form. The north elevation contains a blocked arched opening at ground floor level, a west buttress to first floor level, and a two-light chamfered mullion window on the first floor with a four-light chamfered mullion window above. Like the south elevation, it terminates in a plain gable. The east elevation has a two-light chamfered mullion window to the second floor, above which rises a tall corbelled chimney stack flanked by small round-arched windows on the upper floor beneath overhanging eaves. All elevations except the east carry square pigeon holes with perching ledges.

Internally, the first and second floors served as bird houses, while the upper floor was designed as a sitting room and lookout with a fireplace in the east wall.

Stone staircases with low flanking walls flank the pigeon house on all sides except the east. The northern, southern, and western stairs interconnect, with the western staircase running downhill to the west before turning right to terminate. On a small levelled area of ground flanked by a retaining wall immediately to the west stands the remains of a former loggia consisting of a single wall constructed of thin stone slates topped by flat stone copings. This wall contains three arches springing from moulded imposts. The central arch and the inner faces of the flanking arches are supported on columns of thin, stacked gritstone with voussoirs of thin gritstone slates.

Attached to the south-east corner of the pigeon house and extending south for approximately 73 metres is a stone wall about 1 metre high where it abuts the pigeon house, rising to approximately 2 metres for the remainder of its length. The wall is topped with alternate upright and flat stones and contains six semi-circular arches with thin gritstone slate voussoirs. Six other formerly similar arches are blocked with large gritstone upright flagstones, each pierced with three round-arched pigeon holes.

At the south end of this wall, running east at 90 degrees, is a short length of flat-topped wall approximately 1 metre high terminating against the western of two identical gate piers, which formed the entrance to Belmont Lodge near Belmont Road. The eastern gate pier stands immediately across the former entrance drive. Both gate piers are constructed of gritstone in a rustic style, are circular in plan, stand approximately 2 metres tall, and are topped by domes sitting on overhanging courses.