21st January, 2020 Pointing Heavenward 7.

I don’t know what’s going on with these photos but cannot change now.

Just north of Beverley Road Baths, on the other side of the road and on the corner of Pearson Avenue stands ‘Rosa Villa’, now a home for the elderly but originally built as a private house when this section of Beverley Road was a linear prestigious area roughly contemporary with the fine houses built around the perimeter of Pearson Park.

Rose Villa has a corner turret providing some accommodation like the property highlighted in the previous blog. The turret is capped by a Welsh slate-covered rectangular spire.

David Neave (s.p.b.s) does not mention Rose Villa but he does describe the extensive property on the other side of the Pearson Avenue junction, now a hotel incorporating the original Dorchester House of 1861, and including ‘a profusion of shaped gables and corner turrets topped by slate-covered spires’. Clearly a fashion statement of the 1860s.