Tower House And Avenham Tower, With Attached Railings

PRESTON

SD5428NW BUSHELL PLACE 941-1/14/47 (East side) 27/09/79 Tower House and Avenham Tower, with attached railings

GV II

Includes: No.15 Avenham Lodge, with attached railings BANK PARADE. Block of 3 houses now all flats. 1850s, altered. Stucco on brick with sandstone dressings, all painted (but brick exposed on north side and rear); slate roof. U-plan. Eclectic style. Three storeys with cellars, attics, and 5-storey tower; 5 unequal bays to Bushell Place, 4 to Bank Parade; corner pilasters, double frieze, moulded cornice. On the west side the 4th bay breaks forward and forms a 5-storey tower with 2 square stages above the cornice; this has a porch (to Avenham Tower) with coupled Tuscan pillars protecting a doorway which has an overlight with margin panes, 1st floor French windows with margin panes, and recessed 3-light mullioned windows on each floor above (the recesses and the lights arched at 2nd and 5th floors, square-headed at 4th floor), and a prominent bracketed cornice and pyramidal roof. The porch to Tower House at the left end, a rectangular bay window to the right of this and a tripartite window in the re-entrant of the 3rd bay, all have balustraded parapets; to the right of the tower the 5th bay has a tripartite sashed window with pilastered surround. The 1st floor has pairs of cross-windows, those in the 5th bay under a cornice on consoles; the 2nd floor has windows with narrow round-headed lights like those in the tower, all with bands of margin panes including roundels, and wreaths between the lights. Hipped roof with various small dormers. The south front to Bank Parade (Avenham Lodge), 4 bays, the 2nd to 4th set back, has a rectangular bay window to the 1st bay with a balustraded parapet, and a colonnade of pillars across the raised ground floor of the other bays forming a porch to the doorway in the 3rd bay and incorporating a bay window in the 4th bay, the whole with a balustraded parapet; and windows on the upper floors like those at the front, all at 1st floor with cornices on consoles. Attached to the west front is a low garden wall in short sections stepping down the slope, with 9 stout square piers linked by ornamental cast-iron railings which have bands of roundels at the top. INTERIORS: open-string staircases with turned balusters and stout turned newels, that in Tower house spiralled above 1st floor; entrance hall in Avenham Tower with tiled floor and deeply-undercut moulded plaster cornice; otherwise, not inspected. The houses were built with the appearance of a single mansion, designed as an eye-catcher to Avenham Park.

Listing NGR: SD5416228785