Winston Hall

Winston Hall

A town house, now a club, built in 1750 for Richard Chandler, a woolstapler. The building was purchased by the Gloucester Branch of the Conservative Party in 1883 and opened as the Conservative Club. It retains this use and underwent late 19th and minor 20th-century alterations for the club.

The building is constructed of red brick with stone details painted white, and features a hipped slate roof behind parapets and brick chimney stacks. It is organised as a double-pile block with wings at the rear on each side of a small infilled court.

The main block rises three storeys with a cellar, while the rear wings are two storeys. All sections have offset plinths and raised and chamfered quoins at the outer corners of the main block. The parapets are finished with moulded stone coping.

The symmetrical front elevation comprises seven bays. The central bay contains the entrance doorway, reached by two stone steps with a cast-iron footscraper to the right. The doorcase is dressed with fluted Ionic three-quarter columns, an entablature and a pediment. To each side of the doorway are three sash windows. The first floor contains seven sash windows, and the second floor seven shorter sashes. All windows feature glazing bars (3x4 panes on the ground and first floors, 3x3 panes on the second floor) in openings with rubbed brick flat arches set with raised keystones and moulded stone sills on moulded end-brackets.

The north and south sides of the main block each contain five bays. On the north side, the central bay has a slight projection for a chimney stack built off a moulded stone base-slab on moulded stone brackets. Below this projection is a sash window on the ground floor, and on the first floor within the projection is a small sash. Other bays contain similar sashes to those on the front, all with glazing bars. The south side features on the ground floor an early 19th-century decorative cast-iron porch in the second bay to the right. On the first floor in the central bay is a Venetian window inserted in the lower part of an opening for a larger earlier window, indicated by an infilled semicircular rubbed brick arch with a raised keystone and original moulded stone sill. The ground and first floors contain original or replaced sashes with glazing bars in other bays. The second floor has two casements with glazing bars (4x4 panes) to each side and a short sash (3x2 panes) in the central bay, all in openings with details similar to the front. The north and south sides of the added rear wings also have similar fenestration.

The interior features a central entrance hall. At the rear to the right is a mid-18th-century open well staircase with an open string, column-on-vase balusters, a ramped handrail, carved acanthus tread-end brackets and a curtail step with a column newel set within balusters. The stair dado is fitted with fielded panels and a skylight lights the stairwell above. To the left of the hall is a room containing an 18th-century fireplace with an eared architrave surround and fielded panelling. Other 18th-century joinery and dentil ceiling cornices survive in several other rooms on the ground and first floors. On the second floor on the north side, a long room is roofed with a late 19th-century open timber roof of six bays with arch-braced collar trusses supported on corbels.

The forecourt walls and piers were rebuilt in matching style in the 1980s.