Description

KNUTSFORD

SJ7478 DRURY LANE
792-1/3/22 (South side)
12/10/71 Ruskin Rooms

GV II

Reading rooms and fire station, now offices. c1900. By
Fairhurst, completed by Walter Aston. For Richard Harding
Watt. Render with stone dressings and randomly projecting
blocks. Red pantiled roof. Eclectic style, drawing heavily on
Italianate sources.
EXTERIOR: 3-storeyed, with corner tower projecting at angle
and housing entrance to upper floors. Former fire-station in
west elevation, an irregular 3-window range. Wide
segmental-arched entrance at angle with tower to left now
glazed in, with paired tall windows to right. Tall single and
2-light windows above, all with flat stone lintels. Inscribed
stone over entrance. Low upper storey stressed with continuous
sill band and cornice, 3-light mullioned windows, paired to
right and a single window to left all with segmentally-arched
heads, the mullions and transoms of the lower sections forming
a continuous pattern of balustrading. Stacks to right break
the roof line between the windows. Angled tower projects from
corner, with oriel window over long windows of 1 and 2-lights.
Paired round-arched lights above.
Subsidiary octagonal tower in angle with main range with
round-arched window in each face and terminating in green
scallop-tiled dome. Stone steps against north return of tower
give access to stair doorway of rusticated stone beneath
projecting pantile-roofed porch. Irregular fenestration to
this angled return wall, then return wall of main range with
oriel window to second floor, and casements with margin lights
to ground and first floor with flanking narrow windows. Stack
on rear wall. Heavy wood brackets carry ornate wrought-iron
frame of 'Ruskin Rooms' sign projecting from the tower, and
the stone alongside the entrance steps is inscribed 'The
Ruskin Recreation Rooms'.
INTERIOR: not inspected.
Part of a remarkable development in Free Style built under the
patronage of Richard Harding Watt.

Listing NGR: SJ7521478932

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26667886

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

• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)