Hartington Hall, Rothley

Description

House. Early C17 probably with C16 core. Openings renewed C18. Roof and rear wing altered mid-C19. Random rubble with Welsh slate roof. L-plan with C18 outshut in re-entrant angle.
3 storeys, 3 bays. Central door of 6 flush panels in slightly-chamfered surround. Renewed 6-pane sashes; the lintels and sills are C18, the jambs earlier. Gabled roof with overlapping coping, kneelers and rock-faced corniced end stacks. Quoins and fragments of wall of older house on left return.
Interior: Walls c.40 inches thick. On ground floor 2 large C17 fireplaces with outer chamfers, cyma-moulded surrounds with broach stops and Tudor-arched lintels; also a doorway with broad chamfered Tudor-arched surround; oak beams. Oak beams also on 1st floor. On 2nd floor a C17 fireplace with flat lintel on large rounded corbels.
Referred to as a bastle in 1542. (Listed Building Report)

A survey of 1541 refers to a strong bastle house at Hartington Hall (NZ 02298807, OS 6 inch 1957) (Bates 1891).
The present Hartington Hall, with walls up to 1.6m thick, and internal features consistent with the specified date, appears to be a much-modernised bastle (F1 DS 27-AUG-1968).
Called a bastle in 1541, and Hartington Hall in 1552. Remains may be incorporated in present Hall (Long 1967).
Hartington Hall consists of a substantial two storey three-bay block with a rear outshut to the west of a lower two storeyed rear wing. The building is built of rubble with cut dressings. The main block is 13.6m long, 7.7m wide at the west end and 7.3m wide at the east end; the walls are c.1m thick, except for the western part of the north wall which is 1.6m thick. The south doorway has chamfered jambs and a head which appears to have been of flat-pointed or four-centred form, later cut square. The windows have old chamfered jambs (perhaps reset) and unchamfered lintels and sills. In the west gable are traces of blocked chamfered windows, probably formerly mullioned, set centrally. North of these, heavy quoining in the wall and a projecting plinth, shows that the north wall of this end of the house is in fact the south end of an earlier building, part of the west wall of which survives in the west wall of the present outshut. Internally, there is now a single room at ground floor level. There is a large fireplace at the west end of the north wall, with a moulded flat-pointed arch within a square frame. East of the fireplace is a chamfered doorway with a flattened four-centred head (now opening into the kitchen in the outshut) and east of this again, at the limit of the currently exposed stonework, what appear to be quoins, indicating the position of the south east corner of the surviving section of the earliest building. At the east end of the ground floor room, set centrally, is another large fireplace of similar character to the first. At attic level there is an old fireplace set against the south end of the west wall; this has similar mouldings but a corbelled out lintel. The two storeyed rear wing is of rock faced stone and is probably of later 19th century date (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)