Redland Court (Redland High School)

BRISTOL

ST315874 REDLAND COURT ROAD, Redland 901-1/35/1719 (West side) 08/01/59 Redland Court (Redland High School) (Formerly Listed as: REDLAND COURT ROAD, Redland (West side) Redland Court)

II*

House, now school. 1732-5. By John Strachan. For John Cossins. Limestone ashlar, render with limestone dressings, ashlar stacks, Pennant steps, roof not visible. Axial, double-depth plan. Palladian style. 2 storeys and basement; 13-window range. Symmetrical composition of a central 7-window block, with flanking pavilions behind. The main block has steps up over the basement to a slightly projecting centre, which has a rusticated ground floor with three C19 French windows beneath tented glazed verandah, beneath a tetrastyle-in-antis Ionic portico to a modillion pediment with 4 putti around a cartouche, and 3 windows with architraves beneath swag. Either side has clasping pilasters, sill bands, cornices and balustrade with 7 good urns; Gibbs surrounds to basement and ground-floor windows, the latter with eared architraves with prominent voussoirs over cornices, and first-floor windows with architraves and cornices, all with plate-glass sashes. The pavilions have rusticated pilasters to a cornice and parapet, with plain urns; the ground floor has a Venetian window with a shell-head niche flanked by narrow windows with Gibbs surrounds and voussoirs, above a blind balustrade, and plain first-floor sashes. C19 upper floor to the right pavilion and an octagonal cupola to the left one. The connecting ranges have 2 semicircular-arched ground-floor windows and small plain windows under a cornice. INTERIOR: 3 good front rooms fully panelled, modillion cornices, and fluted Ionic pilasters to segmental arches and 4-fold doors connecting the central and E room, and good marble fireplaces. A central stone-flagged hall to the rear with decorative ceiling, Doric frieze and doorcase with a broken pediment and a mahogany 6-panel door; either side are 2 good open-well stairs, that to left following the semicircular wall to a quarter landing, with a semi-domed ceiling, barleysugar column-on-vase balusters and fluted Doric column newels, ramped rails and pedimented doorcases, Doric frieze with bucrania; the right-hand open-well stair has quarter landings and plainer column-on-vase balusters, and doorcases with segmental pediments. HISTORICAL NOTE: an Elizabethan house was demolished on the site in 1730, and some of the panelling re-used. The house was built for John Cossins; the design uses details derived from Colen Campbell, at Houghton. (Ison W: The Georgian Buildings of Bristol: Bath: 1952-: 164; Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 133; Dening C F W: The Eighteenth Century Architecture of Bristol: Bristol: 1923-; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 471).

Listing NGR: ST5828574844