No 32 and Railings to Front is a Grade II* listed building in the Cumberland local planning authority area, England. First listed on 1 June 1949. A Georgian House. 2 related planning applications.
No 32 and Railings to Front
- WRENN ID
- pale-span-claret
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Cumberland
- Constituency
- Carlisle MP: Ms Julie Minns (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 1 June 1949
- Type
- House
- Period
- Georgian
- Address
- No 32 and Railings to Front, Abbey Street, CA3 8TX
- OS grid reference
- NY 397 559
- Coordinates
- 54.89495, -2.94106
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
No. 32 is a house now used as offices, built around 1817 for Christopher William Hutchinson of Temple Sowerby. It is constructed from calciferous sandstone ashlar, featuring a chamfered plinth, V-jointed quoins, and an eaves cornice. The roof is made of graduated greenslate, with late 19th and 20th century brick chimney stacks at the ridge and ends. The building has two storeys and five bays, with a central staircase plan.
The main entrance has a central panelled door surrounded by pilasters and columns, topped with a wreathed frieze and a patterned fanlight, accessed by stone steps. To the right, there is another panelled door with a fanlight in plain reveals, also leading up steps. The sash windows have glazing bars and are set in plain stone reveals.
Inside, the building retains much original detail. The hall features a panelled soffit to the door arch and a rib-vaulted plaster ceiling. There are wooden panelled doors with fluted surrounds, moulded plaster ceiling cornices, and roundels in the principal rooms. Internal panelled shutters match the detail of the front door. The cantilever staircase has patterned cast-iron balusters and a moulded mahogany handrail, with a large round-arched stair window that has panelled reveals.
Historical context includes references from C Roy Hudleston in the Cumberland News from 1954, which provides details about the building's history, and the Carlisle Journal from 1905 notes the relocation of the County Police Headquarters to this site. The property features waved speared railings around the basement void and a scrolled lamp bracket above the steps leading to the front door.
Local climate
No 32 and Railings to Front sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,100 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 87% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 80% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 51 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 93% of listed buildings. Of these, 27 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- Sale history — 1 transaction since 2014
- Related listed building consents — 2 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings