Building record 14028/1 - Shrigley Hall

<1> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 407440 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

Former mansion now hotel and country club: C.1825 by Thomas Emett Senior of Preston for Sir William Turner. Ashlar brown sandstone with graded slate and partly felted roof. Two storey, symmetrical, eleven bay front, with end and three centre bays breaking slightly forward. Centre has pediment and Ionic tetrastyle porch on five steps. Plinth band, plain frieze and modillion cornice. Mid twentieth century attic storey but balustrating over end bays is the remains of original treatment. Windows, sashes with glazing bars in plain reveals, except end bays which are tripartite with panelled pilasters and segmental tympana. Doorway has carved architrave, six panelled door and ornamental rectangular fanlight. Medallion in pediment, of lion and cross. Rubble wings to rear, three storey to left and two storey to right, both with sixteen pane sashes and plain door cases.

Interior: Hall. Entry through two, six panelled oak doors, semi-circular headed niches and doorways with moulded soffits to left and right. Staircase removed and false ceiling hides Ionic capitals and ceiling cornice, and cuts off upper dome. Three bay room to right of hall has original ceiling. Acanthus border, with large rectangular panel with central band of swags. Cornucopiae and elegant tracery in corners and central elliptical medallion of cornucopiae and acanthus. Three bay room to left of hall has four, six panelled walnut doors with moulded panels and raised fields. Running swag frieze, intertwined foliage soffit and ovolo cornice. Ceiling cornice of acanthus and intertwined foliage. Black and green-veined chimney breast on fluted circular columns. Left end bay room: Twisted vine frieze below modillion cornice with acanthus and vine motifs in circular central panel. End of room, divided by wooden Corinthian pilasters, leads to two storey well behind, under circular skylight, and containing Corinthian columns and pilasters. It now contains the staircase. Dome has been converted into a library. Entrance between composite order columns supporting a foliate frieze. Vault contains twisted vine tracery on ropework dividing moulded panels with a border of urns and tracery around circular light. Plasterwork in vault, mid nineteenth century, may belong to rebuild of vault implied by external masonry.

<2> de Figueiredo P & Treuherz J, 1988, Cheshire Country Houses, p.270 (Book). SCH785.

A stone built Regency house built for William Turner, a Blackburn mill owner, after he acquired the estate in 1818. The architect was Thomas Emett senior, who was from a family of Preston timber merchants. The principal rooms all face west and are located either side of the entrance hall. Unfortunately the entrance hall is no longer open to the high dome and skylight and the Imperial staircase has been removed. The Salesian Mission, who ran the house as a school for fifty years, made changes to the interior and added an attic floor in place of the open balustrade.

<3> Hartwell C, Hyde M, Hubbard E & Pevsner N, 2011, The Buildings of England: Cheshire (2011 revision), p.543 (Book). SCH7059.

The Salesians ran the hall as a school from 1929 to 1982 removed the main stair, but it has been reinstated. A square dome with false perspective ribs rising to a round skylight. Like Tatton, as adjoining space was also open through both floors to a skylight; it is now floored in.

<4> Higham N J, 1984-9, Professor Nick Higham's Aerial Photographs, 1988/2/1/19 (Aerial Photograph). SCH7659.