Holt House And Attached Garden Walls

HOLT HOUSE AND ATTACHED GARDEN WALLS

A villa and attached garden walls on Ullet Road, Liverpool, built circa 1870 for Sir Robert Durning Holt, first Lord Mayor of Liverpool (1893-4). The house was later converted to a nursing home and was empty at the time of inspection in May 1999. It retains its original architectural character despite late 20th-century alterations and additions.

The building is constructed of finely-jointed red brick with ashlar sandstone dressings. The hipped roof is concealed behind a plain parapet, with a domed lantern and prominent ridge stacks. The roof covering is Welsh slate.

The house follows an L-shaped plan, with a symmetrical garden front facing south and the left side of the entrance front extending northwards.

The north entrance elevation is asymmetrical, presenting two storeys with attics above a basement across four bays. An off-centre entrance porch dominates the front, featuring paired Tuscan columns beneath an entablature and frieze. The porch encloses double three-panel doors set below a rectangular overlight with narrow flanking lights. Above the porch sits a Diocletian window with ashlar surround and shallow pediment, flanked by pilasters that rise through a moulded cornice and are expressed in the parapet with ashlar panels and coping. On either side of the porch are six-over-six pane sash windows with ashlar surrounds and gauged brick flat-arched heads, recessed within shallow panels. Above a broad storey band, three smaller sash windows appear to the left and a single 12-pane sash to the right.

The south garden elevation displays five bays with full-height canted bay windows at each end. These bay windows contain six-over-nine pane sashes on the ground floor and six-over-six pane windows to the first floor, with ornamental cast-iron balustrades above. A deep projecting cornice separates the floors. The central three bays feature a ground floor opening adapted during the 20th century to form a doorway with modern joinery.

The west elevation fronts a lower garden area and comprises four bays at basement level with stacked sash windows beneath a shallow parapet, behind which sit two gabled dormer windows. At basement level, three barred windows and a doorway open beneath a continuous decorative balcony with balustrade, supported on brick piers. This balcony extends the full length of the elevation and connects with a terrace at the south front, which is underbuild with brick walling. The walling incorporates circular ventilators and a central flight of steps flanked by walls, set below a parapet wall with ashlar-faced piers and ashlar coping.

The interior retains significant original fabric and finishes despite 20th-century modifications made during institutional use. The entrance hall features polished granite columns and enriched plaster ceiling work, with arched openings and pilasters. The doors are panelled with margin glazing; the entrance joinery includes painted glass panels and leaded panes. The main stair hall contains a principal staircase to the upper floor, set within a well lit by a dome with a wide oculus and glazed indentations above a panelled drum. The dome rises from a square ceiling panel with moulded rib work. The cantilevered stair features turned and reeded balusters, moulded handrails, and enriched newel posts with turned finials. The upper floor landing balustrade has carved enrichment to its plinth and a panelled soffit.

The principal reception rooms occupy the east and west ends of the house. Both feature elaborately decorated surrounds to full-height windows, decorated pelmets, and full-height panelled shutters. The end bay windows contain reeded columns (in the west room) or pilasters (in the east room) between component lights, with enriched plaster work to bay ceilings. The west room has tall rectangular wall panels above a dado. The east side wall features a central chimneypiece with flanking doorways, each with six-panel doors in architrave surrounds; the left-hand door has been relocated to the north-east corner.

The attached garden walls are constructed of red brick with ashlar copings, approximately three metres high. They extend eastwards from the south-west corner as an extension of the terrace walling, and northwards from the north-east corner, with the latter wall incorporating a pedimented doorway at its south end, flanked by balustrading set into the upper walling.

Holt House represents a notable and finely-detailed late 19th-century villa, established on the northern perimeter of Sefton Park (opened in 1872), which developed into an architecturally distinctive suburb characterised by large houses set in extensive grounds, the residences of influential members of Liverpool's industrial and commercial communities. The house forms group value with a neighbouring listed property.