Mountnessing And Beechen House

WESTON PARK 656-1/13/1860 (North side) Mountnessing and Beechen House

(Formerly Listed as: WESTON PARK Mountnessing and Heathside) 05/08/75

GV II

Former villa, now two dwellings. 1861-1862. MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate roof with modillion cornices to stacks. Double-depth plan. EXTERIOR: Two storeys with attics and basement; symmetrical five-window fronts to entrance and rear. Plate-glass sash windows. Following the contour of wide shallow canted bay to the centre of the south front and then along the returns are a coped parapet with balustraded panels above each window; a modillion cornice, a first floor sill string course with brackets to the windows; a ground floor platband with keystones to the raised surrounds of the ground floor windows dying into it; rusticated quoins and a plinth. Beechen House occupies the left hand window range and has a C20 rear wing. Mountnessing is four-window range including the windows of the canted bay. Those to the first floor have sliding louvred shutters, those to the ground floor have sun-blind boxes to the tops. The entrance is in the symmetrical three-window right return. Features are similar to those at the front; a prostyle Tuscan porch has a balustraded balcony above the cornice, the coping coincides with sill string course. The flanking first floor windows are blind. INTERIOR: Four-panel doors, the front room has splayed window openings with panelled shutters, an ornamental cornice and a pink-and-black marble fireplace with keystone to a wide semicircular arch (probably over a former cast iron arch-plate register grate). INTERIOR: Not inspected but reported as having the original staircase, four-panel doors and some marble fireplaces. HISTORY: The house first appears in the Bath Directory for 1862. It was designed in a Palladian Revival style, showing the revival of interest in Bath's Georgian architecture. The house was sub-divided in 1952.

Listing NGR: ST7321866181