Tower House And Avenham Tower, With Attached Railings

A block of three houses, now converted into flats, was built in the 1850s and subsequently altered. It is located on Bushell Place and Bank Parade in Preston and is constructed with stucco over brick, with sandstone dressings, most of which is painted, although the brick is exposed on the north side and rear. The roof is slate. The building is arranged in a U-shape and presents an eclectic architectural style.

The building is three storeys high with cellars and attics and includes a five-storey tower. There are five bays facing Bushell Place and four facing Bank Parade. Corner pilasters, a double frieze, and a moulded cornice are prominent features. On the west side, the fourth bay projects forward to form the tower, which has two square stages above the cornice. A porch, leading to Avenham Tower, features coupled Tuscan pillars and a doorway with an overlight containing margin panes. The first floor has French windows with margin panes, while the upper floors contain recessed three-light mullioned windows. The recesses and the lights are arched at the second and fifth floors, and square-headed at the fourth floor. A bracketed cornice and pyramidal roof tops the tower. Balustraded parapets are found on the porch of Tower House, a bay window to the right, and above a tripartite window in the re-entrant third bay. The fifth bay on the Bushell Place frontage features a tripartite sash window with a pilastered surround.

The first floor features paired cross-windows, with the fifth bay’s windows beneath a cornice supported by consoles. The second floor has windows similar to those in the tower, with narrow round-headed lights and bands of margin panes including roundels, along with wreaths between the lights. The roof is hipped, with several small dormers.

The south front facing Bank Parade, known as Avenham Lodge, has four bays, with the second to fourth set back. A rectangular bay window with a balustraded parapet is located in the first bay. A colonnade of pillars runs across the raised ground floor of the remaining bays, forming a porch to the doorway in the third bay and incorporating a bay window in the fourth bay—all with a balustraded parapet. The upper floors have windows similar to those at the front, with cornices on consoles.

Interior features include open-string staircases with turned balusters and stout turned newels; the staircase in Tower House spirals above the first floor. The entrance hall in Avenham Tower has a tiled floor and a deeply undercut moulded plaster cornice.

Attached to the west front is a low garden wall in short sections, stepping down the slope. It features nine stout square piers linked by ornamental cast-iron railings with bands of roundels at the top. The houses were originally designed to look like a single mansion and were intended as a prominent landmark visible from Avenham Park.