Hilton Hall

Hilton Hall is a house, believed to have originally been a chapel of St. Catherine, acting as a chantry to Staindrop church. The building dates back to the medieval period, with alterations made in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is constructed of limewashed render with ashlar dressings, and has a concrete-tiled roof with stone gable copings and brick chimneys. The building has an irregular L-shaped plan, comprising a main block, a front stair wing with an extruded porch, a left extension and porch, and a rear right wing.

The north elevation, of two storeys and four bays with a one-story, one-bay left extension, features a six-panel door within a Gothic-style surround in the porch, a boarded door in the fourth bay, tripartite sash windows in the first bay and at landing level of the full-height gabled stair wing, a late 19th-century sash window above the porch, a four-pane pantry light low in the stair wing, and a partly-blocked horizontal sliding sash in the fourth bay with a blank first floor. Roll-moulded gabled angle buttresses, with coped offsets, are at the left of the main block. The steeply-pitched roof has moulded kneelers and corniced ridge chimneys, the left chimney being situated on a massive rendered plinth. Similar gabled buttresses are present on the rear and return elevations.

Inside, the porch contains a chamfered surround to a six-panel door, and the walls, approximately 130 centimetres thick, form a principal rectangle and flank a cross-passage from the second-bay door. A cupboard in the front wall of the second bay has a wide run-off chamfer on one side, and narrow window openings are reported to be concealed behind wallpaper in the third bay. A stone bowl, possibly a piscina, is located below the window sill on the north wall of the first bay. The rear right wing has plastered beams with moulded corners and stucco ceiling decoration on both floors, featuring formal arrangements of motifs including fleur-de-lys, lions, crowns, and leaves, with Tudor roses and large marigold patterns in the upper room. A corniced, panelled wall in a ground-floor room contains a chimney piece. Thick cross walls extend to the roof space. Blocked 17th-century two-light windows are visible within the rear wing. The open-well close-string staircase has a flat handrail on fat turned balusters, and square newels with pendants and ball finials. The upper roof is likely 17th century, consisting of cruck timbers with collars and two levels of purlins, with spurs removed and a ridge piece on crossed, halved blades.