DescriptionHouse and attached courtyard wall. Late C16 - early C17 with C19 alterations and restoration in progress at time of resurvey. Probably for the Wigglesworth family. Gritstone; the south face (including courtyard wall) and stacks of smoothly-dressed squared blocks, continued round the outer corners of the wings; the remainder of roughly-finished coursed rubble; graduated stone slate roofs. Hall and cross wing plan, the left (west) wing ruined; the hall of 3 bays with rear outshut and right wing of 5 bays; the wings linked by a courtyard wall approximately 3 metres high and having a central gateway with chamfered-quoined jambs and a shallow 4- centred arched lintel in 2 parts. Cyma-moulded plinth; quoins. Recessed- chamfered mullion windows throughout, some with hollow-moulded mullions. Hall: studded plank door right, in chamfered quoined surround, the underside of the lintel cut away. Window to left of 5 lights, of 3 lights above, both with hoodmoulds. Left wing: 3-light window in south gable which survives to first-floor level; left return: inserted doorway with plain surround right, remainder demolished; right return: 2 ground-floor windows, of 2 and 3 lights; upper storey rebuilt. Right wing; south gable: blocked door left, square opening above; 3-light window right, ground and first floor, lower part of blocked single-light window cut by eaves line at apex. Shaped kneelers, gable coping and remains of finial at apex, external stack to right and on ridge to rear. Rear: 3-light window ground floor, right; external stack on 3 corbels to first floor with projecting stones, possibly a door jamb, to right. Left return: (courtyard) restored cart entrance to left of centre, pigeon-holes above and Blight window to right; 4- and 3- light windows with hoodmoulds to first floor. Right return, left to right: small square opening to ground floor; external stack with oven to right and shaft above eaves level restored c1970; first-floor stack supported by 2 corbels also restored; bays 3, 4 and 5: windows of 2, 2 and 3 lights to ground floor, and of 2 and 4 lights above. Interior: hall: entry into cross passage with 2 former service-room doors to right and fireplace to left. Doorways to right have deeply-chamfered quoined surrounds with rounded pyramid stops. Fireplace composed of an outer inglenook with free-standing column on square stylobate to left supporting a timber mantel beam and stone superstructure. Inserted fireplace within has cyma-moulded stone brackets supporting stone lintel, and a cast-iron range. Blocked doorway to left of fireplace has stopped-chamfered surround as those at opposite end of room. Splat balusters reused in ladder stair to left of fireplace; upper floor cut away to form a gallery; 2 principal rafter trusses, the through purlins replaced by trenched. Right wing: north gable end: bolection-moulded fireplaces to ground and first floors, with right-hand jamb and end of lintel of a wider fireplace on first floor. Massive fireplace with cambered arch and oven opening in south end, right wall, floor above missing. Cross wall to this wing of several builds, including a central section of smooth-finished masonry with a vertical chamfered straight joint. An inserted straight flight staircase cuts across the right-hand door from the hall. The site was owned by the Ingilbys of Ripley Castle, Sir William Ingilby having died there in 1579, when a detailed inventory of the building was made. The rooms listed correspond to a hall and cross wing plan, suggesting that the present house is of that date or more probably a rebuild in stone of the early C17. A tower or stair turret is recorded at the north-east corner of the building (Speight p 412), but it was demolished c1890 and the materials used in the construction of a barn to the west of the hall. The house continued in the possession of the Wigglesworths of Craven until 1891, by which time the east wing had been substantially altered and probably the outshut addition to the hall had been built. George Blackburn of Halifax bought the hall and leased it to tenants, the old kitchen at the south end of the east wing becoming a byre and barn and the hall became a farmhouse. The west wing became a separate property c1960 and the demolition of the roof and walls has taken place since then. (Listed Building Report)
Padside Hall, which is now a farm-house, the visitor may enter upon a field-path by a painted gate on the left of the road, just before the road rises near a plantation and close to the moor. A few minutes walk will bring him to the hill top (950 feet) where stands the old border fortress of Padside; in Fountains Abbey charters written Fadsyke. This ancient tenement was until recently quite unique in the Forest; whatever similar Forest Lodges have existed at a former day, this is now the only lingering relic in the district of a fortified dwelling of the remote feudal ages. A courtyard separates the house into two parts, an east and west wing, the buildings having pointed gables and Tudor mullioned windows. The house is built on the rock and there are no cellars. The walls are a yard thick and grouted, that is having an inner and outer case of masonry, while the intervening space is filled with rubble-stones and mortar. The house has doubtless been rebuilt and restored more than once, as there are evidences in the walls and doorways of a different disposition of the apartments to that now existing. The interior contains a good deal of carved native oak; these trees having been at one time very plentiful in the Forest. There is also a tradition, which may be accepted as a fact, from what we know of the leafy umbrage of Nidderdale in ancient times, that a squirrel could pas from Padside Hall to Ripley Castle without once touching the ground! A square tower of great strength stood at the north-east angle of the building, and this was probably the oldest part of the premises. Unfortunately it was pulled down in the summer of 1898 and the stone appropriated for the erection of the new barn adjoining. The tower appears to have had three stories or flats, reached from the ground-level by a spiral stone staircase, and was probably lighted by narrow watch-loops at the top. There were no windows at the basement, but the upper rooms had small lights, secured in the inside by stout iron bars. The foundation stones, some of very large size, have not been laid more than four feet below the surface, and these with a fragment of the demolished superstructure are all that now remain to tell of old stirring war times in the Forest. The house and land adjoining for generations past have been in the occupation of the Wigglesworths, who purchased the same from the Ingilbys of Ripley in the time of Queen Elizabeth. (Speight)
