Church House

LANCASTER

SD4761NW CHURCH STREET 1685-1/6/90 (North side) 18/02/70 No.96 Church House (Formerly Listed as: CHURCH STREET No.96)

GV II

House, now offices. Late C18, altered c1840, c1910 and late C20. Squared coursed sandstone with ashlar dressings, above an ashlar basement, with roughly coursed rubble on the rear and gable walls. Slate roof. Double-depth plan with, on the left, a wide carriage entrance which gives access to the yard and former garden, and to the house doorway. The site slopes from left to right. 3 storeys above a tall basement, and 4 bays with chamfered quoins, nosed sill bands on each floor, and a cornice. All the windows have moulded architraves and glazing bar sashes; some of the sashes to the upper storeys are late C20 restorations. The carriageway entrance has a moulded semicircular arch with a keystone and impost blocks; the doors have vertical raised and fielded panels. The doorway is on the right, halfway along the passage, and has a moulded architrave and a door with 6 raised and fielded panels. To the rear, on the left of the ground floor, is a canted bay window of ashlar with 12-pane sashes which was added, probably c1840, and, because of the fall of the land from right to left, is supported on an arrangement of beams and piers. On the first floor above it are signs of a now-demolished conservatory, which was entered from the house through a pair of French windows with margin lights. INTERIOR: unusual plan, with large open-well staircase in a spacious compartment to right of entrance, so that its line cuts across the windows of the 2nd bay of the front. The staircase runs at a shallow pitch from basement to 2nd floor, where it was altered c1910 and subsequently. It has an open string, 3 turned balusters per tread (which are slender but swell towards the middle) and a mahogany handrail. The back of 1st floor altered c1910 to make one room, with a complicated arrangement of ceiling beams to support the 2nd floor, where the area of bays 2-4 is occupied by a high meeting room, open to the roof; this is supported on king-post trusses. HISTORY: its early history is far from clear, but it may have been substantially rebuilt in the mid C19. In 1910 it was bought by trustees, among whom were Henry A Paley and Geoffrey L Austin (who presumably designed the alterations) and converted into a Church House, ie a church hall for meetings, bazaars and performances, for the Parish Church of St Mary, now The Priory (qv).

Listing NGR: SD4746261895