Description

MANCHESTER

SJ89SE WILMSLOW ROAD, Didsbury 698-1/9/678 (East side) 25/02/52 Parrs Wood House

GV II*

Country house, now student hostel. Probably late C18; altered. Scored stucco, hipped slate roof. Square main block facing west with 2 unequal service wings on north side. Two storeys and 3 bays plus a 3-window service range to the left, with plinth, 1st-floor band, and cornice below eaves level, all carried round. The principal element is symmetrical, with a pedimented centre which has a prominent bowed porch at ground floor with engaged wooden Tuscan columns and antae, a triglyph frieze with oxen skull metopes, cornice with wrought-iron balustrade, a round-headed doorway with 9-panel door and plain fanlight, and curved sashed windows. These and all other sashed windows have margin panes. The ground floor has large tripartite sashes in segmental blank arches; the 1st floor has a sashed window in the centre flanked by coved niches, a similar window to the left and a blind window to the right. The service wing to the left, which breaks forward, has 3 similar sashes on each floor and a flat-roofed porch attached to the corner, with a round-headed doorway which has a fanlight with radiating glazing bars. Various ridge chimneys. The 5-window south front has a central 2-storey 3-window bow with a cast-iron balcony to 1st floor supported by very slender iron columns, and fenestration otherwise matching the front. The east side, a 7+4 window range, has (inter alia) a single-storey 3-window bow at the south end, a pedimented centre to the front of the service wing at the north end, sashed windows like the others (and a C20 external corridor attached at ground floor). Interior: entrance vestibule with diamond-pattern marble paving, 2 mahogany panelled doors in each side, and a principal doorway with classical architrave; central staircase hall illuminated by a domed skylight and containing a flying imperial staircase with half-landings carried on Tuscan columns, Ionic screens to the landing with rosette frieze and dentilled cornice, doorways with architraves including relief panels depicting classical scenes of rural life; fine decoration in south and east rooms, including fireplaces (one with Ionic columns, the other with herms), moulded plaster friezes and modillioned cornices; elliptical room at 1st floor formerly similar to Cupola Room at Heaton Hall, but decoration recently collapsed. History: may have been designed by a member of the Wyatt family; was owned by Richard Farington, brother of the diarist Joseph Farington, a frequent visitor until his accidental death in Didsbury church in 1821.

Listing NGR: SJ8564890302

External Links

• Parrs Wood House at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q7139863

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects by Harwood, Richard (2012) Paperback
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)