Listed Building: WALMOOR HOUSE (1375760)

CHESTER CITY (EM) SJ46NW DEE BANKS 1932-1/2/59 (West side) 10/01/72 Walmoor House (Formerly Listed as: DEE BANKS Walmoor Hill) II* House, later girls school, then County Fire Service headquarters. 1896. By John Douglas for himself. Snecked red sandstone with tooled surfaces; grey-green slate roof. T-shaped, in Elizabethan manner, main wing crowning steep Dee-side slope. EXTERIOR: 2 and 3 storeys. The east, entrance front is composed as a squat 3-storey tower, left, with corbelled octagonal stair-turret against 2-storey projecting porch with oriel above basket-arch of entrance; a 2-storey range between porch and incomplete servants' wing, right; crenellated tower at junction of wings; stone-mullioned leaded windows; parapets, some crenellated; hipped roofs. Stringcourses, sparingly used. The north face of the servants' wing is simply expressed. The west face to the Dee, set on a precipitous bank, has canted bay windows to end of north wing of basement and 3 storeys; octagonal tower rising to 4 storeys at junction of wings; 3-window range of 2 storeys; 3 storey south bay with large canted projection to outer corner holding large mullioned and transomed windows to ground and first floors and small second-floor windows. INTERIOR retains many features including the principal reception room, now conference room, the stair and notably the oratory in the chamber above the main entrance. The plan is foreshadowed on a smaller scale by the former rectory of St Thomas's Church, Parkgate Road (qv) on a similar westward-facing valley-brow site, 1880; his unexecuted ideal design for such a site, larger than Walmoor and a schloss, was published in British Architect, 68, 1907. (Hubbard E: The Work of John Douglas: London: 1991-: 7-9; 189; RCHME: Historic Building Report - Walmoor Hill, Dee Banks, Chester: Swindon: 1997-). Listing NGR: SJ4207765782