Stables And Coach House At Berrington Buildings

The stables and coach house at Berrington Buildings, now used as a cow house, were built around 1780-1790, possibly by George Steuart. They are constructed of red brick with grey sandstone ashlar dressings and feature a hipped plain tile roof. The building is one storey with a loft.

The south-west front has a plinth, a stone impost band, and a dentil brick eaves cornice, arranged in three bays. The central bay has a blind segmental archway flanked by paired brick pilaster strips that support a stone-dressed triangular pediment, which includes a bullseye window in the tympanum. The flanking bays contain blind round-arched recesses.

The rear of the building features segmental-headed boarded and blind loft openings, ground-floor segmental-headed slatted windows, and two-leaf boarded doors. There is evidence of a former large opening indicated by a straight joint. Although the interior was not inspected, it is reported to have timber-framed cross-walls, a door with six raised and fielded panels, boarded stalls, feeding racks and troughs, and cobbled floors.

The attribution of the stables to Steuart is likely due to their location within the Attingham Estate. The main front of the stables faces Berrington Hall, built in 1805 by Joseph Bromfield, suggesting that the stables were designed to screen the buildings from the house. The paired brick pilaster strips found here are similar to those on Berrington Buildings and also appear in the service wing of the house. It is possible that the stables were built in 1805, or that Bromfield borrowed design elements from them. There is no evidence of any earlier building on the site of Berrington Hall, and the relationship between the house and the stables at Berrington Buildings warrants further investigation.