Root Store, Aqualate Hall

603/0/10058 15-OCT-09

FORTON Root Store, Aqualate Hall

GV II

A root store, dating from the mid-C19.

MATERIALS: Red brick with a red clay tile roof.

DESCRIPTION: The root store stands against the outside west wall of the kitchen gardens, readily accessible to the Hall's kitchen. It comprises an open upper part with a tiled roof with sawn, king-post trusses, supported on one side on the kitchen garden wall, and on the other on five brick piers. These have rounded corners, stone cushion capitals and at their bases are separated from one another by round-topped stone sills. This upper part may have been used to store hay or straw, which would have provided added insulation. Beneath, and reached by a sunken passageway, is a series of four arched brick vaults, each a metre or so high, providing cool, dark storage space for root vegetables.

HISTORY: The building's construction is not documented; on architectural grounds, a mid-C19 date is likely. It appears in its current form on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1879. It was still in its original use in 2008. The root store forms part of an unusually full set of historic estate buildings surrounding Aqualate Hall.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The root store at Aqualate Hall is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons: * As an unusually good, and well-detailed, example of a once-commonplace type of horticultural building which forms an adjunct to the walled garden at Aqualate * As part of a particularly full and architecturally interesting set of estate buildings to one side of Aqualate Hall, which is listed at Grade II*.