Ouse Bank House

Ouse Bank House, Newport Pagnell

A substantial brick house built around 1689, with mid to late 19th century extension and 20th century alterations. The building is constructed in red brick with blue headers laid in Flemish bond, with a plain tile roof and brick stacks.

The main frontage comprises two storeys arranged in two sections. The earlier southern section is four windows wide, set between giant brick pilasters with moulded brick capitals and a dentilled cornice above. The parapet has been rebuilt. The entrance, positioned to the left, features a handsome eared doorcase with a moulded canopy supported on cut modillion brackets. The door itself is six-fielded and panelled with a five-lobed fanlight in a rectangular opening above, set within an egg and dart moulded archivolt with trefoils in the spandrels. The windows are twelve-paned sashes with boxes positioned near the face of the brickwork, heavy glazing bars, and original crown glass. Window openings have rubbed thirteen-in brick flat arches with moulded sills, though those on the ground floor have been replaced. A central lead hopper and downpipe run vertically. Behind the parapet, two flat-roofed dormer windows are concealed. The south gable end carries a large brick stack with a rendered base, rising as three closely-spaced square stacks. Superimposed on the right side over two bays is a square bay window dating from around 1940, with a soldier-coped parapet and flat roof, containing a large twenty-pane sash window.

The building was extended northward by three bays in the mid to late 19th century, employing more pronounced blue headers but otherwise matching the detail of the original section. Cellar openings have been blocked. The return elevation to the north displays three round-headed openings on the ground floor, the central one serving as a doorway, with an external chimneybreast above featuring curved shoulders to the stack. Two lead hoppers are present. The rear elevation contains large nine-pane sash windows with slender glazing bars on the upper floors and three-pane windows at attic level.

Interior

The ground floor has been altered. The first floor room at the north end of the 17th century section is fully panelled with bolection moulded panelling and features a handsome moulded cornice, chair rail, and a bolection moulded fireplace with an overmantle landscape oil painting on canvas, now largely obscured. The steward's office has a lesser-moulded cornice but contains a good moulded doorcase with swept pediment. The large ground floor room in the later section has a lateral fireplace with moulded surround and mirrored overmantle cornice.

History

When built, the house was described as a "capital mansion house". By conveyance in 1756 it passed to Roger Chapman and his wife, before being purchased by Walter Beaty, a Congregationalist and promoter of the lace industry, who died in 1791. Following the Second World War, the building functioned as a County Branch Library until a new library building was constructed in the 1960s.