Conservatory At Sunnycroft

WELLINGTON

1126/0/10065 HOLYHEAD ROAD 29-OCT-07 Conservatory at Sunnycroft

GV II A conservatory or specimen house, built circa 1900, by R Halliday & Co.

MATERIALS: Painted wood and glass with red brick lower walls, stained glass panels and wrought iron decoration.

PLAN: The building is rectangular on plan and has a hipped roof with raised lantern to the centre and a canted bay containing the door to the centre of the south front.

EXTERIOR: Above the brick walling the body is divided by wooden uprights into four panels of glazing to the east and west sides and six to the north, with a canted bay to the centre of the south side. The upper lights have stained glass panels. There is a lantern section and this and the canted bay have decorative iron cresting to their ridges.

INTERIOR: There is tiling to the centre of the floor and piled rockwork to the sides, indicating the former use of these beds for growing ferns. Above these, staging has been erected to support plant pots, supported on cast iron columns.

HISTORY: Sunnycroft was built in two phases. A relatively modest villa was built in 1880 for JG Wackrill, the founder of the Shropshire Brewery in the nearby town of Wellington. At ground floor level this house comprised the rooms which are now the drawing room, smoke room, morning room, staircase hall, kitchen and pantry and larder. In the 1890s it was bought by Mary Jane Slaney, widow of a wine and spirit merchant and in 1899 the house was extended by adding the present dining room, billiard room, entrance hall and porch as well as the gentlemen's cloakroom and the lavatory and store adjacent to the kitchen. The conservatory or specimen house appears to have been added at this time.

SOURCE: Sunnycroft, National Trust guidebook, 2000.

The conservatory at Sunnycroft is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

• An unusually complete survival of a C19 glasshouse by the prestigious firm of R Halliday & Co. * Group value with the nearby house, Sunnycroft. * An important part of a remarkably intact C19 suburban estate which retains a particularly complete range of outbuildings.