Abbeylands

Abbeylands is a vicarage, now a house, built in 1858 by Sir George Gilbert Scott. It is constructed from coursed and dressed sandstone with ashlar dressings, and has plain tile roofs with stone-coped gables and stone stacks. The building is two storeys high and designed in a Jacobean Revival style, incorporating label moulds over stone-mullioned windows, and presented asymmetrically with grouped gables and string coursing to the main block.

The west elevation boasts a battlemented oriel window with foliate corbels to the first floor on the left, alongside a three-light window to the right. Above this is a two-light Middle Pointed Gothic window adjoining a gabled porch set within an advanced wing to its right; a tall stone chimney stack stands to the right side of this wing. Further to the right is a lower service range with a two-light first-floor window set in large gabled dormers, and an advanced wing at the south end featuring a four-light window to the first floor of the gable and a tall lateral chimney stack.

The north elevation displays two battlemented ground-floor bay windows, one rectangular with a parapet to the left and the other canted with a hipped roof to the right. Above these are three-light lancet windows to the first floor, with similar but shorter windows to the attic; the window to the right is within a large gable, and the one to the left within a dormer. Tall ridge chimney stacks are situated to the right of each of these.

The east elevation features three gables to the main block; the rightmost gable is advanced, with a single-storey conservatory flush in front of the left two gables. The end gables have expressed chimney breasts with tall stacks, and the central gable has a four-light window to the first floor and a two-light window to the attic. The conservatory features an arched brace truss roof with trefoil cut-outs to the spandrels. A lower service range is positioned to the left, with a similar elevation to the rear (south) service range, including a two-storey gable facing to the left.

The interior was not inspected. Scott also added a north aisle to St Andrew’s Church in 1860. Abbeylands is an impressive example of Scott’s work, exhibiting an unusual Jacobean Revival style while clearly demonstrating the influence of Gothic Revival in its assured handling and compositional mass.

Sources include David Cole's The Work of Sir Gilbert Scott (1980) and Nikolaus Pevsner’s Staffordshire volume (1974).