Moorside House

Moorside House is a house dating from circa 1830. It is built of scored stucco with quoins, painted white, and has a moulded gutter cornice and a stone slate roof with gable chimneys and copings. The house has a double pile three-bay plan, with a service wing to the rear of the first bay. It is two storeys high and symmetrical, designed in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The front features a Tudor-arched doorway with a hoodmould, and large four-light stone mullion windows, also with hoodmoulds. A right return wall has one similar three-light window on each floor. The rear of the house has a large Tudor-arched stairlight with radiating glazing bars and some sashed windows with glazing bars.

The interior includes a stone staircase with iron twist balusters, a moulded plaster ceiling frieze and alcove in the drawing room, and original door furnishings, including panels on one door decorated with paintings of flowers, possibly by Lydia Becker.

The house was built by Hannibal Leigh Becker, a chemical manufacturer, and was an early home of Lydia Becker, a pioneer of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, botanist, and painter.