Chesterfield And Attached Front Garden Wall

This is a house, later adapted for use as a nursing home, built in 1742. It may have been designed by William Halfpenny. The building is constructed from limestone ashlar and copper-slag blocks, with gable stacks and a slate hipped roof. It follows a double-depth plan and is designed in the Palladian style.

The house is two storeys, with an attic and basement, and has an eleven-window front. It displays a symmetrical design, with a projecting three-window central section topped by a pediment, and lower three-window wings to either side. The central section features a banded ground floor and four Ionic pilasters above, supporting a pulvinated frieze. The corners of the front are rusticated at ground floor level, with quoins above, and topped by a parapet. A later, pedimented Tuscan porch provides access to a pair of doors. The ground-floor windows are recessed, with cambered heads. The second floor has segmental pediments over the middle window and plain pediments flanking it, with keyed architraves to the outer windows and sunken panels above. The side wings are set back, with plain cornice bands and parapets. The right-hand wing has enlarged ground-floor windows and blind windows above with keyed architraves. The left-hand wing has similar detailing and a 19th-century right-hand doorway, now glazed with a bracketed pediment. The windows are plate-glass sashes.

The return front to the right of the main block is constructed of copper-slag blocks with brick window dressings, while the left return is rendered. The rear of the house has two 19th-century canted bays.

The interior contains several notable features, including an entrance hall divided by an elliptical arch with fluted pilasters leading to a central stair hall. This hall contains an open dogleg staircase with column balusters, a moulded ramped handrail and a wide curtail. There are fully-panelled rooms connected by an arch with fluted Ionic pilasters, panelled arched recesses, marble fireplaces with rocaille woodwork, and an eared overmantel in the front room featuring foliate festoons and a bracketed pediment. Doorways have raised pediments and the doors are four-panel mahogany.

The property is accompanied by a retaining wall constructed from coursed rubble enclosing the front garden. A blocked semicircular-arched doorway with a Gibbs surround is situated on the left-hand side.

This is a significant early villa, located on a hilltop setting in Clifton, with a well-preserved interior. The use of slag blocks in a building of this style is unusual.