Bricklayer’s classical
After my recent encounters with garagiste’s corrugated iron and chunky fragments of railwayana, perhaps this blog could do with a some more polite architecture. So here’s a lovely house from the 1780s on the main street in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire, a small town I have known for years and mused about before.
The winning combination of brick arches and the building’s classical proportions typify the late Georgian period. Those urns, swags, stucco stringcourses, and white balusters give the facade that bit of extra interest and, indeed, swagger. We can be a bit Adamish, the house seems to say, even if we are in a provincial town in the Midlands. The white stucco details stand out effectively against the background of red brick, a material that’s been common here for some 200 years. There was a local brickworks from the early-19th century, but when this house was built the prevailing materials in the town were probably Mountsorrel granite and Swithland slate. So from brickwork to stucco, from doorstep to rooftop urns, this is a building that stands out.
