Dotheboys Hall And Former Coach House

Dotheboys Hall is a large house dating to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was originally the Bowes Academy, a private school that has since been divided into seven flats. A late 19th-century coach house is attached. The building is constructed of dressed sandstone with graduated green slate roofs and stone chimney stacks. It has an L-shaped main block, with a garden front and a right return wing, to which the coach house and a service wing are attached.

The garden front is two storeys and irregular, with seven bays. It features flush quoins. A replaced door with a radial fanlight sits within a moulded round-arched surround in bay six, flanked by late 19th-century canted bay windows. Four two-pane sashes with moulded surrounds and projecting sills are present on the left side. Similar two-pane sashes sit above. The roof is low-pitched and hipped, with three ridge stacks topped with bands.

The coach house is single-storey with a two-bay centre featuring blocked round arches and an embattled parapet with pyramidal coping stones. Taller square-plan towers break forward and have pyramidal roofs with ball finials.

The two-storey right return wing is irregular, with seven bays and scattered four-pane sashes. A pair of rusticated coach arches, with modern glazing, are located towards the rear. The roof is low-pitched and hipped at the rear.

The one-storey service wing has replacement windows and a low-pitched roof.

Dotheboys Hall was visited by Charles Dickens in 1838, who was subsequently outraged by the school’s conditions. These conditions were exposed in his novel Nicholas Nickleby, leading to a public outcry and the closure of many similar schools, including the Bowes Academy. The building is listed for its historical interest.