The Lodge

A mid to late 18th-century house, now used as a club, situated on the north side of Pontefract Road at Snaith and Cowick. The building was substantially altered around 1980, including colour-washing and replacement windows.

The main structure is built in brick laid in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings, now colour-washed throughout, and has a pantile roof. It is a three-storey building with five bays arranged symmetrically. The plan is double-pile with a two-room central entrance hall on the south front, the main staircase to the left and secondary staircase to the right, and three rooms to the rear.

The south front features a tripartite Doric entrance with a wide six-panelled door beneath a five-pane overlight in a panelled reveal. The door is flanked by eight-pane sash sidelights in wooden architraves with moulded ashlar sills. The entire entrance is set within a pilastered surround with a plain entablature and a central projecting columned porch with pediment. The upper floors have unsympathetic 20th-century casement windows in the original openings, with projecting sills and rubbed-brick arches with double keystones; those on the second floor are shorter. A central first-floor Venetian window has rubbed-brick pilasters and keyed arch, with plain sill and lintels. The roofline is finished with a moulded stone-coped parapet and gables; the rear gables have plain kneelers. End stacks are truncated.

The side elevations display single sashes and round-headed stair windows with glazing bars and keyed arches. The two-storey rear elevation has ground floor openings comprising three twelve-pane sashes and one unequal six-pane sash in flush wooden architraves beneath keyed flat arches, an inserted door beneath a segmental arch, and a blocked central round arch with unsympathetic 20th-century inserted windows. The first floor has five twelve-pane sashes in flush wooden architraves beneath keyed flat arches, with a coved cornice above.

Internally, the entrance hall, now opened to the side rooms, retains an ornate modillioned cornice and a plasterwork ceiling rose with garlands. The floor is veined white marble with black insets. The front rooms feature ornate plaster cornices with floral friezes. The right-hand front room has a grey marble pilastered chimney-piece flanked by half-domed alcoves with moulded panelled doors below. The left-hand front room has a similar marble chimney-piece with paterae and reeded pilasters and frieze, flanked by fitted mahogany cupboards. The ground floor rear right room contains a moulded dado rail, cornice and spine beam, and a pair of arched alcoves.

The main staircase is a good two-flight return with a ramped corniced handrail, pairs of column-on-urn balusters with square knops to each tread, a large column newel and scrolled foliate brackets. The secondary staircase is a two-flight return with closed-string, plain balusters and moulded handrail. The upper hall features a dentilled cornice and a pair of round-arched doors with radial fanlights.

The first-floor bedrooms retain original stone chimney-pieces, dado rails and moulded cornices; those to the front rooms are particularly ornate. The front right bedroom has a dentilled cornice with pulvinated bay-leaf moulded frieze and a Doric pilastered chimney-piece flanked by arched alcoves, with a two-fold fielded-panel connecting door to the central room. Fielded-panel window shutters and doors in architraves and panelled reveals are found throughout the interior.

The plaster cornices, with their figured friezes, are similar to those at Cowick Hall and probably date from James Paine's alterations of the 1750s.