Stone Cross Mansion

Stone Cross Mansion is a country mansion, dating to 1874. It is now used as offices and a factory. The building may have been designed by Paley and Austin, but drawings by JW Grundy of Ulverston survive. Constructed from coursed rock-faced limestone with Hexham freestone quoins and detailing, it is built in a Gothic/Scottish Baronial style. The building has a complex plan based around a central rectangular block, with a main elevation facing east. The mansion is three storeys high, with full and roof dormers, and has 11 window bays, although entrance bays 7 and 8 are set back within a three-arched porch. The porch has a central gablet, a pierced parapet, and clustered shafts to the columns, and projects from a five-storey tower in bay 6. This tower is machicolated and crenellated, featuring a bowed oriel window of three lights on the first floor. Bay 1 has a canted three-light bay window, and bay 3 features a three-light flat window with a decorative lintel. A quoined gable stack, with decorative quoins incorporating courses above and below the third storey, sits between bays 9 and 11. The south-facing garden elevation is also of three storeys and 10 bays, with bays 1-3 and 8-10 containing three-light square windows on the ground floor. A canted two-light window is set within a dressed stone bay which projects from the elevation. All windows are sash windows with quoined surrounds. The north-east corner features a gableted apex with shaped jagged gable ends containing stacks. The interior retains original decorative window frames with Gothic-carved panelling, marble fireplaces with tiled metal surrounds, coffered ceilings, and tiled encaustic mosaic floors. A lavish High Victorian Gothic hall includes a marble columned arcade, corbelled wall brackets to a glazed ceiling, and a first-floor balustrade. While the main flight of the Imperial staircase has been removed, returned half-flights remain. The first floor of the hall contains three oil-on-canvas paintings of Romantic Gothic Revival scenes, signed L Besche 1880. Further notable features include leaded lights and panelled doors, with lavishly embellished surface and capitals, demonstrating blind arcading and quadripartite vaulting. The building has undergone later additions and alterations.