The Ruskin Rooms are a Grade II listed building. The description given by British Listed Buildings reads as follows;
"KNUTSFORD
SJ7478 DRURY LANE
792-1/3/22 (South side)
12/10/71 Ruskin Rooms
GV II
Reading rooms and fire station, now offices. c1900. By
Fairhurst, completed by Walter Aston. For Richard Harding
Watt. Render with stone dressings and randomly projecting
blocks. Red pantiled roof. Eclectic style, drawing heavily on
Italianate sources.
EXTERIOR: 3-storeyed, with corner tower projecting at angle
and housing entrance to upper floors. Former fire-station in
west elevation, an irregular 3-window range. Wide
segmental-arched entrance at angle with tower to left now
glazed in, with paired tall windows to right. Tall single and
2-light windows above, all with flat stone lintels. Inscribed
stone over entrance. Low upper storey stressed with continuous
sill band and cornice, 3-light mullioned windows, paired to
right and a single window to left all with segmentally-arched
heads, the mullions and transoms of the lower sections forming
a continuous pattern of balustrading. Stacks to right break
the roof line between the windows. Angled tower projects from
corner, with oriel window over long windows of 1 and 2-lights.
Paired round-arched lights above.
Subsidiary octagonal tower in angle with main range with
round-arched window in each face and terminating in green
scallop-tiled dome. Stone steps against north return of tower
give access to stair doorway of rusticated stone beneath
projecting pantile-roofed porch. Irregular fenestration to
this angled return wall, then return wall of main range with
oriel window to second floor, and casements with margin lights
to ground and first floor with flanking narrow windows. Stack
on rear wall. Heavy wood brackets carry ornate wrought-iron
frame of 'Ruskin Rooms' sign projecting from the tower, and
the stone alongside the entrance steps is inscribed 'The
Ruskin Recreation Rooms'.
INTERIOR: not inspected.
Part of a remarkable development in Free Style built under the
patronage of Richard Harding Watt.
Listing NGR: SJ7521478932"
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Richard Harding Watt was a local philanthropist and idealist with a passion for designing buildings. He made his fortune from glove making in Manchester. The Ruskin Rooms are built in eclectic Free Style under Harding Watt’s patronage. The use of white-painted render, curved windows, heavy stone lintels and door surrounds and clay pantiled roofs, provide this group of buildings with its special character. The Rooms were built as reading rooms and a fire station.
As a tribute to John Ruskin, the exterior of the building is inscribed
'Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life,
and every setting sun be to you as its close'
(from Ruskin’s Lectures on Art 1870)Source: (
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"Watt purchased a derelict tannery on Drury Lane and, inspired by a sketch he made in Damascus, created the Laundry Rooms and Worker houses. It was topped by a veranda with a green tiled, eight sided
tower. The building is now a series of cottages. Watt was a fan of John Ruskin and admired his philosophies so when it came to building a social club for the laundry works it was named The Ruskin Recreation Rooms and bore a quote from the works of Ruskin.
In 1944 a Welcome Club for officers of the American Third Army was opened in the building by General Patton."
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