Description

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458/0/10064

MARSLAND ROAD
No 131, The Moorfield

(formerly listed as: the Sale Hotel)

13-JAN-10

II
The Moorfield (formerly the Sale Hotel). Hotel, later public house. 1878 by Lockwood, Smith & Heathcote; 1905 billiard room extension by Whitelegg & Whittaker.

MATERIALS: purple and red brick with some stone dressings; slate roof with lead finials.

PLAN: rectangular, with tower wing to east (left) and lower billiard room extension to west.

EXTERIOR: of two storeys with higher projecting bay to east; taller tower beyond that. Central entrance (altered) beneath large mullioned square staircase window; projecting bay to west, with a further three-light projection beyond that, replacing the original arched entrance. Casement windows above, set beneath overhanging eaves carried on with slender wooden brackets. The canted left-hand bay has triple windows with side-lights to the returns, set between stone cills and lintels; above the battlemented parapet is a low canted window set beneath overhanging eaves. To the east is a single-storey entrance beneath a slate roof, with half-timbering to the eastern face. Behind this is an octagonal tower, with narrow windows rising up the sides reflecting the stairs within; at the top is a continuous window beneath the steeply pitched slate roof. The tower is attached to a four storey block. The west return elevation is gabled and tile-hung, with a projecting penticed window at first floor level.

INTERIOR: considerably altered, with no extant fixtures to the ground-floor public spaces. The main wooden staircase is intact, lit by the closely leaded mullioned window: open string, with moulded posts and fretted square section uprights; fan ornament beneath the treads. Secondary stair with upswept handrail and similar fretting. Open trussed roof to billiard room extension.

HISTORY: The Moorfield, formerly listed as the Sale Hotel, but originally known as the Moorfield Hotel, was opened in 1879 to designs by the practice of Lockwood, Smith and Heathcote, architects of London and Manchester. It was the centrepiece of a development by John and Marmaduke Witty of Manchester who had previously acquired the existing Sale Botanic Gardens and Pleasure Grounds which lay alongside. The Gardens and Pleasure Grounds, as was often the case, were short-lived and closed in 1896-7 and the land was subsequently developed for housing. This, the Moorfields estate, still exists and provides part of the historic context for the hotel. The hotel was modestly extended by the addition of a billiard room in 1905, an earlier billiard room having been contrived by filling an archway through the building. The hotel and pub was internally much altered in the 1960s when many of the Victorian fittings were removed.

SOURCES: Building Control Records, Trafford Council

Reasons for Listing

The Moorfield, built in 1878 to the designs of Lockwood, Smith and Heathcote, is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Architectural: the hotel, designed by a significant architectural practice, is a carefully composed design in the Old English manner, then becoming fashionable. The tower is a particularly unusual feature.
Historical: this is a highly prominent building in the suburban context which was associated with a now-vanished pleasure ground; as such, it is a significant embodiment of developments in High Victorian leisure.
Rarity: it is a highly unusual survival of a building connected with a private pleasure ground, and a striking landmark within its setting.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26672585

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  The green guide for historic buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair