Westwood Hall

Westwood Hall is a large house, built in the 1850s (1850-53) by Hadfield Weightman and Goldie. It was commissioned for John Davenport, the son of the founder of the Davenport Pottery Company in Leek, and has been used as a school since around 1920. The house is constructed of red sandstone ashlar with plain and scallop-tiled roofs. It is designed in a Jacobean style with robust detailing throughout.

The front facing Westwood Park Avenue features a prominent clock tower to the left, with a round archway in the lower storey and mullioned windows above. An oriel window sits beneath the tower. The clock tower has coped gables and a gableted turret finial with a weather vane. To the right of the tower is a symmetrical five-window range, with a projecting entrance porch in the centre, flanked by canted bay windows and outer mullioned and transomed windows with leaded glazing. A continuous cill band runs along the first-floor windows, which are also mullioned and transomed. All windows have hollow chamfering to the mullions and dripmoulds. The porch has a round-arched doorway with a chamfered form and a pendant keystone, and a mullioned and transomed window above. A segmental pediment tops the porch parapet. The attic has three coped gables with ball finials.

The garden front is asymmetrical and features an eight-window range terminating in a higher gable to the right. A two-storey canted bay window is located in the left-hand gable, and paired mullioned and transomed windows are found in the central gable (with three lights to the first floor). The right-hand gable has a full-height bow window with a conical roof. To the right again, an advanced and higher three-storey gable incorporates paired mullioned and transomed windows with leaded patterned glazing, and round-arched mullions. Upper windows have varying numbers of lights to the first and attic floors. The gable itself is coped and has a stack at the right-hand angle. Return wings to the right and a rear range are constructed of brick and are also two-storeyed with attic dormers. Various axial and end wall stacks are present throughout the building.

The interior retains much of its original layout, arranged around a courtyard plan, with principal rooms overlooking the garden and a full-height great hall behind the clock tower. Original features such as plaster ceilings and fireplaces remain in the principal rooms. One fireplace has monochromatic tiles illustrating crafts in the style of William de Morgan, and another features a heavy overmantel enriched with strapwork. The entrance hall and staircase were reconstructed following a fire in 1983; the stained glass in the stair window was largely salvaged.