Crook Hall

Crook Hall is a manor house dating back to the 14th century, with significant additions and alterations from the 17th and 18th centuries. The earlier part is constructed from coursed squared sandstone with a Welsh slate roof, while a later section is built with an English garden wall bond of brick, ashlar quoins and dressings, and a Welsh slate roof with stone gable copings. The building is comprised of a 4-bay hall, a kitchen wing, a 17th-century extension, and an early 18th-century house that projects forward.

The hall has a 2-storey projection on its left side and two cuped ogee-headed lancet windows on its right side, which is now ruined, revealing a garderobe tower and chamber. A Tudor-arched doorway in the gabled 2-storey projection is lintelled and dated 1671, with initials “I.F.” above a small, square window with a chamfered surround. The mullion in the hall's central window has been removed. The rear elevation exhibits a 2-centred-arched door surround. Internally, the hall has sandstone walls, some coursed and squared, and roof trusses that may date from the 16th century, featuring truncated principals on tie beams, curved struts, and clasped purlins, with ashlaring at the eaves. A later fire-hood backing onto the passage at the front has been partially removed, and a brick wall supports a massive stone lintel. This house is notable as the only known domestic open hall in County Durham.

The 17th-century link has two gables - one over a 2-storey, single-window section to the left and another over a 2-storey-and-attic, 2-window section to the right. The left side features horizontal sliding sash windows in stone surrounds from which the central mullion has been removed. The right side has cross windows on the ground floor, sash windows with glazing bars above, and a blocked attic window. Inside the link, there’s a large wood lintel to the fire on the left, a stair constructed from triangular-section blocks, and ceiling beams with painted red foliage.

The early 18th-century house to the left is three storeys and three bays wide. It features sash windows with glazing bars, some wider than others, within wide boxes. The 2-storey entrance bay on the right has a door with 3-over-3 panels and a 3-paned overlight within a lugged architrave. The main house displays sandstone lintel bands and 2-brick floor bands, moulded kneelers, and end brick chimneys. The left return features a large brick chimney stack with offsets, with floor bands at differing levels compared to the front. Quoins at floor level suggest a re-fronting of an earlier house. The interior of the 18th-century house boasts a high-quality staircase with a ramped grip handrail on alternate vase-and-column and rusticated-column balusters. A panelled room on the first floor has round-headed niches and an elaborate chimney-piece, likely a composite of 18th and 19th-century work, featuring terms supporting a garlanded corniced top. Doors feature six fielded panels. Stucco ceiling cornices and a dove with a basket, the badge of the Hopper family (previous owners), are also present.