Tabley House - Architecture

Architecture

Tabley House was designated as a Grade I listed building on 5 March 1959. Its architectural style is Palladian, the only 18th-century Palladian country house in Cheshire. The house has three storeys; the bottom storey is constructed in rusticated stone, with the upper storeys in Flemish bond brick with stone dressings. A Doric frieze runs around the whole building below the eaves. The roofs are in green slate with lead flashings. The south front has nine bays, the central three bays projecting forward. On each side of the central projection is a semi-circular stairway leading to the middle floor. The stairway is built in rusticated stone and it has a moulded balustrade. From the top of the stairway a portico rises through the top two storeys. It consists of four columns in Doric style constructed from red Runcorn sandstone. Its tympanum contains the arms of Sir Peter Byrne Leicester and his wife, Catherine. All the windows in the ground floor are sashes with 3x2 panes and over each window there are splayed voussoirs. The central bay of the middle storey contains a doorway with an architrave and a segmental pediment carried on brackets. On each side of the door is a window with similar architraves and segmental pediments, but not carried on brackets. In the lateral three bays on each side are sash windows with 3x5 panes over which are architraves and triangular pediments. The top floor windows are also sashes, these having 3x3 panes, and architraves with scrolls at the top and bottom.

The north front is also symmetrical and is in seven bays, with the central three projecting slightly forwards. Over the bays is a pediment containing the arms of the 2nd Baron de Tabley and his wife Catherina. In the centre of the ground floor is a porch, on either side of which are two 3x2 sash windows, plus a narrow two-pane window. The middle floor has a central Venetian window surrounded by a rusticated stone arch. All the other windows on this floor are 3x5 sashes; those on each side of the central window have triangular pediments, while those in the lateral bays have horizontal architraves. The top storey has seven 3x3 sash windows; the central three have scrolls similar to those on the south front, while the surrounds to the lateral two windows on each side are plainer.

On each side elevation there are central canted bay windows. The middle floor has arched windows on the west front, while the corresponding windows on the east front are blind. On each side of the house are two-storey pavilion wings joined to the main block by quadrant (curved), single-storey corridors. Each pavilion is symmetrical and identical, built in brick with stone dressings. Each is in three bays, the central bay forming a canted bay window. Again, the windows are sashes.

To the east of the house, and linked to it by the Old Hall Room, is St Peter's Chapel. Incorporated in the Old Hall Room is the painted and gilded wooden chimney-piece from the Old Hall, which had been installed in the Old Hall by Sir Peter Leycester in 1619. It includes carvings of caryatids, statues of Lucretia and Cleopatra in niches, and a female nude lying on a skull and holding an hourglass. The windows in the Old Hall Room contain stained glass panels with various designs, including depictions of English monarchs from William II to George II.