Rockmount, Church Road
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Rockmount, Church Road by Stephen Richards as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Rockmount, Church Road
Image: © Stephen Richards Taken: Unknown
Probably the best of the suburban villas on Church Road, this splendidly spiky Victorian affair dates from 1873 and was designed by the splendidly-named Sextus Dyball. It is crammed with detail, in particular the bay on the right which has brick nogging and two demi-octagonal roofs. Grade II listed. Dyball was a speculative builder-architect who designed a number of buildings in the area. Jonathan Meades wrote of him that he was "a local builder to whom all devotees of inspired ugliness and sinister gracelessness will be forever indebted. Did Dyball know what he was doing? Did he have any idea of the sensations that his creations would provoke? It is improbable that he was out to shock. Rather, it seems that he ... subscribed to an aesthetic system that, although not far from us, feels chronologically, seems unfathomably distant – a vestige of an alien civilisation."
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Image Location
Latitude
51.414247
Longitude
-0.083989