St Helen Hall

St Helen Hall is a house on Manor Road in St Helen Auckland, first built after 1622 and extended around 1735 for William Carr, Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne.

The 17th-century building is constructed of rubble with incised render and ashlar dressings, topped with concrete roof tiles and stone gable copings. The 18th-century extension is built in ashlar with a rusticated basement and a roof of graduated Lakeland slate with ashlar chimneys. The house is planned as an L-shape, with the 18th-century Palladian wing breaking forward from the right end of the original 17th-century house. The 17th-century house originally included an earlier cruck-framed structure at the left, which was demolished before 1972.

The 17th-century house elevation has two storeys and three windows, with label moulds over a central six-panel door and three-light windows with chamfered stone mullions and casements with glazing bars. Three-light casements with central opening lights sit under label moulds in three gabled dormers rising from the eaves. The roof has a left-end chimney, with gable copings resting on moulded kneelers. A mid-20th-century ground-floor corridor addition features an arch to a half-glazed door at the left with one shaped stone bracket for a former doorhood. A small section of wall to the left of the 17th-century roof is brick.

The garden front presents two storeys and five windows. An ashlar plinth extends to sill level. The basement displays richly varied and intricately carved vermiculate rustication, with wide-splayed voussoirs to a central half-glazed door and six-pane ground-floor sashes which slide into slots above. An ashlar band below the raised piano nobile floor band supports blind balustraded aprons with square-section balusters, set against moulded sills of sashes in architraves with bolection-moulded frieze and cornice. All windows have broad glazing bars. Ashlar courses are thinner at sill and lintel levels. A dentilled eaves cornice surmounts the elevation. The steeply pitched hipped roof oversails the eaves, with right-end and rear chimneys rising from the eaves. The left return facing the road has three blind windows on each floor. The right return features a tall round-headed stair window over a flat-roofed mid-20th-century extension.

The interior of the 17th-century house retains much 17th-century panelling and two stone fire surrounds with Tudor arches and ogee-section stepped moulding, transferred here from West Auckland. The roof consists of collared trusses with raised cruck principals and two levels of purlins, marked with carpenters' marks.

The Palladian wing contains a ground-floor entrance passage and stair well parallel to the rear wall, extending through two right bays. The left ground-floor room, accessed from the garden, has raised fielded panelling with dado and cornice. The library and dining room on the ground floor retain original detail. A wide stair at the rear of the right part has moulded treads, shallow risers, and a ramped moulded handrail.

The piano nobile features a drawing room at the right. The principal room at the left is a salon with three windows, proportioned as one and a half cubes, with the rear wall brought forward into one plane to accommodate the chimney without internal or external projection. The decoration is of extraordinary richness, including enriched skirting board, dado and panel mouldings, pedimented supports with bolection frieze, and a richly carved painted wood chimney piece with female terms and broken pediment. The stucco ceiling decoration is of rococo character, of unknown artist but reminiscent of the York school. The work is probably original to the building, as after Carr's death in 1741–2 entertaining became less important, making this very early for the style if original. Rich classical cornice mouldings include banded laurel leaves. Symbolic figures of eagles with snakes in their grasp and of monkeys recur around the edge of the principal ceiling panel, with classical masks and arrangements of grapes in asymmetrical swagged corner panels from which intersecting curves trail towards the centrepiece featuring a figure of Cupid in an ornate frame.

William Carr was Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne and entertained frequently at St Helen Hall.