Alton Towers and attached garden walls and gatehouse

Alton Towers and attached garden walls and gatehouse

Country house with adjoining walls and gatehouse, built between circa 1810 and circa 1840. The architects included James Wyatt, Robert Abraham, Thomas Allison, Thomas Fradgley, William Hollins, Thomas Hopper and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, commissioned by the fifteenth and sixteenth Earls of Shrewsbury.

The building is constructed of ashlar with edged herringbone tooling and slate roofs with ashlar stacks. It is designed in castellated Gothic style with an asymmetrical plan. The principal alignment runs north-west to south-east, with the entrance at the south-east angle leading into a 460-foot-long range of buildings. This range comprises The Armoury to the south-east, The Talbot Gallery to the north-west, and a nearly central Octagon linking the two. This range connects to the main domestic block to the north-east via a conservatory extending from The Octagon and an L-shaped service block from the Talbot Gallery. A chapel projects south-eastwards from the main domestic block. An attached wall encloses the north-east and south-east sides of a garden (the other sides being formed by the house itself), with a gatehouse positioned at the north-east corner of the garden.

North-east front: The front is mainly three storeys with a crenellated parapet, featuring a projecting central block flanked by set-back wings. The centrepiece is the gable end of The Banqueting Hall by Pugin, flanked by stepped corner buttresses ending in octagonal caps with spirelets. A canted oriel window comprises three tiers of cinquefoil-headed lights with a crenellated parapet, the central bay having five lights and the two side bays each containing a single blocked light. A central panel to the gable above bears the Talbot arms beneath a four-centred arch, flanked by windows with similar but slightly lower heads, all sharing a common stepped hood mould. To the left of the central block is a three-storey canted bay window of three lights; the ground-floor lights have four-centred heads and are blocked, while those to the first floor have pointed heads with transoms and reticulated tracery, and the second floor has cross windows with four-centred upper lights. Similar fenestration appears in the two-bay link between the bay window and The Banqueting Hall, except the first-floor windows have square heads. To the right of the central block is a slightly projecting bay with a ground-floor window featuring a four-centred arch and Y-tracery, a pointed first-floor window of three lights with late 14th-century style tracery, and two second-floor single-light windows with cinquefoiled heads under pointed arches. Between this bay and The Banqueting Hall is a four-storey, three-bay link with windows largely devoid of tracery; first-floor windows are pointed, ground-floor windows have four-centred arches, second-floor windows have square heads, and third-floor windows have two cinquefoil-arched lights under a square head.

The right-hand block comprises 2:4 bays divided by an octagonal turret and terminated to the right by a diagonally placed corner tower, with mainly square-headed windows; the first and second-floor windows of the two left-hand bays are pointed with Y-tracery. The left-hand block comprises 3:1 bays with mainly square-headed windows, the chapel set back to the left. An attached crenellated garden wall incorporates an octagonal turret and is terminated by a two-storey gatehouse with a low Tudor arch carriageway and crenellated parapet with projecting machicolations. In front of the wall is a dry moat itself enclosed by a low attached wall.

Entrance front: A two-storey, three-bay range is terminated to the right by a square three-storey entrance tower with angle buttresses and to the left by an octagonal tower, continuing as a wall and terminated by a square three-storey tower with an octagonal turret at its left-hand corner. An attached garden wall lies to the right of the entrance tower. All features have crenellated parapets (those to the towers featuring pseudo-machicolation), and mostly square-headed windows with trefoil-arched lights. The entrance tower is approached by a flight of steps with flanking Talbot hound statues bearing shields and a solid balustrade, leading to a tall four-centred arch bearing the Talbot arms above.

The Chapel: The east end has octagonal corner turrets with fishscale-patterned stone domes of ogee shape, capped by finials. A ground-floor canted bay window of three transomed lights with Y-tracery sits beneath Tudor arches and a parapet with decorated frieze. A three-light first-floor window features Perpendicular tracery under a square head. The gable has a decorative frieze and a canopied niche containing a statue. A square bell tower of three stages stands at the south-west corner; the second stage has blind elongated arcading, the third stage is heavily decorated with an openwork parapet featuring gabled corner pinnacles.

Interior: The Armoury roof features an arch-braced collar supporting a central moulded plate with queen struts above the collar. The Banqueting Hall contains two fireplaces, both with square heads recessed beneath four-centred arch panels bearing the Talbot arms. The north bay window contains stained glass by Hardman. The roof has arch-braced collars with king-posts above, openwork panels between collars and principals, curved wind-braces, one pair of purlins and a ridge piece, a central louvre, painted green and gold. In the Chapel, above the present low ceiling, the timber roof is supported on corbels bearing figures of kneeling angels. Stained glass by Willement is present.

Alton Towers forms part of an important garden layout included at Grade I on the Historic Monuments and Gardens Register.