St Wilfrids Presbytery (Part)

A pair of large townhouses dating to approximately 1804, located on a corner site in Preston. The buildings are now a presbytery, with No.1 Winckley Square integrated with the adjacent properties, and No.1A Chapel Street used as offices. They are constructed of red brick in Flemish bond, with sandstone dressings and a slate roof. The plan is double-pile, with a single-span roof.

The houses are three storeys high, with cellars beneath, and have 5 bays facing Winckley Square, each house symmetrical in design. A stone plinth and a first-floor sill band extend around the left return wall to Chapel Street, terminating in a moulded gutter cornice. No.1 Winckley Square features a wide, elliptical-arched doorway in the center, with brick voussoirs painted black, leading to a set-in stone doorcase with reeded jambs and lintel, and a modern fixed glazed door under a large fanlight with oval tracery and margin panes. No.1A Chapel Street has no entrance on this facade. Windows have raised sills and wedge lintels; those on the first floor have small segmental cast-iron balconies with hooped railings, fixed with fleur-de-lys brackets. No.1A Chapel Street has sash windows without glazing bars on the ground and first floors, while No.1 Winckley Square has 12-pane sashes on the ground floor, 8-pane sashes on the first floor, and 9-pane sashes on the second floor. The gabled left return wall, which serves as the entrance front of No.1A Chapel Street, has a round-headed doorway in the fourth bay, with a wooden pilastered doorcase and a fanlight with radiating iron pseudo-glazing bars (some replaced with lead strips). The fenestration matches the Winckley Square facade, but only four windows are present on the second floor, along with the sill of a former attic window. The rear of the buildings shows sashed windows that have been replaced with casements.

Interiors feature fine, open-well staircases with stick balusters and wreathed mahogany handrails, illuminated by domed, oval skylights. No.1A Chapel Street is altered with under-drawn ceilings, which are said to conceal moulded plaster decoration. No.1 Winckley Square has extensive cellars, and the ground-floor front rooms and entrance hall are combined as a refectory, retaining Gothick geometrical moulded plaster decoration to the ceilings, and a black marble fireplace with fluted Ionic columns. A white marble fireplace with a fluted surround is found in the room above the left-hand room.