Building record 543/3 - Bridge House, Walton Hall Park

<1> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 1329775 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

Bridge House, Walton Hall Park, Grade II Listed.
List Description: Two houses (formerly Schoolhouse and Schoolmaster's House) 1838 for the Walton Hall Estate. Stone-dressed Flemish bond brown brick with steep gabled roofs of Westmorland green slate and diminishing chimneys with octagonal flues. A picturesque T-shaped block; the schoolhouse, left, forms the T-head and the schoolmaster's house, right, the leg. The schoolhouse is of 2 storeys plus attic with 2 windows to lower storeys and one (in gable) to attic; the schoolmaster's house has projecting gabled porch with Jacobean doorway, a window to each side and 2 gabled half-dormers. Projecting sandstone plinths. Timber mullioned and transomed windows with leaded glazing in octagonal and diamond panes in iron casements (including hipped bay at side of schoolhouse). School closets and wash-house with hipped graded slate roof and shaped chimney, attached to schoolhouse by yard walls at rear. Interior. Bolection-moulded 4-panel doors; simple staircases; moulded plaster cornice to former schoolroom (with bay window).

<2> See map for surveyor, c.1837-51, Cheshire Tithe Maps and Awards, Higher Walton, 1845 (Maps and Plans). SCH3266.

Bridge House is depicted on the Tithe Map for Higher Walton (1845); it forms part of Plot 71, owned and occupied by Gilbert Greenall and described as 'Farm Buildings, House, School, Hothouses, Gardens And Yards'. It lies to the east of the roadway leading from Walton Bridge, immediately to the north, to Walton Hall, located to the south.

<3> Peter de Figueiredo (Independent Consultant), 2008, Walton Hall and Gardens, Warrington: Conservation Statement, R4587 (Client Report). SCH9194.

Bridge House was one of several estate buildings owned by the Walton Hall estate. It formed part of a complex of buildings, including a hothouse and farm buildings, in an area known as the Lower Park which had been created from four fields, located immediately south of the Bridgewater canal and to the north of the Hall. The left hand section of Bridge House formed the village school and the right hand section the school master’s house. The building remains in largely original condition and is leased as a private dwelling.