Watergate House is located in Watergate Street, Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, England. It has been designated by English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 as a Grade II* listed building.

History

Watergate House was built in 1820 as a town house for Henry Potts, Clerk of the Peace

Clerk of the Peace

A clerk of the peace held an office in England and Wales whose responsibility was the records of the Quarter Sessions and the framing of presentments and indictments. They had legal training, so that they could advise justices of the peace.-England and Wales:...

 for the County of Cheshire. It was designed by Thomas Harrison

Thomas Harrison (architect)

Thomas Harrison was an English architect and engineer. He built a number of bridges, including Grosvenor Bridge in Chester. He also rebuilt parts of Chester and Lancaster castles...

. In 1907 it became the headquarters of Western Command

Western Command (United Kingdom)

-History:The Command was established in 1905 and was originally called the Welsh & Midland Command before changing its name in 1906. In 1907 Western Command relocated to Watergate House in Chester...

. It then became the headquarters of the Cheshire Community Council, and has since been used as offices.

Architecture

The house is constructed in Flemish bond brown brick with stone dressings and a grey slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

 roof. It has two storeys plus a basement. The plan of the main block is square, with the entrance in a recessed convex quadrant at the northeast corner. A service wing projects to the south. Six curved steps lead up to a curved eight-panel door with four-pane sidelights and a three-pane overlight. The door is surrounded by an Ionic

Ionic order

The Ionic order forms one of the three orders or organizational systems of classical architecture, the other two canonic orders being the Doric and the Corinthian...

 doorcase. Above this, in the upper storey, is a twelve-pane sash window

Sash window

A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels or "sashes" that form a frame to hold panes of glass, which are often separated from other panes by narrow muntins...

 in an architrave

Architrave

An architrave is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of the columns. It is an architectural element in Classical architecture.-Classical architecture:...

, the bottom panel of which is inscribed with aa crown flanked by initials "E" and "R". Both storeys on the east and north sides contain three twelve-pane sash windows. On the west (garden) front is a central two-storey bay window

Bay window

A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room, either square or polygonal in plan. The angles most commonly used on the inside corners of the bay are 90, 135 and 150 degrees. Bay windows are often associated with Victorian architecture...

containing sash windows, flanked by sash windows in each storey. The entrance door leads through a domed circular lobby to an octagonal central hall.