Former Prison Gatehouse & Governor's Residence (now Greystones & St. David's)

Cadw's description

Location

Set back from the lane at the end of a short broad drive, 350m from the junction with the A494.

History

1870 by Martin and Chamberlain of Birmingham. Built to replace Flint Gaol, the Mold Prison became redundant under prison act of 1877. In 1881 it became St David's French Jesuit Seminary. Utilized as detention barracks during the Great War it later became a convent school. In 1924 it was sold by the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities and the cell blocks demolished in the late 30's.
Currently sub- divided into two dwellings.

Exterior

2 storey and attic gabled gatehouse incorporating and flanked by, domestic accomodation. Squared rubble with freestone dressings. Steeply pitched, double pile, slate roofs. Raking gable parapets, freestone copings on kneelers. Bracketed eaves. Moulded freestone stacks on rubble bases. 3-bay gabled gatehouse with recessed centre/entrance bay. Tall lancet with returned hoodmould supporting sunk quatrefoils. Eaves band. Tall 3 order pointed arch, billet moulding and chamfering. Pierced ironwork screen to tympanum. Stock brick vaulting to passage, original inner doors.
3 bay former governor's house to right. advanced bay with twin lancets to attics. Blind dormer at right. Lancets to 1st floor. Sexfoil oculus to tympanum with hoodmould on advanced bay. Ground floor, tripartite cusped "lancets", columns; hoodmoulds to right, bay window to left. Billet moulded pointed doorway, pierced sexfoil to tympanum. Gothic panelled door. Contemporary outbuilding adjoins to end.
Left side of gate has blocked doors to passage. Lancet to attic, twin lancets to 1st floor, hoodmoulds. Tripartite lancet to ground floor. Similar to left end elevation with adjoining polygonal hip roofed stair "turret" with pointed lights to stair cross window. Cut doorway below.
3 gabled rear elevation. Twin lancets over plain 3 centred arch, flanked by twin lancets over twin round arched windows, iron bars to latter. Pointed doorway with lancet over to left.

Good contemporary boundary walls to paddocks flanking driveway, freestone copings, gatepiers with pyramidical caps. Brick paved inner yard.

Reason for designation

Group value.