Linby Old Hall Farm

Description

Farmhouse, C15, refenestrated in the late C17 and altered in the mid-C18. This building is a wing of an earlier manor house which was probably demolished in the mid-C18. (PastScape)

Externally, the Hall is a three-storeyed, seventeenth-century house of symmetrical elevation, one room deep with matching end turrets, all under a common roof. The south end has thicker walls of four different widths – 3 feet, 4 feet, 4.5 feet, and 5 feet – and, as at Strelley Hall, they indicate the existance of a medieval tower incorporated in a later rebuilding. The entrance is of simple chamfered doorway with two-centred head and drawbar to a room some 22 feet square. The seventeenth-century newel in one corner, as at Aspley Hall, may have replaced the original one serving the two upper floors. Whether there was an attached hall is not clear, though the 4-foot thick wall of the south front extends for 19 feet. A thirteenth-century date has been suggested, built by a successor to William St Michael, a London merchant whose family held the manor of Linby between 1198 and 1286. Too much weight should not been given to a single doorway since sharply pointed heads are also found in a fourteenth-century context. (Emery)