About The Architect

Summary of Beer Scores

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Website.

The pub is found in Chester, Cheshire, CH1 2NX.

This pub opened in 2012 and is typical of Brunning & Price pubs being run to a very high standard with a good selection of beers. The pub is named after Thomas Harrison. Thomas Harrison designed and built St. Martin’s Villa as his own residence, from where it overlooked the works he had undertaken at Chester Castle. After the completion of the building, work on the Grosvenor Bridge was commenced, although he died before its completion. The building is a simple villa, built in a somewhat austere style, but is nevertheless beautifully proportioned. Charles Cockerell, fellow architect, described the house as being “well conceived, broad, elegant and simple”. It adopts a conventional classical form, influenced by Roman villas and Palladio’s villas of Northern Italy which Harrison would have studied on his European tour, and the overall effect is certainly pleasing to the eye and harmonious. The building has certainly very little in the way of ornamentation – there are no cills or lintels, for instance, or Doric columns to the entrance, and similarly the interior is almost minimalist in its lack of unnecessary decoration. The Tithe map of 1848 indicates that the site of the villa was part of a large plot owned by Mr Matthews and occupied by Joseph Kay. In 1857, the villa was bequeathed to the parish of St. Bridget and St. Martin as the Rectory by Thomas Harrison’s daughter Anne. It was named on this map as St Martin’s parish, and in a map of 1874, and another of 1911, the building is described as The Rectory. In 1960, St. Martin’s Lodge was purchased by the County Council to form an annex of the Police Headquarters. Situated within Chester’s city walls overlooking the racecourse at Roodee.

We have visited this pub once, seen 6 different beers and tried 1 of them.

Map location

Postcode: CH1 2NX