Windermere House

LANCASTER

SD4761NE MIDDLE STREET 1685-1/7/183 (South side) 11/06/90 Windermere House (Formerly Listed as: MIDDLE STREET (South side) Redman House)

GV II

Girls' charity school, now offices. 1849. Probably by Sharpe and Paley. Elizabethen Vernacular style. Coursed and snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings. Slate roofs with coped gables and kneelers. Rectangular plan with the entrance in the second bay. Chimney stacks, each with 2 flues set diagonally, between the second and third bays and on the right-hand gable. Low service wing to the rear. 2 storeys and 5 slightly irregular bays, each with a gabled dormer. The doorway has a moulded 2-centred arch, and a boarded door, recessed up 2 steps. Above the doorway is an arched niche which contains the figures of 2 girls holding an inscription. To the left on the ground floor is a 4-light mullioned window; like all the others, it has arched lights. The first 2 gables, each with a 2-light mullioned and transomed window, are offset slightly to the left. To the right of the doorway on the ground floor are four 3-light mullioned and transomed windows, while on the first floor there are only three 3-light stepped mullioned and transomed windows, each under a gable. The left-hand gable wall has a 3-light mullioned and transomed window on the ground floor, with a similar stepped one above. To the left of the building is a raised yard. INTERIOR: to the right of the entrance there is a large room on each floor; the upper one has an arch-braced roof. HISTORY: built to replace a smaller school on the same site, which was opened in 1772 and whose datestone is visible inside on the ground floor. The inscription above the main doorway, which is almost illegible, was said to read: 'This school was rebuilt and enlarged by the bounty of Richard Newsham, Esq., of Preston, and Agnes Bowes, his wife, and other friends of education, an extension being granted by William Ford, Esq., and his sisters, A.D. 1849.' (Cross Fleury (pseud.): Time-Honoured Lancaster: Lancaster: 1891-: 530).

Listing NGR: SD4755261541