Wynlass Beck

Wynlass Beck is a villa built in 1854 with minor late 20th-century alterations. It was designed by Joseph Stretch Crowther, an architect from Manchester, for Mr Peter Kennedy. The building is constructed in rubble Lakeland greystone with ashlar sandstone dressings, quoins, moulded kneelers, and coped gables, with a Westmorland slate roof laid to diminishing courses. The style is Gothic revival.

The building follows an extended L-plan, with the main domestic range to the south, a service range and attached glasshouse to the north and west.

The entrance front faces east and is formed by paired gables of different widths, both steeply pitched with a massive square chimney between them. The main entrance is positioned off-centre within the right-hand gable, featuring a stepped chamfered ashlar surround with a shouldered and joggled head to a recessed double doorway below a blind quatrefoil. The double plank doors are decorated with elaborately ornamental strap hinges and fittings. Above this are 3 lancet windows with pointed heads beneath hood moulds. The left-hand gable contains a single pointed arch window with a quatrefoil head.

The south elevation facing the garden rises to 2 storeys with attics across 4 bays. A wide gable projects at the left-hand end, while narrow gables break through the eaves to bays 2 and 4. Bay 3 features a full-height projecting bay window with a faceted pitched roof rising to a point. The windows are multi-light mullioned types in quoined surrounds, with individual lights mostly featuring trefoil heads. Cill bands run across all storeys. A late 20th-century conservatory was added at the east end.

The west elevation has a wide truncated chimney stack to the right, flanked by ground-floor 2-light windows. Further left is a 2-storey entrance porch with a shallow pyramidal roof. Extending westwards from the porch is a low glasshouse with curved roof pitches, behind which sits a single-storey L-shaped service range extending from the north end of the west elevation. The north elevation features an advanced gable at the west end, various 2-light windows, and a stair window at the east end.

Internally, the entrance vestibule leads to an arcaded stair hall with moulded pointed arches, one of which is now infilled. The main staircase is dog-legged with octagonal newel posts topped by crenellated caps, interrupted splat balusters, and moulded handrails. The principal reception rooms and bedrooms have 9-panel doors with moulded architraves, skirtings and plaster cornices. Most rooms retain original ashlar or marble hearth surrounds. Service rooms feature built-in cupboards. The property includes extensive cellars, some of which have been modified to create habitable rooms.

J.S. Crowther was a specialist church architect with a preference for Gothic revival style who had also designed houses in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. He was associated with the Reverend John Aspinall Addison, who had built a Gothic revival villa in Windermere shortly after the completion of the Kendal and Windermere Railway in 1847. Addison funded the building of a chapel (which later became Windermere's first church), a junior school, and a residential college. Crowther designed several more houses for wealthy clients in Windermere during the 1850s and 1860s and is thought to have worked to Addison's direction on other projects in the village, including additions to St Mary's Church.

Wynlass Beck is a distinctive and little-altered detached villa that formed part of an important group of Gothic revival buildings which helped establish the distinctive architectural character of Windermere village in the decades following the opening of the Kendal and Windermere Railway in 1847.