Middleton Hall

Details

MIDDLETON MIDDLETON PARK SP19NE 2/83 Middleton Hall GV II* Country house. The main early C18 house incorporates buildings of C14 and C16 date and has extensive early C19 additions. The existing buildings are grouped around an open courtyard with its entrance to the north. An early C14 west facing building in the east range incorporates some C12 material. It is built of finely jointed dressed sandstone partly covered in cement render. 2 storeys with chamfered offset at first floor level. Roughly central doorway with a 3-centred arch and chamfered surround. To the right of the doorway is a round-headed loop partly concealed by the render, and to the left, an inserted doorway. Blocked inserted openings to first floor left and right. The doorway gives access to a chamber 28 feet long from north to south, and 13 feet wide. There was a room of similar size above, the floor of which was carried on a continuous offset. The round-headed loop noted above has splayed jambs. In the south wall is a cupboard with Caernarvon arched lintel, a groove for a shelf and a rebate for a door. In the south wall of the first floor chamber is a doorway with segmental head and roll-moulded surround. There is a similar doorway in the north wall, though this is heavily weathered. An early C14 arch-braced collar rafter roof survives. The 2 doorways at first floor level suggest that there were further medieval buildings adjoining to the north and south and this suggestion is confirmed by surviving continuations of the east wall. To the north and separated by a short gap is a much altered timber-framed building, possibly the remnant of a chapel for which licence was granted to Sir Baldwin Freville circa 1390. At the north-east corner of the quadrangle is a building aligned east-west facing north. It is probably Cl6. Timber-framed, plastered in the C17 and partly rebuilt in brick in the C18/C19. 2 storeys with jettied first floor on scrolled plaster brackets. 3 window front with moulded plaster architraves. The entrance is at the rear. Exposed framing in the north and east walls: close studding with middle rail, long curved tension braces to ground storey and short curved braces to first floor. Inside there are 2 ground floor rooms of unequal size. The smaller eastern room has a spine beam with wide chamfers and the main western room has boxed and plastered spine and cross beams and wide joists. In the south wall is an early C19 cast iron kitchen fire grate with fluted grieze. Main house: early C18. Rendered brick; plain-tile roof; brick ridge stacks. L-shaped plan: the house encloses the west side of the courtyard and part of the north side. West elevation: 2 storeys with moulded eaves cornice. 2:4:2 window front articulated by giant fluted pilasters which reflect the internal proportions: 12-pane glazing bar sashes with moulded architraves. Early C19 three-bay extension wing to the right. The left hand (north) return of the range has 3 more bays with pilasters, and then a 2-bay entrance block set back to the left. It has a central 6-panel door with bracketed hood approached by a flight of concrete steps. The south range contained the services. Interior: the entrance block contains a single room or hall. Access is from the north doorway which opens to the landing of the great staircase. From here, flights ascend to the first floor of the west range and to a blocked doorway in the east wall, and 2 short-flights descend to the floor of the entrance hall. The staircase has an open string with shaped tread ends, ramped handrails, a square panelled foot newel and a panelled dado. Most of the balusters have been removed but the few that survive alternate between column on vase and barley sugar twist type. To each side of the landing is a giant fluted column of square section. Large raised and fielded wall panels to the lower part of the hall and plastered walls above crowned by a coved and moulded cornice. In the south wall is a large stone fireplace with bolection moulded surround and in the east wall 2 doors, now blocked. These together with the blocked door at first floor level indicate that C18 house extended further to the east. A first floor gallery extends along the west side of the hall. It is carried on an arcade of 3 round arches with raised keys; there are fluted pilasters between the arches. Behind the arcade and directly beneath the gallery is a passage which gives access to the principal rooms of the west range. Each of the 4 ground floor rooms of the west range has a polished marble fireplace with bolection moulded surround. The large central room is flanked by a pair of smaller rooms each of which has an C19 plaster cornice with modillions alternating with rosettes, and a lower band of egg and dart. The southern of these flanking rooms also has a pair of round-headed arches in the east wall, each with a plaster shell-vault. Middleton Hall was formerly contained by a moat, parts of which survive to the east and north-west. (Buildings of England: Warwickshire: p355; VCH: Warwickshire: Vol.IV, 1965, p156)

Listing NGR: SP1925498097

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

309397

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Doubleday, AH, Page, W, The Victoria History of the County of Warwick (1947), 156
Pevsner, N, Wedgwood, A, The Buildings of England: Warwickshire (1966), 355

End of official list entry