Listed Building: WEST END HOUSE AND ATTACHED FRONT GARDEN RAILINGS AND GATE (412583)

POOLE SZ0090SE ST JAMES'S CLOSE 958-1/17/150 (West side) 14/06/54 No.2 West End House and attached front garden railings and gate (Formerly Listed as: ST JAMES'S CLOSE (West side) No.2 West End House) (Formerly Listed as: ST JAMES'S CLOSE (West side) Gates and railings at No.2) GV II* Formerly known as: West End House WEST STREET. House. Mid C18 incorporating slightly earlier fragments at rear. Flemish bond brickwork with stone dressings, fragments of early C17 stone and brick walling to rear; brick gable stacks and slate roof. Early Georgian style. L-shaped plan with right-hand rear extension. 2 storeys, basement and attic; 5-window range. Double fronted with rusticated quoins, ground-floor cill band, cornice and parapet with balustrade sections with 3 pairs of good urns on the dies. Fine doorcase has vermiculated blocked Ionic pilasters to a pulvinated frieze and pediment, rectangular fanlight and 6-panel door. Keyed stone architraves with first-floor cill blocks to 6/6-pane sashes, and 3 hipped dormers. Left-hand return has a round-arched stair light. INTERIOR: reported to include an enriched plaster ceiling to right-hand ground-floor room, NE room has a marble fireplace, enriched pulvinated frieze, and cornice; right-hand lateral dogleg stair with curtail, turned balusters with moulded caps and alternate plain and twisted column-on-vase balusters, and scrolled rail and curtail; first-floor rooms have cornices and fireplaces. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: good attached front garden spear-headed railings with orb finials, overthrow and 2-leaf gates. HISTORICAL NOTE: one of the houses built in the first period of Poole's C18 prosperity, and with its fine enclosed front garden, one of the finest examples of a local merchant's house of the period. The scrolled end to handrail is reminiscent of the work of the Bastards of Blandford, and similar to that at Sir Peter Thompson's House in Market Close (qv). Gates and railings listed on 28.5.74. (RCHME: County of Dorset (South East): London: 1970-: 236; Buildings of England: Pevsner N & Newman J: Dorset: London: 1972-: 236). Listing NGR: SZ0077490438

Record last edited

Apr 6 2022 1:26PM