Description

CHIPPENHAM

ST9273SW ST MARY STREET 930-1/10/201 (North side) 25/04/50 No.61 and attached rear garden walls

GV II*

House, now offices. 1702 (deed). Limestone ashlar facade; rubblestone to the rest; Flemish-bond brick turret with burnt headers, freestone quoins and dressings and hipped slate roof; stone slate double-pitched roof with lateral brick stacks to the valley of the main block. PLAN: double-depth central-entry through-passage plan with a turret to rear left and projecting C19 1st-floor closet on cast-iron columns to centre of rear landing. C20 rear extension. The turret may be a former rear stair turret but it is more likely to have been a lobby and entrance to the kitchen and a closet to the 1st floor. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys with attic and cellar; symmetrical 5-window range. The facade has a moulded cornice, sills to 1st floor and sill string course to the ground floor; chamfered rusticated quoins. The central bay is set slightly forward under a small pediment to the centre of the cornice. The painted stone doorcase has a similar pediment on the scroll brackets at string course level. The tall cyma-moulded architrave has a C19 6-panel door and an overlight with coloured triangular panes. Painted moulded architraves to 6/6-pane sash windows to the 1st floor and plate-glass sash windows to the ground floor. The rear has various C18 and C19 windows. INTERIOR: the central axial wall is almost 1m thick and accommodates the stacks that rise from the roof valley. The most complete room is to the front ground-floor left. It has full-height painted pine panelling with a fine box cornice; a white marble fireplace (probably mid/late C18) to the centre of the rear wall with a narrow horizontal panel of grained wood or plaster with richly raised rococo moulding and an animal to the centre; above it is a raised panel with bolection moulding; thick skirting boards and dado rail, all have returned mouldings at the openings; raised-and-fielded panelling to the window shutters, the 8-panel door and the soffits and backs of depressed pointed-arched recesses flanking the fireplace, that to the left has a door to the rear kitchen. Wide pine floorboards. The room to the front ground-floor right, formerly similar, now has a late C19 ornamented cornice and ceiling rose; similar arched recesses without panelling (to the right is a passage to the rear room) flanking a mid C19 white marble fireplace with anthemion motifs to the corners; the original 8-panel door is glazed to the centre; C19 high skirting boards. The central entry hall has late C19 polychromatic tiles; a semicircular arch through the thick central wall has a moulded keystone and archivolt, panelled fronts and soffits and fluted returns. The room to the ground-floor rear right, formerly a kitchen, has a stone Tudor-arched surround and a timber overmantel and cornice to an open fire against the central wall; 2 plastered chamfered crossbeams with run-out stops and a C19 dresser to the left-hand wall still on a flagstone base, other flagstones are removed. Mid C19 8-over-8 pane sash window. The small room to the ground-floor rear to the right of the rear stairwell is altered. The open-well, open-string staircase has a swept skirting, fretted ends and probably C20 thin turned balusters and newel to a wreathed handrail, and raised-and-fielded panelling below and to the 4-panel cellar door. The richly-moulded stairwell cornice has egg-and-dart moulding to the base. Doors to the 1st floor are 6-panel. The room to the 1st-floor front right is partitioned. The rear wall has a returned cyma-moulded cornice to full-height raised-and-fielded panelling with cupboards, flanking an early C19 fireplace. The room to the 1st-floor rear right has 2 boxed-in cross beams and in the rear left corner, steps down to a small closet in the brick turret which has thick glazing bars to a 9/9-pane sash window. The rear 1st-floor closet has painted-over margin panes flanking a C20 door. To the centre front of the landing between the rooms are 2 cupboards, one with a 4-panel door contains winding stairs with oak treads to the extensive attics. Both ranges are 4-bay collar-truss roofs with a central roof connecting front and rear ranges. Some of the tenoned purlins are rough, implying others are later; the collars are nailed. The wide boards, partly covered, are oak or elm. The cellar is approached by stone steps under the stairs, a narrow barrel-vaulted tunnel leads the vaulted area under the front right-hand room. Some original shelves and a cupboard remain against the right-hand wall. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the garden to the rear (now occupied by a C20 extension) is enclosed by a stone-coped brick wall (in English Garden Wall bond) attached to the rear. That to the right is a substantial retaining wall approx 40m long, which sweeps up toward the end with a door and steps to the land outside which is approx 2m lower. The facade is of a similar design to No.19 (qv).

Listing NGR: ST9222673304

External Links

• Wikidata Q17544288

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Recommended Books

• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)