Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 16 January 2025 to update the name and address and reformat the text to current standards

SY6873
969-1/3/128

PORTLAND
Fortuneswell
OLD HILL, (East side)
The Old Rectory, with boundary walls

(Formerly listed as Nos.1, 1A, AND 2 The Old Rectory, with boundary walls)

II

Rectory to St. George Reforne, later hotel, conversion to dwellings, 1991. C18 part includes symmetrical South East front; enlarged to North East and remodelled in 1825. Rendered and scribed, asbestos-cement slate roof. A long but compact hipped block set to high retaining terrace on north side. Two storeys and part basement; South East 3+1+2-windowed. Mainly 16-pane sashes, but C20 steel casement to ground-floor bays one and two, and 12-pane sashes to ground floor, bays five and six. Some early glass remains in first-floor windows. Centred to left half is good panelled door with fanlight in stone-cheeked porch to flat roof, then a mid-height stair window, and at head of intrusive C20 stair flight a C20 door. Two end and one gable stacks. North East front also six-windowed: 16-pane sashes at bays one/three/four/six, blind openings to two and five; ground storey has various altered windows, including arched light to bay five with plain overlight to C20 door. West end has added one-storey unit behind stepped gable walls north and south. Main block has moulded stone or rendered cornice to ovolo finish, on which is set square-edged lead gutter as a blocking course.

Interior not inspected.

Subsidiary Features: To the South West, attached to the end gable wall of No 1, a length of wall in cut block, with an interrupted saddle-back parapet forming crenellations, rising c 1.5m. After an opening, this returns, at c 1m height across the whole frontage of the property, continuing until it meets a range of C20 garages. A similar wall returns on the far side of the garages at an acute angle, running along the top of a retaining wall, all as the first stretch in detail. These walls are important in defining the historical site in an otherwise unstructured piece of townscape. Built as the Rectory to St. George, Reforne (qv), and enlarged to the North East in the early C19, the houses have a dramatic site on the scarp slope above Fortuneswell, and was bounded to the south, until its removal, by the Merchants' Railway.

(Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: Dorset: London: 1970-: 253).

Listing NGR: SY6887173106

External Links

• Wikidata Q26569614

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

• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  London 6: Westminster (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England): Westminster v. 6
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)