Marsden Hall Cottage And Linking Archway Marsden Park Cottage

SD 8738 NELSON MARSDEN PARK OFF WALTON LANE

1317-0/0/10002 Marsden Park Cottage, Marsden Hall Cottage and linking archway GV II

Two cottages and linking wagon archway. Probably mid to late C18: altered in C19 and subsequently. Sandstone rubble, with concrete tiled roofs. The cottages flank the entrance to the rear courtyard and the archway bridges it: Marsden Hall Cottage on the south side has an irregular plan structurally integrated with the north-east corner of Marsden Hall, Marsden Park Cottage has a rectangular plan parallel with the drive between them, and the archway links their west fronts. Two storeys, an irregular facade with 2 gables linked by a short screen wall over a tall elliptical archway, one 1st-floor window in each gable. Marsden Hall Cottage to the right, with an open-pedimental gable which partly spans the screen wall to the left and has a large apex urn, has 2 square windows at ground floor under a dripmould run out and stepped up over a doorway to the right, over which is a round-arched window (both these abutting the junction with the hall), and a rectangular window in the centre of the upper floor. The archway has a rusticated surround and linen-fold enriched keystone, and a pair of low wrought-iron bar gates with dogbars. The gable end of Marsden Park Cottage has coupled doorways to the left, a small segmental-arched opening mounted on that to the left, a square window in the centre of the ground floor and a small rectangular window inserted at 1st floor. Except for the last, all these doorways and windows have square-cut plain surrounds, and the windows have altered glazing. Continued to the left of Marsden Park Cottage is a tall screenwall to the walled garden. The right-hand side wall of this cottage (facing the drive) has features suggestive of a former non-domestic function: a rectangular tripartite grid of square-cut mullions and transoms. in which the left and right-hand parts have three 3-light stages to the eaves, the top and bottom glazed but the middle blocked, and the centre part has 2 stages each divided into 2 square panels, the lower being of 2 lights (the left glazed and the right blocked); while the upper left panel contains an oval plaque with remains of painted lettering ("MARSD.../ Founded.../ Edwd.../ Esqr."), said to commemorate the foundation of an asylum in these buildings c.1850. Attached to the rear gable is an early C19 extension covering a doorway at 1st floor (visible internally) and partly covering a round-headed attic window.

Listing NGR: SD8604137991