Random Building
1893 – “Woodcroft”, Leek, Staffordshire
Designed for for H.Davenport esq., with perspective view published in The Building News, May 5th 1893. “The existing part of the house having no features of interest externally is to have bays and ramped gables and a pillared portico added to harmonise with the new work. The new part of the house is faced with Fareham and Woodville thin red sand stocks and the stone used is Sheen.
The roof covering will be yellow Broseley tiles or Bingley stone slates of varying tones of colour except the tower which will be lead or copper. The billiard room walls are wainscoted in oak in the lower part and above are faced with Farleigh Down Bath stone which may ultimately be treated as bas-relief panels illustrating Mr Morris’s legend of The Glittering Plain with the figures of Hallblithe and Hostage in glass in the end window.
The ceiling of this room has teak moulded beams carrying the floor above and resting on large oak corbels descending to the wainscottlng carved as cupid caryatides. The soffits of alternate joists are exposed and the spaces panelled by corresponding oak cross pieces, the panels being filled by fibrous plaster slabs, with raised paterns of conventional foliage of square outline. Messrs W Sugden & Son, Leek, are the architects. The proprietor’s workmen are out the whole of the work excepting the heating &c done by Messrs Haden & Son, and the plumbing &c done by Mr C Phillips.”
By the late 1930s a private estate had been built over the site and grounds of Woodcroft and over the grounds of Woodcroft Grange, another late 19th-century house nearby.
Published March 11, 2013 | Last Updated March 21, 2013