Acton Burnell Hall (Concord College)

Acton Burnell Hall is a country house, now a school. The building was substantially rebuilt in 1915 by F.W. Foster following a fire in 1914, but preserves elements dating from 1814 when architect John Tasker (c.1738-1816) designed it for Sir Joseph Edward Smythe, probably remodelling an earlier house of 1753-8 by William Baker (1705-71) for Sir Edward Smythe. The house was extended around 1810, and a garden porch was added in 1909. An adjoining chapel, probably of late 18th or early 19th-century date, was altered and extended in 1846 by C. Hansom. The builder for the 1915 rebuilding was James Carmichael of Wandsworth.

The main house is faced in painted stucco lined as ashlar with grey sandstone ashlar portico and porch, and has a hipped slate roof. It is remodelled in Neo-Classical style, comprising two storeys and an attic. The entrance front displays a plinth, cill bands, Tuscan giant order with pilaster strips at the ends, entablature and blocking course, and a central tetrastyle Ionic portico with unfluted columns supporting an entablature and triangular pediment, with low scrolled flanking walls at the bases. The front has twentieth-century flat-topped dormers and six rendered stacks. The façade is arranged in 2:2:2 bays with glazing bar sashes fitted with moulded architraves. The central entrance comprises a pair of four-panelled doors with an early twentieth-century glazed draught lobby, a nine-part rectangular overlight, moulded architrave, frieze, and acanthus brackets supporting a cornice.

The left-hand return front displays 1:3:1:3 bays, incorporating two full-height canted bays, with ground-floor windows having lugged architraves and keystones. The rear front shows 2:5:2 bays with pilaster strips at the ends and flanking a central break. A central ashlar porch features channelled rustication, concave corners, a moulded cornice, blocking course, and a segmental-headed doorway with two glazed doors, lugged architrave, and keystone dated 1909.

The south-west wing, set back to the right and dating from circa 1810, comprises three storeys and an attic. It displays Tuscan giant order with pilaster strips, entablature, and blocking course. It has twentieth-century flat-topped dormers and four stacks arranged in 1:2:1 bays, fitted with glazing bar sashes and late nineteenth-century wooden cross casements.

The adjoining chapel is constructed in stuccoed brick with later ashlar window dressings and is extended in roughly squared and coursed grey sandstone with sandstone ashlar dressings and a plain tile roof. The chapel is planned as an L-shape with a side chapel to the south-west in fourteenth-century Gothic style. The main chapel body displays raised quoins, pilaster buttresses, and a coped parapet with recessed square panels, comprising three bays. The windows, installed circa 1846, have two trefoil-headed chamfered lights; the west window, also circa 1846, features three trefoil-headed lights with cusped Geometrical tracery. The two-bay side chapel has angle buttresses and a parapeted gable end, with cusped Geometrical tracery windows, a hoodmould with carved stops, and a quatrefoil opening in the apex of the gable above.

The house is fitted with cast iron downpipes with stag's head reliefs on the rainwater heads; the chapel's downpipes have late 18th or early 19th-century lead rainwater heads.

The interior of the house is largely of 1915 by Foster in an early 18th-century style, featuring bolection-moulded panelling and marble fireplaces with pedimented doorcases with lugged architraves and pulvinated friezes. The full-height entrance hall contains enriched plaster decoration and a three-flight square-well staircase with barley-sugar and fluted balusters and a wreathed moulded ramped hand-rail terminating in a Composite columnar newel post. An Ionic screen leads to a central ground-floor segmental-vaulted corridor with three arches to a first-floor gallery. The rear library is fitted in a Jacobean style with oak panelling, a Tudor-arched stone fireplace with overmantel, and a segmental-vaulted plaster ceiling with strapwork enrichments and roundels of heroes. An arcaded gallery serves the central first-floor corridor with enriched plaster decoration. The early nineteenth-century back staircase in the circa 1810 block features a closed string, stick balusters, and a wreathed moulded hand-rail. Some of the library panelling appears to be reused 17th-century work, probably removed from Frodesley Lodge, a nearby circa 1600 house also formerly owned by the Smythes, following the fire at Acton Burnell in 1914.

The chapel interior retains circa 1846 fittings including a west gallery with trefoil-arched arcade; chancel and side-chapel arches with chamfers dying into responds; a trefoil-arched piscina to the side-chapel; circa 1846 stained glass in the west window and side-chapel window. Two chest monuments to members of the Smythe family of 1841 and 1853 consist of recumbent effigies within cusped-arched niches with ball-flower ornament and hoodmoulds. The chapel also contains early and mid-19th-century memorial plaques and tablets.

A former early 19th-century stable block, now converted to a science block and gymnasium, adjoins the hall to the south-west.

It is known that a small stone house stood on the site of the present building by 1731. The former small stable block to the south-west, now student accommodation, might date from this period. Tasker certainly added the portico in 1815 and the rest of the building may have been rebuilt or remodelled at the same time or shortly before. The house was described as being of 'white freestone' in 1891, though this may refer to the painted stucco or indicate that the house was of ashlar before the 1914 fire and subsequent rebuilding. The pilaster strips to the entrance front and the two full-height canted bays to the north-east front appear to be 1915 additions; an early 19th-century coloured engraving by John Preston Neale (1771-1847), Seats of the Nobility and Gentry, and a circa 1891 photograph show the house without the pilasters. The engraving also shows only one ground-floor bay while another pre-1914 photograph shows two ground-floor bays. The Shrewsbury Chronicle describes the house as having been 'completely destroyed' by fire during the night of 14/15 April 1914 but notes that the chapel was spared. It appears that the house in its present form is largely of 1915, with the portico and probably the shell dating from before this time.

The house stands in ornamental grounds with a lake, the gable ends of a former medieval barn, a prospect tower (Keeper's Lodge), an ice house, and a shell house.