Listing Text

CLARENDON PARK ALDERBURY
SU 12 NE
Shute End Road
9/57 St. Marie's Grange
9.2.73
I

House, 1835-7 by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin,, enlarged and altered c1841,
probably to sketches by Pugin. Red brick of local manufacture,
with Chilmark stone dressings. Tiled roofs. Builder, Osmund of
Sarum, at cost of £2,000, for Pugin and his second wife. Original
structure a 3-storey rectangular block with wing, also 3 storeys
containing chapel and attached sacristry on east. Entrance from
Salisbury-Southampton road via draw or turning bridge to middle
floor, alongside tall square stair tower, giving directly on to
parlour, and beyond, the library, with garde-robe turret on south.
Ground floor contained kitchen buttery and fuel stores, with
probably servant's room and service access under chapel. Upper
floor of two bedrooms, also with garde-robe in turret. Chapel led
axially off library. All constructed in English bond 22-in brick
diminishing by half-brick at each storey. Stair tower flat roofed
with parapet, and upper levels, decorated with letters M (for
Marie) AWP and stepped crosses, in vitrified black headers. Stone-
mullioned windows with four centred heads, originally leaded, of
which 2 survive, and now paned metal windows. Building extensively
altered c1841 possibly to facilitate sale, angle with chapel built
out to square to contain new entrance at lower floor level to stair
hall, 2-storey bay added to chapel with brattished parapet, kitchen
converted to sitting room with angled bay, many windows and
doorways moved. Bell tower built at north-east corner with 'dream-
holes' and conical roof, and adjoining narrow flush dormer. New
works in cavity wall construction with snapped headers and Bath
stone.
Interior: Original front door studded, with iron knocker and
spyhole. Oak ceilings of original work comprising moulded beams
and chamfered joists with oak frieze, now covered, survive in
original parlour and library now bedrooms, the library retaining
deeply carved limestone fireplace, also some lesser fireplaces.
Moulded door from library with rebus refixed on landing. Stained
glass with Pugin's monogram and arms reset in later stair hall and
chapel. Work of 1841 includes large oak chimneypiece with mirrors
in lower sitting room, dog-leg stair with turned balusters, and
ceilings with fibrous plaster friezes. Original 4 trusses of the
2-storey chapel survive behind later ceilings. While living here,
1835-7, Pugin wrote what was, probably his most important work
'Contrasts', and, inter alia, was working on Scarisbrick Hall,
Lancashire.
(B. Ferrey: Recollections of A.Welby Northmore Pugin (1861); Phoebe
Stanton: Pugin, (1971); John Piper: Arch. Review xcviii,
(1945), 81)

Listing NGR: SU1731728162