Hesketh Arms Public House and Adjacent Mounting Block, Standish, Wigan

Description

SHEVINGTON

1484/0/10019 SHEVINGTON MOOR
27-JAN-10 (North side)
109
HESKETH ARMS PUBLIC HOUSE AND ADJACENT
MOUNTING BLOCK

II
Public House. C18 with early-C19 assembly room, later-C19 and early-C20 extensions. Millstone grit with ashlar dressings, stone slate roofs with partial slate roof to rear elevation.
PLAN: Original building two rooms deep with central entrance, and a partial cellar. Early-C19 assembly room on east side with large room on both ground and first floors, heated by chimney breast in centre of east exterior wall. Later extensions to west side and rear.
EXTERIOR: C18 building of two storeys and three bays wide, built of small blocks of shaped and coursed millstone grit, believed to be from the local Appley Bridge quarry to the south. Double-pitched roof with stone slates to the front and slates to the rear, with stone chimney stack to both the east and west gables, the former incorporated into the taller, assembly room extension. Wide, round-headed doorway to centre of elevation, with monolithic ashlar jambs and voussoirs with giant keystone. Three-panel double doors with a semi-circular overlight with small-pane glazing forming a grid. To each side is a window with ashlar sills, jambs, and wedge lintels. Eight-over-eight pane hung sashes. Over the ground-floor windows are two shallower, first-floor windows. Similar ashlar sills, jambs, and wedge lintels. Four-over-eight pane sashes, the upper panes fixed. Early-C20 hipped porch canopy over the doorway. Stone slates and shaped and pegged wooden brackets rising from stone corbels. Above the porch, and respecting its height, are two small windows with square-cut projecting stone sills and deep, slightly wedge-shaped lintels. Window frames are of six small panes with the top two panes opening with side pivoting hinges. Between the windows is a stone corbel with an infilled mortice above, which suggests a pub sign was previously attached. Rising above eaves level is an early-C20 pedimented gablet with shaped stone coping and three ball finials. Attached to right-hand (east) side, and projecting slightly, is early-C19 assembly room. Taller two storeys, and a single first-floor bay. Built of slightly larger blocks of shaped and coursed millstone grit, with double-pitched roof of stone slates, with two stone ridge stacks, that to the left originating with the C18 building. Later stone stack to rear, outer (north-east) corner. Two ground-floor windows with ashlar sills and deep, slightly wedge-shaped lintels. Eight-over-eight pane hung sashes. Large, central window on first floor with similar sill and wedge lintel. Six-over-six pane hung sash with narrow marginal lights separated by wooden mullions.
INTERIOR: Ground-floor altered, with opening up of rooms and loss of original staircase. First floor retains a number of original plank doors with thumb catches and strap hinges hung on metal pintels, some in their original positions, some re-hung. A central tie beam is visible beneath the landing ceiling. Stone-built partial cellar with blocked doorway with deeply chamfered stone lintel to right (east) end of rear wall.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Monolithic two-step stone mounting block standing adjacent to the south-east, outer corner of the assembly room extension.

HISTORY: Architectural evidence suggests that the building was built in the C18; features like its double front door suggest it was designed as a public house. The 1824 Alehouse Recognizance records the building as bearing the sign of the Hesketh Arms, with the proprietor as James Ranicar. The Heskeths were one of the principal landowners in the parish, having acquired the land in C16. The 1843 tithe map schedule confirms the Heskeths, namely Sir Thomas Dalrymple Hesketh, Bart, as owner of the public house, and Edward Dawber as the occupant. Edward Dawber had been listed as the publican in the 1841 census and remained so in 1851. The tithe map shows that the assembly room extension had been built by 1843. The 1894 Ordnance Survey map shows a single-storey extension had been added to the left (west), together with a long rear range apparently replacing the earlier extensions to the rear. By 1928 the building was in its present configuration, with added male and female toilet blocks, and an altered rear range.

SOURCES
Alehouse Recognizances, 1824, Lancashire Record Office, Preston, Ref. No.3/150
1843 Tithe Map for Shevington in the Parish of Standish, Lancashire Record Office, Preston, Ref. No.DRB/1 174
Baines, E, History, Directory, and Gazeteer of the County Palatine of Lancaster, Vol II (1825), 651.
Page, William, The Victoria History of the Counties of England, Lancashire Vol VI (1966), 201.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION
The Hesketh Arms Public House and adjacent mounting block, 109 Shevington Moor, Shevington, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: as an C18 rural pub built in the local vernacular tradition, but with a notably aggrandized front elevation, perhaps built for the principal landowners, the Heskeths, whose name it bears, later embellished in the early C20 with the addition of a deliberately archaic gablet with ball finials
* Evolution: the further enhancement of the public house through the addition of an early C19 assembly room
* Subsidiary feature: a stone mounting block adjacent to the assembly room extension makes a positive contribution to the streetscape as a relic of a pre-motorised age.

Reasons for Listing

Yes, list

External Links

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