Cowling Hall

Description

Cowling Hall and Wing (formerly listed under Cowling Hall 22.8.66 including long outbuilding adjoining Cowling Hall) GV I 2 houses. C12, C17 and early C18. Brick rendered, rubblestone and ashlar. Pantile and stone slate roofs. The Hall: 2 storeys, 5 bays with 3 storey, 1 bay block to left. Main range: plinth, stone quoins, central bay breaks forward with stone quoins. 3 steps lead to 8-panel door with rusticated Doric stone surround with pilasters on plinths, frieze with triglyphs and cornice above; central 1st-floor window rises from cornice and has stone surround with consoles, frieze and triangular pediment. Flanking both the door and window are narrow 8-pane sashes with stone cills and double keystones. The 2 outer bays to either side have sashes with glazing bars with stone cills and double keystones. Block to left has 2 4-pane C20 sashes to ground floor and a tripartite sash with glazing bars and stone cill to 1st and 2nd floors. Above is a stone band and parapet quoined to left. This bay is possibly part of an earlier pele tower. Pantile roof hipped to left with shaped kneeler to left and right. Stone coping to right. Garden front similar but without the narrow sashes in the central bay, blocked mullioned cellar windows to plinth and a small 6-pane window above 1st floor to each side between the outer bays, one of them blind. Interior: main staircase has balusters alternatively of fluted column-on-vase type and barleysugar-on-vase type. The back stair in the earlier bay is dog leg with splat balusters. Remnants of early C18 panelling in Hall. Wing to west of Hall: 2 storeys, 6 bays. The half nearest the Hall is C12, the other half of C17. Board door in pointed-arch surround with moulded jambs and arched cusped light with transom above. Other windows are C20 16- pane sashes. 1st floor: bays 1, 2 and 6 have earlier quoined surrounds; sundial to left. Stone coping with graduated stone slate roof. Left gable end has 3-light stone mullioned window to the 1st floor with a cornice dripmould supported on flattened corbels. Interior: half-timbered wall to right of arched doorway; pieces of C17 plastering in south bedroom. Roof bosses of a rose and head of James I in other bedrooms. (Listed Building Report)

Cowling Hall is a rectangular 18th-century classical building facing north-east, rebuilt on the site of an earlier house. The two-storied older portion, now occupied chiefly by stables, extends from the north-west angle to the edge of the road. Opposite this wing was originally another, forming with the main block the three sides of a court, the outer wall of which is now represented by the remains of a thick wall along the road. This would have been a plain wall, perhaps embattled and with an archway in the middle, forming the chief entrance to the court. In the remaining wing overlooking the court are a trefoil-headed light, a squareheaded light and a two-light mullioned window; others, blocked up, are probably concealed by ivy. (VCH)

Comments

Neither the description in the listed building report or the, now somewhat elderly, description in the VCH give a clear idea of the form of the medieval hall. The listing report suggests the northern part of the house was a pele tower although it gives no date. The VCH appears to be suggesting the medieval form of the house was a three sided courtyard house with the fourth side enclosed by a thick, embattled, wall. This is certainly possibly, although whether that amount to the building being a fortified manor house is questionable. A three storey solar tower attached to a hall certainly seems a reasonable possibility for the late medieval form of the manor house.