Warehouse. 1834 post-fire rebuilding with later C19 reworking and C20 additions. English bond brick, stone sills with Welsh slate roofs. Rectangular site with complex massing of storage structures culminating in substantial central silo with Romanesque-style detailing: blind 4-bay brick banded with Lombard banded north and south facades, and prominent eastern flat-topped rectangular tower with STEAM MILL formerly MILNS SEEDS painted. Canal Side facade has central 5-bay, 5-storey gable end block with 5-light round-headed apex window.
A Steam Mill was first built on the site in 1785, for Samuel Walker, George Walker and Hugh Ley, Chester Corn and Flour Merchants. The mill was significant as it was one of the first steam-powered canal-side flour mills. Destroyed by fire in 1819.
Tags: Canon EOS R RF 50mm f1.8 STM Chester Shropshire Union Canal Mill Warehouse Narrow boat
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Presbyterian church. 1864. By Michael Gummow of Wrexham. Stucco front, brick sides and rear, grey slate roof. Ionic front has full height 4-column portico in antis. Plain cast-iron railing to forecourt, on stone plinth, with 3 pairs of iron gates. Behind the portico the wall has sill band with central recessed panel; a now blank architraved opening to each side with pilasters, frieze and cornice. A pair of doors of 5 fielded panels in each return wall of portico. A blank panel with architrave frieze and cornice on face of each wing. Alternating triangular and curved pediments to openings. Dentil pediment to portico. Sides of 6 bays, the first bay stucco, the others brick. The liturgical east end is apsidal.
Tags: Canon EOS R RF 50mm f1.8 STM Chester Church Michael Gummow Stucco Portico
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Baptist church, now Zion chapel. By John Douglas, 1879-80. Stone-dressed red brick; red-brown clay tile roof. Undercroft, church and ancillary rooms in a small wing at west end of each side, over which the main roof sweeps down. The symmetrical west front has corner turrets with eaves lower than those to the church; each turret has double boarded doors in moulded pointed-arched stone openings. 3 mullioned 3-light windows to basement in railed area between turrets. The main gable-end is of 3 bays divided by moulded stone projections; 2 lancets to lower part of each bay; a Geometrical 2-light window to upper part of each bay, the central window being tall. Steep stone-coped gable. The corner turrets diminish to octagons in plan immediately beneath the
boldly projecting eaves of spires. 3 bays to each side have triple lancets, stone-dressed in recessed arched brick panels; the bays divided by stone-dressed buttresses. The north and south wings have cross-windows in their west faces. 2 louvred and gabled lucarnes on each slope of main roof.
The chapel is an important element of the excellently-composed group of buildings east of Grosvenor Park Road by John Douglas.
Tags: Chester Church Canon EOS R RF 28mm f2.8 STM John Douglas Brick
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Roman Catholic church. 1873-5 and 1913-14 by Edmund Kirby. Buff sandstone; grey slate roofs. Continuous aisled nave and sanctuary, liturgical orientation reversed. The west front is symmetrical; projecting nave-width porch has pair of boarded doors with statue of St Werburgh on column between; a pair of lancets in recessed arch to each side of statue. The porch is gabled, and with gabled parapet to each side-wall. The gabled west end of the nave has triple lancets, flanked by flat gabled buttresses. A lancet in west end of each aisle; loop in nave gable; cross finial. The aisles have buttresses between paired lancets; cross-gabled wings. 15 clerestory lancets to each side of nave and sanctuary; Apsidal east end with 5 lancets; ambulatory.
Edmund Kirby was an English architect. He was born in Liverpool and articled to E. W. Pugin in London, then became an assistant to John Douglas in Chester. He travelled abroad in France and Belgium before opening practice independently in Liverpool. He was an architect to the Roman Catholic Church and also to the North and South Wales Bank.
Tags: Canon EOS R RF 28mm f2.8 STM Edmund Kirby Chester Church Lancets Porch
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Park-keeper's lodge, now park office. By John Douglas, 1865-7, at the expense of the second Marquis of Westminster. For Chester City Council. Tooled squared snecked red sandstone rubble, timber frame with plaster panels and red-brown tile roofs. High Gothic moving towards Vernacular Revival. 2 storeys, T-shaped with single-storey office wing; the lower storey is stone, the upper storey framed. The east front has ornate timber-framed gabled porch to door of 2 boarded panels on wrought-iron hinges; a 2-light mullioned casement with stiff-leaf colonnettes, left; a canted bay window projecting front gable, right. Upper storey on corbel-table has a small 6-pane casement above porch, a 12-pane casement in hipped dormer left and a 20-pane cross-window in front gable right; four crowned figures with armorial shields; small framing; jettied gable with curved braces; shaped and carved bargeboards.
John Douglas was an English architect who designed over 500 buildings in Cheshire, North Wales and Northwest England. He was articled to E. G. Paley in Lancaster and practised throughout his career from an office in Chester. Initially he ran the practice on his own, but later worked in partnerships with two of his former assistants. A major influence in his work was the rise of interest in vernacular architecture, in particular black-and-white revival using half-timbering. One characteristic feature of Douglas's work is the inclusion of dormer windows rising through the eaves and surmounted by hipped roofs.
Tags: Canon EOS R RF 28mm f2.8 STM Chester Lodge John Douglas Black-and-white revival
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