Our History

Alternatively known as BROOKLANDS, OUSEBANK STREET.   Building: House is Circa 1689. Mid-late Circa 1900 extension. Circa 2000 extensions and alterations  Red brick with blue headers in Flemish bond, plain tile roof brick stacks. Two storeys, built in two sections, the earlier a four-window bay at the South, between giant brick pilasters with moulded brick capitals and detailed cornice parapet rebuilt. The entrance is at the left, a handsome carved doorcase with moulded canopy on cut modillion brackets, a six-fielded and panelled door with a five-lobed fanlight in a rectangular opening over egg and dart moulded architrave and trefoils in the spandrels. Twelve-paned sashes set with the boxes near the face of the brickwork and having heavy glazing bars and original crown glass. Openings have rubbed thirteen-in brick flat arches and moulded sills (replaced on the ground floor). Central lead hopper and downpipe. Behind the parapet, two flat-roofed dormer windows. On the South gable end a large brick stack, its base rendered, and rising as three close-spaced square stacks. Superimposed on the right two bays is a square bay window of circa 1940 with a soldier-coped parapet and a flat roof. Large twenty-pane sash window. The building was extended to the North by three bays in the mid 19th century, using more pronounced blue headers, but the detail was otherwise identical. Blocked cellar openings. The return elevation on the North has three round-headed openings on the ground floor, the centre, a doorway, and external chimney breast over with curved shoulders to the stack. Two lead hoppers. The rear elevation has large nine-pane sash windows with slender glazing bars to the upper floors, three-pane to the attic level. The rear elevation returns by one bay at the Southside meeting a later build.   Interior:   Altered on the ground floor. The first-floor room at the North end of the circa 1700 section is fully panelled with bolection-moulded panelling (removed), a handsome moulded cornice, chair rail, a bolection-moulded fireplace with an overmantel. The steward's office has a lesser-moulded cornice, but a well-moulded doorcase with swept pediment. The large ground floor room in the later section has a lateral fireplace with moulded surround and mirrored overmantel cornice.    History:   Described as a 'Capital Mansion House' when built, it came by conveyance of 1756 to Roger Chapman and his wife who was then bought out by Walter Beaty; Congregationalist and promoter of the lace industry, who died in 1791. Following the Second World War, it functioned as a County Branch Library until the new building was built in the 1960s.