Wycliffe Hall

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 17/05/2018

718/0/10165

GEDDING ROAD Sam Cooper Day Centre Wycliffe Hall

(Formerly listed as Sam Cooper Day Centre, GEDDING ROAD)

10-SEP-01

GV II Hall, then hospital and home of rest, now day centre. 1906, with additions of 1930-31. Original part by Arthur Wakerley on land given by him. For the Wycliffe Society for Helping the Blind. Red brick with slate roof. Stone coped gables.

Art and Crafts style to original part, rest Neo-Georgian. Central section with two wings with facing gables, the original part being the left wing. Ten-window range at first floor disposed 2:5:3. 6/6 sashes, with similar below except three to left wing. Central window is large and in moulded architrave with pediment. It has an iron balustrade which is the top of the entrance. This is a Doric portico in antis with plain entablature. Panelled door set within in channelled rustication. Left gable has projecting stack emerging from the first floor. On the end are wooden mullion and transom windows with a large central window emerging above the eaves in a dormer with curved leaded roof. Below this here is a plaque inscribed 'Wycliffe Hall for the Blind, opened AD1906 by Mrs. Arthur Wakerley; Edwin Crew Chairman of Committee'. To rear are further sash type windows and the former Home of Rest range with flat roof and taller central section with pedimented window.

Forms part of a very significant group of buildings built for the blind by the Society beginning with Hunter Lodge (qv), then this hall, followed by 65-71 Gedding Road (qv) and then, by the Leicestershire and Rutland Insititution for the Blind, the Workshops and Lodge (qv). This embodied the ideas of the Society as expressed in Edwin Crew's book of 1912 'City of the Blind at Leicester'. Seaton, D., 'Light amid the shadows', Leicester, 1994.

Listing NGR: SK5884804837