Listed Building record MDR4721 - Allestree Hall, Allestree, Derby

SK 34594071. Allestree Hall (NAT) (1) Allestree Hall is a grade II* listed building. Probably built in 1802 as a foundation stone bears this date and the initials J W. the architect is not known; it is here suggested that it was possibly John Johnson of Leicester. The first owner appears to have been a John Girardot. The Hall is built from ashlar and is 3 storeys high, with 5 sash windows to each storey. There is a plinth and a sill band to the first floor with a cornice and blocking course. Ground storey windows are three-light, of handsome character, divided by Ionic columns and with an entablature over. The side elevation has 5 sashe windows, and a 2 storey addition beyond with 5 sashes. There is a bowed entrance hall and a stair hall with a stone staircase although the metal balustrade has been removed. The remainder of the interior has been largely altered but 2 ground storey rooms have good Adam style ceilings which may be old. The setting is a Landscape park, now a Golf course. (2) Allestree Hall is a plain five-bay, two-and-a-half storey stone house, begun in 1795 by James Wyatt and sold unfinished to John Charles Girardot in 1805. (3) A beautifully set ashlar faced villa, designed but not fully completed by James Wyatt 1795-1802 for Bach Thornhill of Stanton Hall. Finished by another hand 1805-6 for Charles Girardot and altered c. 1835 for William Evans of the Darley Abbey mill family. Council owned and long vacant, but due for conversion. Ice house nearby. (4) The old hall …vanished in the eighteenth century, but on the sale of some of Evans' land to Bache Thornhill of Stanton, a new one was begun in 1802 to a much-revised design of James Wyatt and finished a few years later by John Girardot, an East-Indian merchant turned local vintner. By the 1820s, however, a branch of the Evans family had acquired that too. On its sale in the 1920s the parkland was acquired to build housing and a golf course. Fortunately, the war stopped the housing going beyond Main, Short and Evans Avenues. (5) In 1795 Bache Thornhill of Stanton-in-Peak bought 130 acres of land in Allestree and commissioned James Wyatt to build a gentleman's villa. The planned interior was probably never finished, although a stone near the entrance with 'JW 1802' cut into it probably marks completion of the exterior by Wyatt himself. After standing empty for three years Thornhill sold it to John Charles Girandot, who appears to have finished the interior and lived there for 20 years before selling to William Evans of the Darley Abbey Mills family, who added the porch, and enlarged the park to about 300 acres. In World War II the house was occupied by the Sherwood Foresters Regiment, and then the National Fire Service, and after the war was sold with the parkland to Derby Borough Council. They demolished the West Wing (part of the service accommodation) and the conservatory, but resisted calls to demolish it and began on a programme of repairs. It was sold in 1990 to a developer for conversion into luxury flats and a public restaurant. (6) Associated with Allestree Park (SMR32093).