Mount Stuart House

Cadw's description

Location

On the corner with James Street. Main entrance to NE corner, facing entrance lane to Mount Stuart Square.

History

Built 1898 for John Cory & Sons Ltd Ship owners, by H Tudor Thornley, (also architect of Beynon House in Square), and still occupied by the same company in the 1990s.

Exterior

Free Classical style with Dutch influences. 3-storeys and attic, mostly red brick with liberal Bathstone dressings including channelled dressed stone ground floor; red brick plinth. Sash windows without glazing bars. 1st and 2nd floors punctuated by giant order pilasters with enriched capitals; overall cornices to ground and 2nd floors. Almost symmetrical 8-window elevation to Mount Stuart Square with 3-attic gables, the central one of which has stone frontispiece with octagonal colonettes and broken pediment; strapwork enrichment between pediment and paired windows. Flanking oculi; broad stone chimneys beyond with panelled fronts - continued down as panelled pilasters below the cornice. Attic gables at ends have paired round-headed windows and central colonette as before. Corner pilasters continue up to form finials with semicircular caps. Architraves to 1st and 2nd floor; 1st floor has additional enrichment including pediments and bracket dentil cornices; outer bays have Renaissance style panelling and volutes between 1st and 2nd floors. Round-arched main entrance at extreme right end with deeply bracketed, and inscribed, entablature; dentil cornice continued and with pediment, volutes and stone ornament above; double doors. High upper sashes to ground floor with undulating aprons and channelled voussoirs; chamfered corner with bracket. One ground floor window has original frosted lettered glass.

4-window w elevation to James Street with similar detail. Central windows paired with flanking giant order pilasters; all 1st floor windows are pedimented; oculi flanking central attic gable. Similar frosted glass window. Stock brick right hand side, facing chapel, with camber headed 4-pane sash windows. 1930's fenestration at rear.

Interior

Wooden Jacobethan staircase. Board room on first floor has 3 windows to James Street and 2 to entrance lane to Mount Stuart Square. Panelled doors; doorways have cornices with pulvinated friezes. Painted wood panelling c. 2m high, plaster frieze with moulded floral decoration and ceiling in late C17 style having moulded fruit and garlands. Office to W with window to James Street in similar mode but with C16-style fretwork ceiling.

Reason for designation

A dominant and well preserved late C19 commercial building on the edge of Mount Stuart Square. Group Value.