Chesterfield And Attached Front Garden Wall

BRISTOL

ST5772NW CLIFTON HILL, Clifton 901-1/14/775 (North side) 08/01/59 No.3 Chesterfield and attached front garden wall (Formerly Listed as: CLIFTON HILL (North side) No.3 Chesterfield)

GV II*

Formerly known as: No.3 Clifton Court CLIFTON GREEN Clifton. House, now nursing home. 1742. Possibly by William Halfpenny. Limestone ashlar and copper-slag blocks, gable stacks and a slate hipped roof. Double-depth plan. Palladian style. 2 storeys, attic and basement; 11-window range. A fine symmetrical front has a pedimented 3-window centre broken forward, and lower 3-window side wings; the centre has a banded ground floor and 4 Ionic pilasters above to a pulvinated frieze. Outer corners have rusticated ground-floor quoin strips, quoins above, and parapet. Later pedimented Tuscan porch to a 2-leaf door. The centre has recessed ground-floor windows with cambered heads, middle segmental and flanking plain pediments to the second floor, with keyed architraves to the outer windows and sunken panels over the second floor. The wings are set back, with plain cornice bands and parapets. The right-hand has enlarged ground-floor windows and blind ones above with keyed architraves; the left-hand has similar surrounds, and a C19 right-hand doorway, now glazed, with a bracketed pediment. Plate-glass sashes. The right return to the main block is of copper-slag blocks with brick window dressings, the left return is rendered. The rear has two C19 canted bays. INTERIOR: a good interior includes an entrance hall divided by an elliptical arch with fluted pilasters from a central stair hall, with a left-hand open dogleg stair with column balusters, a moulded, ramped rail and wide curtail. Fully-panelled right-hand rooms connected by an arch with fluted Ionic pilasters, panelled, arched recesses, good marble fire surrounds with rocaille woodwork, an eared overmantel in the front room with foliate festoons and bracketed pediment; doorways with raised pediment, and 4-panel mahogany doors. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached coursed rubble retaining wall encloses front garden, with a left-hand blocked semicircular-arched doorway with Gibbs surround. A notable early villa development on the hilltop in Clifton, with a good interior. The use of slag blocks in a polite house is very uncommon. (Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 151; Ison W: The Georgian Buildings of Bristol: Bath: 1952-: 38).

Listing NGR: ST5732272920