Description

TQ 19 SE BUSHEY ELSTREE ROAD
(North side)
Bushey Heath

11/74 Rosary Priory
- High School

- II

Former large house, now school. c.1880. Ashlar with sandstone dressings. Slate roofs. Extravagant loosely classical style. 3 blocks, sides canted away from centre. 2 storeys and attic to centre and left. 3-storey block to right with 5 storey square tower and 7-storey octagonal tower. 3 bay central block: entrance to centre in 2 storey semi-circular porch, half-glazed doors, flanking round headed windows in architraves. Ground floor Corinthian pilasters. First floor glazed and louvred timber balcony with Ionic pilasters. Flanking bays have shallower bows. Doric pilasters and cornices, bracketed sills and cornice to first floor. Balustraded parapet with segmental headed dormers. Steep mansard roof with elliptical and circular openings and a central dormer. Surmounted by a tall lantern with 3 lights to front, corner pilasters, coved roof. To left is a 2-bay block with a linking bay, tripartite first floor window with a pediment and a dormer. Semi-circular bow projects forward to left. At far left end of front a canted bay with round headed windows. Axial stack on left block with panelled shaft and cornice.
To right is 3-storey tower block, canted bay to left with tall round headed sashes in keyed architraves rises to an octagonal head. To right a quadrant curve with 2 windows leads to octagonal tower in a white stone with red stone strips. Round-headed and square-headed windows on alternate floors on 4 sides. Ground floor banded rustication.
Moulded and bracketed cornices separate storeys. Balustraded parapet. To right of tower are 2 bays with cross windows in a central rectangular bay, bracketed cornices, balustraded parapet, vermiculated quoins. Behind this is 5-storey square tower. 2 bays to each side. 4th floor: triple round headed windows with moulded architraves and key blocks, sandstone Ionic pilasters. 5th floor: tripartite windows with bracketed cornices and central pediments. Bracketed cornice to open parapet. Pilasters at angles of tower with sandstone panels diminishing to corner turrets with open double arcades. 2 bays on right return of tower have ground floor banded rustication and round headed French windows with Doric columns in reveals. First and second floor rectangular oriel windows on carved brackets. Iron railings run across right half of ground floor front. Garden front: symmetrical 2:3:2. Centre block has steps up from basement to 2-storey porch, ground floor tetrastyle Corinthian, first floor glazed timber loggia with fluted Ionic pilasters. Flanking canted bays to round 3 storey turrets with round headed windows, that to left retains an open head with a Doric arcade, dentilled cornice to ogee cap. To sides and angled forward are paired canted bays, semi-circular bows at return ends. Iron railings run across ground floor. Interior not inspected. Formerly known as Caldecote Towers and Caldecote Lodge. Attached C20 buildings not of special interest. (Pevsner 1977).

Listing NGR: TQ1540394919

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26630414

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

• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas