High Biggins Old Hall

Description

C15, early C17 and C19. Two storeys. Rubble. Slate roof, steeply pitched over east wing. Quoins. Now an L-shaped building with Medieval solar and two later wings, one on site of original hall. The Medieval part has two windows on west side. One of C15 on first floor, of two chamfered lights with hooks for shutters in splay. One on ground floor of late C16 or early C17 with three chamfered lights, the centre rebated. Also on ground floor blocked two centred arched doorway. Heavy beams to ceiling. On first floor chamfered fireplace with shouldered lintel. The early C17 wing, on north side, has several three and four light chamfered mullion windows with labels and decorated label stops. One crocketed finial survives to north-east corner. On south side of this block one doorway at first floor level with single roll on arris. On first floor inside one square headed fireplace with stopped double chamfer. The north wing though probably C19 has doorway with label over, linked with raised lettering "EC 1606" (for Edward Curwen). Roofs C19 throughout. Another block linking High Biggins Old Hall to Biggins Hall, with fragments of old work, was demolished recently. Built and extended as manor house. Upper part of east wing may have served as court room. (Listed Building Report)

Biggins Hall, about m. S.W. of the church, is of two storeys; the walls are of rubble and the roofs are slate-covered. The outbuildings adjoining the S. side of the modern house formed the original Hall. The middle block is of mediæval date; it was extended to the W. and the S. wing added, on the site of an earlier wing, in the 16th century. The N. wing is dated 1606. The W. extension retains most of its 16th-century windows of three and four transomed lights with labels. There is a window of the same date in the end-wall of the S. wing and another inserted in the W. wall of the original block. Above this last is a 15th-century window of two lights and there are two doorways of the same period in the N. wall of the same block. The doorway of the 17th-century wing has a square moulded head with the initials and date E.C. (Curwen) 1606. At the N.E. angle of the original block are remains of a circular staircase. Inside the building the original block has heavy ceiling-beams and two original doorways with pointed heads. A fireplace on the first floor has a shouldered lintel. In the E. wing is a 16th-century fireplace with a triangular head. (RCHME)

Comments

Gentry status manor house. Included by Perriam and Robinson in their gazetteer of medieval fortified buildings but there is no actually evidence the house was fortified either with a moat or a tower.