Park House ( cy, Tŷ Parc; formerly McConnochie House), 20 Park Place,

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

, is a nineteenth century

town house A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type of city residence ...

. It was built for John McConnochie, Chief Engineer to the

Bute Docks Cardiff Docks ( cy, Dociau Caerdydd) is a port in southern Cardiff, Wales. At its peak, the port was one of the largest dock systems in the world with a total quayage of almost . Once the main port for the export of South Wales coal, the Port ...

, by the

Gothic revivalist Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

architect

William Burges William Burges (; 2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoc ...

. It is a

Grade I listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The architectural historian John Newman writes that the architectural style of the house "revolutionized Cardiff's domestic architecture," and

Cadw (, a Welsh verbal noun meaning "keeping/preserving") is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and part of the Tourism and Culture group. works to protect the historic buildings and structures, the landscapes and heritage s ...

considers the building "perhaps the most important 19th century house in Wales."

History

Commissioned by McConnochie in 1871, the house was completed externally by 1874, although decoration of the interior continued, somewhat slowly, until McConnochie's Cardiff mayoral year of 1880. The surveyor was J. Holden. The house was much admired at the time of its construction, being referenced by Viollet-le-Duc and its plans displayed at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

. Today, the house is of particular interest for three reasons; as the precursor of Burges' own house in Kensington, as evidence of one of the few architectural errors Burges made in his career and as a template for an architectural style which had a significant influence on late Victorian and early Edwardian Cardiff. "By its powerful early French Gothic style, its steep roofs and boldly textured walls (the house) revolutionized

's domestic architecture." The house is now a restaurant. To publicise its opening to the public in 2012, the owner wrapped the building with a giant red ribbon. As this had been done without listed building consent, Cardiff council demanded its removal.

Architecture and description

The style of the house is Burges's signature Early French Gothic, with triangle and rectangle to the fore, although it is without the conical tower felt appropriate for Burges's own home and for

Castell Coch (; ) is a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle built above the village of in South Wales. The first castle on the site was built by the Normans after 1081 to protect the newly conquered town of Cardiff and control the route along the Taff Gorge ...

. The external frontage comprises four gables, the windows of the last gable concealing the major error of the interior, the fact that the entrance confronts the visitor with the underside of a colossal staircase. It is hard to understand how Burges could have made such a mistake. It was not repeated at

The Tower House The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London, built by the architect and designer William Burges as his home. Designed between 1875 and 1881, in the French Go ...

, which is an almost, reversed, replica, with added conical tower. The house is of two storeys, with an attic and a basement. The style of the house was widely imitated, in Cardiff and beyond, and this can be evidenced by walking tours of any of Cardiff's inner suburbs, where echoes of Burges's influence can be seen.

described Park House as "perhaps the most important 19th century house in Wales". Burges used various building stones for Park House,

Pennant Sandstone The Pennant Measures is the traditional name for a sequence of sedimentary rocks of the South Wales Coalfield. They were also referred to as the Upper Coal Measures and assigned to the Westphalian 'C' and Westphalian 'D' stages of the Carbonifero ...

for the walls,

Bath stone Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate. Originally obtained from the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England. Its honey colouring gives the World Heritage City of ...

s around the windows, entrance porch and plinths, while the pillars are pink Peterhead granite from Aberdeenshire.

Henry-Russell Hitchcock Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987) was an American architectural historian, and for many years a professor at Smith College and New York University. His writings helped to define the characteristics of modernist architecture. Early life He ...

, the American architecture critic, considered Park House "one of the best medium-sized stone dwellings of the High Victorian Gothic". It is a Grade I listed building.

Footnotes

References

Sources

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External links

* {{Use dmy dates, date=April 2020 Houses completed in 1880 Gothic Revival architecture in Wales William Burges buildings Grade I listed buildings in Cardiff Grade I listed houses in Wales Houses in Cardiff Castle, Cardiff