Weelsby Hall

Weelsby Hall is a country house of 1890, now in use as a children's home, located on Weelsby Road in Grimsby. It was designed by L Maples for George Frederick Sleight, a prominent fishing magnate with extensive interests across the fishing industry, including a fish-curing factory on Sidebottom Street.

The building is constructed of red brick in English bond with stone dressings and a Welsh slate roof. It is designed in the Italianate style and stands two storeys high with a prominent three-storey tower at the south entrance front.

The building is rectangular on plan, with two-room and three-room main fronts and a large central staircase hall. The symmetrical south front comprises five irregular bays. The central projecting bay contains the main entrance, surmounted by a three-storey tower and flanked by narrow single recessed bays and projecting gabled outer bays. The plinth is moulded, and the facade features first-floor bands, sill bands and string courses linking window heads. The central and outer bays are defined by broad angle-pilasters.

The entrance porch is particularly elaborate. It features an arched ashlar surround with three pairs of double marble columns carrying round arches that form a short tunnel vault. The front is decorated with a pulvinated frieze, a keyed arch with ornately carved spandrels, a moulded cornice and a balustrade with ball finials to the corner piers. Carved panels flank the porch sides. Steps lead up to a panelled double door beneath a fanlight.

The flanking recessed bays have narrow 1/1 sashes beneath segmental arches with keyed and eared architraves. The left wing has a canted bay window and the right wing a rectangular bay window; both are fitted with three 1/1 sashes in pilastered surrounds with keyed arches, entablatures with moulded cornices and balustraded parapets. On the first floor, a central segmental-headed 1/1 sash in an eared architrave sits above the entrance porch. The recessed bays repeat the ground-floor sash pattern, while the wings contain three similar sashes above which are round-arched ashlar panels carved as blind radial fanlights.

The eaves are overhanging with a wood cornice and corniced gutter carried on bracketed modillions. The gabled wings have open pediments incorporating a dentilled brick raking cornice.

The tower features central round-headed sashes and oeil-de-boeuf windows in keyed architraves, angle pilasters with carved ashlar panels, a panelled frieze, a modillioned ashlar cornice and a balustrade with stone and brick corner piers. Three corner piers carry pyramidal finials. The front right corner contains a small square turret with round-headed windows featuring strapwork tracery, beneath a pyramidal spire topped with a wrought-iron finial. The roof is hipped and gabled.

Lateral and ridge stacks with divided shafts and corniced caps matching the eaves cornice are distributed across the roofline.

The right return is of six irregular bays with a projecting gabled section to the left of centre. It repeats the window details and architectural features of the south front and includes a projecting chimney-breast decorated with a carved stone relief panel bearing a shield with the initials GFS.

The left return comprises five irregular bays with a projecting four-bay section to the left, containing a central projecting gabled bay, and repeating the architectural details of the main front.

The rear elevation has side wings with projecting lateral stacks, pedimental gables and attic dormers.

The interior retains many original features of high quality. The inner entrance is fitted with a glazed and panelled screen decorated with coloured leaded lights and a pair of keyed round arches carried on pink marble columns. The entrance-staircase hall features a polychrome tiled floor and a panelled pine ceiling. The wooden staircase, carried on columned arcading, has a carved pulvinated string, column balusters and newels.

The first-floor landing incorporates a four-bay north gallery arcade of marble Corinthian columns with keyed round arches; the keystones serve as corbels for hammerbeams with arched braces and carved pendants supporting an elaborate roof with a raised central section incorporating arched braces and a large roof light. Between the hammerbeams is a painted frieze depicting cornucopias and urns. The south side of the landing is enclosed by a glazed screen to the tower staircase, housed within a marble and ashlar surround with Corinthian pilasters and half-glazed panels. The door is set in an elaborate carved wood surround with radial fanlights; the leaded glass panels are painted with depictions of the Seasons.

The four main ground-floor rooms are fitted with highly ornate marble chimneypieces, carved wood overmantels and overdoors, moulded cornices and ceiling roses. The ground-floor south-west room is decorated with a delicate painted frieze, ceiling and overdoor panel featuring flowers and musical instruments. Other ground and first-floor rooms retain good marble chimneypieces and grates.

George Frederick Sleight, who later became a baronet, was one of Grimsby's greatest fishing magnates, with business interests spanning all processes of the fishing industry.