Norley Hall And Adjoining Norley Hall Farm

Norley Hall and adjoining Norley Hall Farm is a country house, now divided into two dwellings, located on Town Farm Lane near Norley. The building was originally rebuilt in 1782 for William Hall on the site of earlier houses belonging to the Hall family. It was substantially remodelled in Tudor Revival style in 1845 by the Liverpool architect Alfred Bower Clayton for Samuel Woodhouse, a wine importer. A service wing was extended in similar style in the late 19th century, and minor additions and alterations were made in the 20th century.

The exterior is rendered with a late 20th-century Tyrolean finish, with sandstone ashlar used for the basement, porch, and dressings. The roof is covered with Welsh slate in gabled and hipped form with fish-scale tiles. Clustered corbelled stacks, some truncated, rise from various points. The building features a ground floor sill band and coped gables. Windows are mainly 19th-century plain sashes set within mullioned openings with label moulds.

The main block is two storeys with basement and attics, arranged in a grid of 5 by 3 windows, corresponding to the form of the original 1782 house. The north-west entrance front has a projecting central gabled bay. A single-storey Gothic porch with diagonal buttresses, pinnacles, and pierced balustrade projects from this front. The porch contains a moulded Tudor arched doorway and four-light side windows with panel tracery, leading to a pointed arched inner doorway with sidelights of similar tracery and coloured glass, and a half-glazed door. To the left of the porch are two cross-mullioned windows, while to the right stands an external stack. The storey above contains three windows with two smaller windows to the right flanking the stack. A two-light window sits in the central gable, with a three-light dormer window to the left. To the left of the main block, a setback link structure of two storeys contains two glazed-in pointed arched openings with two windows above. Within the return angle stands an octagonal stair turret topped with a pointed-arched bell turret under a conical roof.

The former service wing to the left is two storeys, with a four-light window (now with a 20th-century door inserted) flanked by single-light windows. Above are a three-light window and a single-light window. A projecting gable to the left has three-light cross-mullioned windows on each floor. The right return features a slightly projecting gabled bay with a canted bay window beneath a traceried balustrade, containing three cross casements. Above this bay is a French window, with a two-light window above. Two cross-mullioned windows stand to the right with two smaller windows above them.

The garden front has a central gabled bay fronted by a canted bay window of two storeys plus basement, retained from the 1782 design. The basement contains small plain windows and a doorway to the right, flanked by round-arched recesses. The bay window has three windows on each floor and a renewed French window to the attic. Flanking the bay window to the left is a cross casement, and to the right is a square bay window of two lights with traceried balustrade. Above are two windows, and in the attics are two gabled through-eaves dormers on sill brackets. A link to the right has a flat-roofed porch with panelled door and 20th-century steps, flanked to the right by a cross-mullioned window, with two small windows above. The former service wing to the right has two gables, a square stone bay window of four lights to the left, and a small 20th-century projection to the right. Above are a cross-mullioned window to the left and a smaller mullioned window to the right.

Interior

The plan of the 1782 house is largely retained. The central entrance hall has a dentillated cornice and opens via a round-arched opening into a similarly detailed stairwell. The stairwell contains a cantilevered stone dogleg staircase with triple wrought-iron stick balusters and a ramped hardwood handrail. The principal ground-floor double room has at each end a moulded marble fireplace in Tudor Revival style, bearing the Woodhouse monogram. The room is decorated with an elaborate pierced Gothic-style cornice with drops and ceiling bosses in the same style. The adjoining dining room has a similar pierced cornice applied to an 18th-century bow window with shutters. The billiard room features a Tudor-arched cornice with fan-vaulted bosses and a similar boss in a central recessed ceiling panel, alongside a 20th-century fireplace and windows with shutters.

The basement is rendered throughout with segmental arches and contains a wood and stone winder stair with paired wrought-iron stick balusters and a ramped hardwood handrail. A segmental-arched major fireplace with rusticated jambs is present, along with a minor brick fireplace with a hob grate.

The first floor has a cornice to the spinal corridor and principal rooms, with several late 18th-century five-panel doors. Multiple 18th-century moulded fire surrounds, including a marble example with cornice in the principal room, all fitted with grates dating to around 1845. The attics contain an open-well wooden stair with triple stick balusters and a ramped hardwood handrail, all in hardwood. Plain four-panel doors and fireplaces similar to those on the first floor are present. King-post roof trusses, now exposed following 20th-century works, have lower ends chamfered and date to the 19th century.

The building retains architectural features of high standard in two contrasting styles and remains largely intact, forming a notable example of changes in architectural taste between 1782 and 1845.