Foxlowe

LEEK

SJ9856NW MARKET PLACE 611-1/4/84 (North side) 13/04/51 Foxlowe (Formerly Listed as: MARKET PLACE (North side) Foxlowe (Leek Trades and Labour Club))

GV II

House, in use as trade union and labour club since 1919. Late C18. The interior remodelled c1900, probably by William Larner Sugden. Brick with slate roof. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, 5-window range forming 2 parallel ranges. Corinthian architrave with paterae and triglyphs to cornice; 6-panelled door with traceried fanlight enriched with swags in the spandrels. Flanking 12-pane sash windows on each floor (6-pane sashes to attic storey) with continuous cill band to ground and first floors. String course above ground floor. Central first-floor window emphasised with entablature. All windows have painted stone cills and flat-arched brick heads. Rear elevation has full-height bow window to principal rooms (formerly drawing room and morning room) to right, long service wing to left, extended against inner face with addition of billiard room c1902, and further extended in connection with the use of the building as a club in the C20. INTERIOR: substantially remodelled c1900, though central entrance and stair hall with stone cantilevered stair and cast-iron balusters, and conservatory accessed from the mezzanine may possibly date from earlier alterations. Plaster or frieze paper cornice of pomegranates and leaves, to hall, staircase and landings, and fine brass door furniture. Several rooms contain fireplaces and overmantels from this c1900 remodelling, but the former drawing room to ground floor rear retains a plaster cornice and gilded cornice to the bow window from an earlier C19 decorative scheme. HISTORICAL NOTE: the house was probably built for Thomas Mills, attorney, of Leek and Barlaston Hall at the end of C18, and was lived in for much of C19 by the locally eminent Cruso family. In 1918, the house was acquired by the Federation of Textile Unions as their headquarters and working men's club, and served as the office of William Bromfield, for a time General Secretary of the Union, and elected as Leek's first labour MP in 1918.

Listing NGR: SJ9840756622