Capheaton Hall And Walls Attached

Capheaton Hall is a country house built in 1668 by Robert Trollope, with wings added for Sir Edward Swinburne, who died in 1786. The north front was added in the late 18th century by William Newton for Sir John Swinburne. The building is constructed of ashlar stone and features a Lakeland slate roof.

The south front is designed in a Baroque style, featuring two storeys and basements with five bays. It is divided by giant pilasters with rusticated bases, and there is intermittent banded rustication on the ground floor, with bulgy rustication above. Central steps lead up to a door surrounded by an elaborate frame, which includes Corinthian columns carved with vine leaves and bases that have relief carvings of a beggar and a knight. The scrolled pediment above holds the Swinburne coat of arms. The windows are 2-light mullioned with raised rounded surrounds decorated with leaf garlands. Above the outer ground-floor windows are dated sundials framed with dogtooth, and above the inner ground-floor windows are carved flower vases. The dentil cornice is a replacement by Newton, and the roof is hipped with corniced ridge stacks.

The east side mirrors this detail, featuring a central doorway with a surround of thick, naturalistic fruit and leaf carving and an elaborate crest above. A recessed lower five-bay wing has 12-pane sash windows with projecting keystones. Ramped walls approximately 20 yards long extend south from the ends of the wings, with a wall to the west that includes a 17th-century doorway with a scrolled pediment.

The north side exhibits a Classical style with a seven-bay main block and a three-bay pedimented centre. It has a half-glazed door set in an open Tuscan porch, with 12-pane sash windows in architraves and an Oeil-de-boeuf window in the pediment. The lower L-plan three-bay wings, with six-bay inner returns that enclose a forecourt, also feature 12-pane sash windows in plain reveals with keystones.

Inside, the hall has a restrained mid-18th-century plaster ceiling, fielded panelling, and Palladian doorcases. A similar ceiling is found in the ground floor southeast room.