Orangery, Walls And Gate Piers To East Of Croxdale Hall

The Orangery, garden walls, and gate piers located to the east of Croxdale Hall date from around 1765. The Orangery is constructed from narrow handmade bricks arranged in an irregular English garden wall bond, with stone dressings and ridged concrete roof tiles. The walls feature a similar brick inner face, a coursed rubble outer face, and flat stone copings. The gate piers are made of the same brick.

The north, east, and west walls enclose a garden of approximately 3.7 hectares that slopes from north to south, with the southern boundary defined by a serpentine lake. The Orangery is positioned at the center of the north wall, and a pair of gate piers is located near the north-east corner. It is designed in the Palladian style and is two stories high, consisting of 1 + 3 + 1 bays. The structure has an ashlar plinth and raised quoins, with a central loggia featuring three tall round arches that have raised stone surrounds, impost blocks, and keystones. The outer bays, which now serve as gardeners' cottages, have Venetian windows with replaced sashes on the ground floor and Diocletian windows above, each with triple keystones. The Orangery is topped with a tall parapet that has corniced coping above a stone band and a steeply-pitched roof with stone-coped gables and brick end stacks. The lower two-story rear has altered window arrangements.

The garden walls are notably tall, with the double-skin north wall stretching approximately 370 meters and previously heated. Each half of this wall, flanking the Orangery, is canted out at regular intervals to create four triangular-plan projections, which were designed to increase the growing area and stabilize the unbuttressed wall. The west wall measures about 70 meters long and features a round-arched doorway to the north, a large central round archway with a chamfered surround on the outer face, and a quadrant ramp descending at the south end. The east wall is approximately 100 meters long and has a pair of tall square-plan gate piers topped with pyramidal stone caps at the north end. A rubble continuation at the south end of the east wall and altered lean-to sheds on the outer face of the north wall are not considered of special interest.