3109

 

II  

Designated  

06/10/1993  

28/08/2001  

Beechwood House, attached forecourt wall and attached coach-house range  

 

Newport  

Beechwood  

Newport  

Beechwood  

333263  

188638  

W  

Set near the top of a steeply sloping public park with terraced forecourt.  

Domestic  

 

Built in 1877-8 by Habershon, Pite and Fawkner, architects of Cardiff and Newport, for George Fothergill, a tobacco manufacturer and former Mayor of Newport. Bought in 1900 by Newport Borough Council who, despite proposals to demolish the house, opened the grounds as a public park; the house was later used as a 1st World War convalescent home and in 1920s it became a refreshment centre for park visitors. Damaged by fire in 1992; now boarded-up within a security fence. The grounds may have been designed by Thomas Mawson, the pre-eminent garden designer of the late C19/early C20 period who was responsible for the contemporary Bellevue Park on the other side of Newport; laying out in 1900 attributed to Mr Davey of the Borough Engineers Department. Informal in style with open grass and isolated ornamental trees, though with more elaborate water features round the springs. Park was extended to S in 1924. All 4 entrances have wrought iron gates. Early 1900s photograph of the house shows the building exterior very much as at present with large pane sash windows, but with an additional chimney on W side and a stone balustrade on the forecourt wall in place of the railings. Shown on First Edition OS map surveyed 1881-2 with attached W range within a small garden enclosure,as now; glasshouses no longer extant. One of a group of small mansions in parkland on this hillside, including also Maindee Hall to S and Hatherleigh House to E.  

Small mansion in simple Italianate Classical style. Built of ashlar Bath-stone, with rusticated dressings and partly rendered; hipped Welsh slate roof, now fire-damaged; tall stacks with dentilled cornices and recessed panels; wide eaves with deep moulded brackets which are grouped round angles and dentilled cornice. Horned sashes, now boarded up. Roughly U-shaped plan of main frontage and two long rear cross wings. Symmetrical design to 3-bay front (S side) with two windows over central entrance flanked by splayed 2-storeyed bays; deep band course between floors together with first floor impost band and sill band; plinth. Segmental-headed first floor windows with keystones and square-headed ground floor windows with voussoirs and keystones. Grand flat-roofed porch with entablature, parapet, paired Corinthian columns and steps up to entrance. Attached to porch is the low stone forecourt wall, extending round returns, with iron railings, piers and one surviving stone urn. Long right (E) side has, from left, 2 windows, then a splayed bay, then a 5-window range. Left (W) side is rendered, a 9-window first floor range and irregular ground floor openings. At centre rear are two round-headed staircase windows between the cross wings; wing to E has hipped roof; that to W is longer and wider with a correspondingly flatter roof pitch. Attached to left (W) is a high mostly brick wall extending to incorporate a 2-storey hipped roofed part-rendered coach house and single storey ancillary range, plus lean-tos; the house has boarded-up cambered headed openings with at front a round-headed gabled loft opening above a carriage entrance.  

Interior reported to retain wide and deep central hall with dentilled cornices, elaborate patterned tiled floor and open well stone staircase; ironwork balusters rising to triple arcades linking to first floor corridors. Throughout, foliage plasterwork borders to ceilings, Doors were 6-panelled with raised fields and panelled soffits, high skirtings. Ground floor chimneypieces removed before 1991.  

Listed as an industrialist's mid-Victorian mansion in a parkland setting.