The Lions And Attached Pavilions, Balustrades, Gate Piers And Railings

The Lions and Attached Pavilions, Balustrades, Gate Piers and Railings

A house built between 1720 and 1730 by Benjamin Holloway, a carpenter and builder, for himself. The building is a fine example of Provincial Baroque style and exemplifies the calibre of craftsmanship Holloway had developed through his employment by the Duke of Chandos on the houses in Castle Street. The house was illustrated in William Halfpenny's "Perspective Made Easy", published in 1731.

The structure is constructed of Flemish-bond brick in alternate red and yellow, with stone coping, cornice, banded pilasters, architraves, cills and a rusticated basement. It is a double-depth plan with forward pavilions and mid-nineteenth-century side wings. The building rises two storeys with a semi-basement and presents a symmetrical five-window range to the street. The double-pitched pantile roof has yellow brick stacks to all gable ends, and the pavilions are topped with pyramidal slate roofs.

The principal facade displays windows to the main block as 6/6-pane sashes set within segmental-arched, pulvinated architraves with keystones that die into the cornice above. A wide flight of steps over a basement arch rises to the central bay. The blocking course, which replaces a former parapet wall and is raised above an open segmental pediment, features dentilled corbels that coincide with the cornice and form capitals to fluted pilasters. These frame a semicircular-arched sash window with a moulded archivolt, keystone and imposts. A recessed panelled apron rests on the cornice of the doorcase which spans the facade as a string-course. The raised-and-fielded 8-panel door sits in a pulvinated architrave with a crest to the keystone, all framed by Doric columns and a triglyph frieze with patera. The outer sides of the bay carry banded rustication on both floors. Flanking windows to the first floor have moulded cills and plain shallow shaped aprons with guttae to the ends. Ground-floor windows have bracketed cills, whilst basement windows have flat gauged stone arches below a string course.

The single-storey pavilions are set forward to the front of a paved courtyard at street level and linked to the pilasters by rusticated arches. They have hipped roofs, moulded and banded eaves cornices and pilasters (that to the far left is missing). Venetian windows face the fronts; the central arches of which, with large keystones dying into the bands, are blocked. The fixed casements with thick glazing bars to the sides have heavy cornices above and panels below. The window to the far right is a blind ashlar recess. The pavilions are accessed by twentieth-century doors in moulded architraves facing the courtyard.

To the rear, the eighteenth-century left ballroom wing is two storeys with basement and a three-window range. Constructed in red Flemish-bond brick, it features a plain parapet, bracketed cills to eared architraves with raised cornices, 3/6-pane sash windows to the first floor and 6/9-panes to the ground floor. The lower sash and cill of the left window have been removed to form a door. The three-window range to the rear of the lower early-eighteenth-century main block to the right is of yellow Flemish-bond brick, with raised surrounds and keystones to 6/6-pane sash windows. The central range has been rebuilt in the twentieth century in stretcher-bond brick with a large 6/6-pane sash window to the first floor and twentieth-century double doors to the ground floor, flanked by twentieth-century windows under segmental arches to the semi-basement.

The interior retains eighteenth-century joinery including doors and shutters. A semicircular arch, now blocked, at the rear of the entrance hall is decorated with acanthus-leaf edging to the intrados and a plaster shell to the centre, similar to those found at No. 12 Castle Street. The ground-floor room to the left of the front features high raised-and-fielded panelling which rises to approximately two metres to meet the fireplace wall; a white marble fire-surround of circa 1840 with block corners and an oval panel with radiating flutes to the centre of the lintel is set under four square panels below a dentilled cornice at ceiling level. Carved scrolls sweep down from the cornice to meet the panelling, which displays two shell alcoves at the corners. The wall to the right of the central entrance hall has been removed. The wall to the left retains a dado rail sweeping up to a 6-panel door, with the tallest panels at the top, and raised-and-fielded panelling below the dado rail. The room to the right, formed from the former hall, rear room and front room, features a mid-nineteenth-century cornice, raised-and-fielded panelling to the shutters and panelled reveals to a door to the rear right leading to the eighteenth and nineteenth-century ballroom.

The large eighteenth-century ballroom has a very high ceiling and a modillion cornice with patera and a frieze of key pattern and swags. Traces of two high and wide semicircular arches to the left remain visible; these were lowered to become segmental arches below a nineteenth-century picture rail. The 6/9-pane sash windows retain eighteenth-century added moulding to the panelling of the shutters. A late-nineteenth-century fireplace in Jacobean style with columns and panelling stands against the front wall, whilst the right-hand wall features a nineteenth-century segmental-arched recess.

The ground-floor room of the nineteenth-century wing contains a wooden fireplace to the left with an eared architrave and eighteenth-century-style moulding, a moulded and reeded cornice, high skirting boards and a segmental-arched recess to the rear. The closed-string staircase to the rear of the former hall has turned balusters, fretted ends and a moulded rail. A lodge to the right, which was where drivers waited, contains stone skirtings, a corner stack and a late-nineteenth-century Gothic-style fireplace with a cinquefoil-headed cast-iron grate.

Subsidiary features include twentieth-century low panelled and corniced gatepiers carrying spectacular Chinese-style dogs, known as The Lions, which are connected to the pavilions by low ashlar walls with twentieth-century square-section stone balustrades. The steps to the door are flanked by nineteenth-century railings with scrolls attached to the vertical rails.