The Clock House

The Clock House is a former stable block and coach house, dating to approximately 1830. It was designed by Edward Blore for Ralph Sneyd and is now part of Keele University, housing the music department (west half) and the Vice-Chancellor’s residence (east half). Constructed of red brick with blue bricks in diaper patterns, it features a rock-faced sandstone plinth and quoins, with ashlar to the gates and dressings. The roof is tiled, with coped verges on stone kneelers, and tall brick lateral and ridge stacks.

The building comprises four ranges arranged around a central paved courtyard, with gates on the north and south sides. It is a mixed Tudor and early Renaissance style. The structure is one storey to the north and south (with an attic to the south), and two storeys to the east and west, which originally housed the coachman and head gardener.

The south side, the main entrance front, has six bays. The original design featured shaped gabled eaves dormers and wide round-arched doorways (now bricked up) with raised keystones and double doors, three to each side of a central carriageway. Later alterations include the blocking of three tall rectangular slits and the insertion of two mid-20th-century casements to the left of the entrance, along with two flat-roofed eaves dormers and a French window to the right. The original fenestration survives to the shaped gables at each end: two cross windows to the ground floor, with a two-light mullion window above, all with dripstones; oculi are at the top. The dominant feature is the entrance itself, a wide round-headed arch under a flat head, with panelled spandrels, flanked by polygonal corner turrets. Above this is a clock house, with armorial shields beneath the eaves of a stone pyramidal roof capped by an octagonal round-arched bell turret (the bell is now missing), and a stone cupola. A clock is situated in an ornamental stone surround on the north side.

The other sides of the building are plainer, with altered fenestration originally consisting of mullioned and transomed windows; some of the original 19th-century glazing survives. The north side has a central entrance, similar to that on the south, but with scrolled cresting to the centre and spur stones to the outer arch. Early 20th-century and mid-20th-century additions to the east and west are not included in the listed building. An avenue of trees leads from the south entrance toward Lymes Lodge.