Park House, Cardiff

Commissioned by McConnochie in 1871,[1] the house was completed externally by 1874,[2] although decoration of the interior continued, somewhat slowly, until McConnochie's Cardiff mayoral year of 1880.[3] The surveyor was J. Holden.[4] The house was much admired at the time of its construction, being referenced by Viollet-le-Duc[5] and its plans displayed at the Royal Academy.[3] 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[3] 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 Cardiff's domestic architecture."[6]

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.[7]

The style of the house is Burges's signature Early French Gothic,[6] 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. 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.[6] It is hard to understand how Burges could have made such a mistake.[5] It was not repeated at The Tower House, which is an almost, reversed, replica, with added conical tower.[5] The house is of two storeys, with an attic and a basement.[8] 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. Cadw described Park House as "perhaps the most important 19th century house in Wales".[9]

Burges used various building stones for Park House, Pennant Sandstone for the walls, Bath stones around the windows, entrance porch and plinths, while the pillars are pink Peterhead granite from Aberdeenshire.[10] Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the American architecture critic, considered Park House "one of the best medium-sized stone dwellings of the High Victorian Gothic".[lower-alpha 1][11] It is a Grade I listed building.[12]

• Crook, J. Mordaunt (1981). The Strange Genius of William Burges. Cardiff: National Museum of Wales. ISBN 0-7200-0234-6.
• Crook, J. Mordaunt (2013). William Burges and the High Victorian Dream. London: Frances Lincoln. ISBN 978-0-7112-3349-2.
• Dakers, Caroline (1999). The Holland Park Circle: Artists and Victorian Society. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08164-0.
• Hilling, John B. (2016). The History and Architecture of Cardiff Civic Centre. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-1-78316-842-2.
• Hitchcock, Henry-Russell (1968) [1958]. Achitecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Pelican History of Art. London: Penguin Books. OCLC 851173836.
• Newman, John (2001). Glamorgan. The Buildings of Wales. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-071056-6.

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