Listed Building: MANSION HOUSE AND ATTACHED FRONT AREA WALLS AND RAILINGS (412615)

POOLE SZ0090SE THAMES STREET 958-1/17/176 (South West side) 14/06/54 No.11 Mansion House and attached front area walls and railings (Formerly Listed as: THAMES STREET (West side) No.11 Mansion House) (Formerly Listed as: THAMES STREET (West side) Iron railings at No.11) GV II* House, now club. c1776. Probably built for Benjamin Lester by John Stretland, Poole builder. Brick with stone dressings, brick gable stacks and a slate valley roof. Mid Georgian style. Double-depth plan. 3 storeys, attic and semi-basement; 5-bay front with slightly projecting central bay containing doorway and stair windows lower than those to the flanking floors. Ground-floor impost band, cornice and parapet, and a pediment set in the central parapet. Curved steps up to a semicircular Doric portico with triglyphs, and a 6-panel moulded door with margin lights. Basement and ground-floor windows set within semi-detached-arched recesses with rubbed brick arches, flat-headed basement and first-floor windows, all with 6/6-pane sashes including radial heads to ground-floor windows. Central first-floor Venetian stair window with a small lunette above, slightly raised to light the stair. Right-hand return has lateral stacks with a central first-floor window above an oculus. INTERIOR contains a large flagged entrance stair hall with wainscotting, dado and side niches, and enriched bracketed cornice, a fine Imperial stair which returns up to the front landing with a seat in the Venetian window, iron balusters, each third one enriched, and paired wooden columns supporting the stair with Tower of the Winds capitals; rear first-floor dining room with alcoves and a marble fireplace with a relief of 2 dried cod, representing the probable source of the family wealth; panelled doors and cornices; basement kitchen and services. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached front area walls and spear-headed iron railings, modern interval panels with decorative wrought-ironwork, and side wall. HISTORICAL NOTE: Lester was one of the MPs for Poole from 1791-1796. Now part of a single club with Nos 5, 7, 9 & 10 (qv). With Rolles' Beech Hurst in the High Street (qv), one of the two largest houses in Poole, and illustrative of its C18 prosperity. Railings listed on 28.5.74. (RCHME: County of Dorset (South East): London: 1970-: 234; Buildings of England: Pevsner N & Newman J: Dorset: London: 1972-: 323; Hillier J: A Portfolio of Old Poole: Poole: 1983-: 30). Listing NGR: SZ0081490362

Record last edited

Mar 31 2011 3:49AM