Former Nurses' Home, St Maurice’s Road, York. Architect, W. H. Brierley (1862-1926). 1913. This is set back behind a bow-fronted house of 1792 on the road, and is just south of the former County Hospital, matching it quite well in style. It now offers self-catering accommodation. Brierley was another big name in York architecture, seen as a "leading protagonist of the Wrenaissance style in the North-East" (Curl and Wilson 116).
Left: Looking along the front elevation. Right: Rear elevation.
The style is described as "reticently latest Classical" by David Neave and Nikolaus Pevsner (247). The main doorway has a rusticated surround and other elaborations on its axis. The cornice at the roof-line is equally important in giving character to the building.
Brierley clearly had a flair for enhancing a more austere style with attractive detail, and it is interesting to recall that George Wittet, the Scottish architect responsible for some wonderful work in India, had been with him from 1902-04, before becoming assistant to John Begg — whom Wittet then succeeded as consulting architect to the Government of Bombay (Mumbai).
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Photographs and text by Rita Wood, with the information about Brierley, and formatting, by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web project or cite it in a print one. Click on them to enlarge them.
Bibliography
Curl, James Stevens, and Susan Wilson. Oxford Dictionary of Architecture. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Pevsner, Nikolaus, and David Neave. Yorkshire: York and the East Riding. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Created 28 November