Briars Hey

Briars Hey is a detached villa in Rainhill, built in 1868 by the Manchester architect William Hayward Brakspear for alkali and glass manufacturer John Crossley. The building was later used as a children's convalescent home and care home. It was empty at the time of inspection in December 2004.

The house is constructed of coursed rock-faced red sandstone with ashlar dressings and decorative sculpture. It features tall chimney stacks with coupled shafts and corbelled caps, and a Welsh slate roof with decorative banding. The style is exuberant Gothic Revival.

The building follows an irregular T-plan with canted end bays on the west elevation extending beyond the main house body. The principal reception rooms are arranged around a central stair hall.

The exterior is two storeys with attics. The west elevation is near-symmetrical and comprises five bays. The central entrance bay is wide and gabled, incorporating a richly-moulded pointed arched doorway with splayed jambs beneath an elaborate bracketed canopy with pendant enrichment. Above this is a wide pointed-arched three-light mullioned window with plate traceried head and hood mould extending into the gable apex. Single lancets flank the doorway, and the ranges either side of the entrance have central chimneys with coupled shafts.

The north elevation is five bays long with a central arched entrance and traceried overlight. A wide canted end bay to the right features a tall two-light window with plate-traceried gabled head breaking through the eaves line. Windows to the ground floor on both elevations have pointed and cusped arched heads, and sash window frames without glazing bars. A tall left-hand end bay supports a pyramidal roof with a substantial lantern. The main roof carries two tall ridge chimneys and two small gabled dormer windows.

The interior retains significant original features despite substantial alteration from institutional use in the later twentieth century, when larger rooms were subdivided. The central stair hall, entrance vestibules and connecting passages retain fine patterned encaustic floor surfaces. The stair hall features pointed-arched arcades at ground floor and first floor landing levels, with columns having carved capitals and arch spandrels pierced by quatrefoils. The open well stair has fine ornamental balustrading, carved newel posts and moulded handrails. The stair well is illuminated by a generous lantern with a square panelled roof and cross beams supported on slender brackets. The lantern glazing is arranged in three sets of four lights to each face.

The ground floor retains some original six-panel doors with arched mouldings to the upper panels, deep skirtings and moulded architraves. The former library retains original half-glazed library cabinets. The passage between the west elevation doorway and the stair hall has moulded pointed arches spanning and flanking it.

William Hayward Brakspear worked under Charles Barry and A W N Pugin on designs for the Houses of Parliament. Briars Hey is considered his most important domestic commission and also his most costly, with the cost recorded in his practice ledger as £12,213.

The house and estate were acquired in 1938 by the religious order of The Sisters of The Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and the building became St Joseph's Convent, serving as a children's convalescent home. In 1970 it was purchased by Lancashire County Council for use as a children's home.