Museum At Botanic Gardens

The Museum at Botanic Gardens, built in 1876 and altered since, is a museum located on Botanic Road in Churchtown, Southport. It features red brick construction in Flemish bond with sandstone dressings, a slate mansard roof adorned with glazed clerestory and fishscale bands, and a cast-iron verandah. The building is designed in a loosely Gothic style with an elongated cruciform plan, consisting of a main range oriented north-south, a shallow projection at the front, and a rear wing.

The exterior is two storeys high with an attic and has a nine-window range arranged in groups of three. Originally symmetrical, the building has a projected gabled centre. It has a stone plinth, an impost band at the ground floor, and sill and lintel bands at the first floor, topped with a bracketed gutter cornice. The central tall cast-iron verandah features a first-floor balcony with an arcaded front of five bays and two-bay returns, supported by slender banded columns with barleysugar twists in the upper sections. Arched openwork brackets form two-centred arches, and the deck is protected by openwork railings with delicate quatrefoil panels.

On the ground floor, the verandah includes a wide segmental arch with a tripartite doorway flanked by tall segmental-pointed two-light windows, all set under relieving arches with stone hoodmoulds. The first floor has tripartite French windows leading to the balcony, flanked by tall casements, also under segmental-pointed relieving arches. Above, the gable features a louvred trefoil with a hoodmould and stone coping topped with an apex finial.

The left range has three doorways with double doors and stilted segmental-pointed overlights, along with three shouldered cross-windows above. The right-hand range, which was formerly similar, is now partially covered at the ground floor by a large 20th-century conservatory, which is not of special interest. The interior has not been inspected.