Aston Hall, Stone

Aston Hall, Stone

Aston Hall is a convalescent home designed as a house in 1855 by Edward Welby Pugin for Father Edward Huddlestone. The building incorporates an earlier wing and material from a convent designed by CF Hansom.

The house is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with gault brick and blue brick decoration and ashlar dressings. The roof features alternating bands of plain and fishscale tiles.

The building has two stories with attics and follows a "pinwheel" plan that revolves around a central, open-well staircase hall. At ground floor level, this hall leads to three reception rooms. A corridor extends north-east, and at its further end incorporates part of the cloister walk of the earlier convent building by Hansom. Also converted from the earlier building are the lower stages of the former tower and the sacristies, which now serve as a chapel.

The exterior is decorated with white and blue bricks forming trellis patterns, together with the initials of Edward Huddlestone and the date 1855. Casement windows are largely of plate glass, set in generous ashlar surrounds, though several metal casements have been replaced with timber-framed substitutes.

The south-west garden front features a plank door with strap hinges to the right of centre, with three trefoils to its fanlight. Above this is a lancet at first floor level. To the right is a projecting gabled wing with a two-storey canted bay to the ground and first floors and a two-light casement to the attic. To the left of the door are two three-light ground-floor windows with cushed heads and two two-light casements at first floor level. The gabled dormer windows have decorative bargeboards and elaborate structural joinery, each supporting a wrought iron mace finial. The gabled wing has a weathervane to its apex. The left corner has quoins including a small niche housing a figure of a saint at first-floor height. Recessed at left is a small square turret with a parapet and flat roof, which has lancets to both floors. To the right of this is a lower wing with a square bay at ground floor level with hipped roof and a two-light gabled semi-dormer window to the first floor.

The south-east front comprises the 1855 building at the left and a portion of the eastern range of the earlier convent building at the far right, with a dining room addition of 1912 between them. The Pugin block at the far left has two two-light windows with mullions and transoms at the left, divided by a projecting chimney stack. To the right is a projecting wing with a canted bay to the ground floor, a three-light casement at first floor level and a two-light casement to the attic. The 1912 section comprises three bays with a canted bay at the centre of the ground floor containing a half-glazed door, flanked by two-light mullioned and transomed casements. The earlier portion at the right has stone walling with four two-light windows with cusped heads at ground floor level and a gabled first floor window.

The north-west front has two gables set beside each other, with the left one being a later addition including walling from an earlier lean-to range.

The north-east front has the projecting earlier wing at the left with a combination of stone and brick walling and cusped lights. The ground floor has been masked by later 20th-century additions, but the first floor of the 1855 house has a turret with a square lower body which dies, via offsets, to an octagonal upper body. This has brick walling and stone quoins and a lead candle-snuffer roof. To its left is the tall staircase window.

The interior features a hall with an open-well staircase with moulded newels and chamfered balusters. Each tread end has a sunken trefoil panel. The hall fireplace has a richly moulded surround with Edward Huddlestone's initials to a shield above the opening. Three other ground floor rooms all have fireplaces with a similar pattern, featuring the initials "EH" to the jambs and the text "SOLI.DEO.HONOR.ET.GLORIA".

The chapel to the north-west of the house, which appears to be part of the tower and eastern range of Hansom's convent building for the Passionists, has chamfered ceiling beams and joists. The north-east wall has an altar with a reredos formed of three recessed arched panels with figurehead stops, which may be salvaged from another location in the former convent building, possibly from the arches above the piscina and sedilia of the earlier chapel.

For the purposes of listing, the lift and lift shaft located in the stair hall and the range of 20th-century buildings on the north-east side of the former service yard, including garages and an entrance lobby, are not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.