Hall Green Farmhouse And Attached Front Garden Wall

Hall Green Farmhouse and attached front garden wall

This farmhouse dates from the late 16th or early 17th century in its core structure, with a façade of around 1800 and 19th-century extensions to the rear. The building is timber-framed on a tall sandstone plinth (visible to the rear and internally) and clad in Flemish bond orange brick. It has a Welsh slate roof with one ridge stack and two end stacks. The plan consists of a hall with two crosswings.

The exterior presents two storeys and an attic with a symmetrical five-bay front. The end bays are projecting gables containing three-light horizontally sliding sashes with flat wedged stone heads and raised keyblocks, with similar two-light windows in the gables themselves. The central portion features three three-light windows arranged around a central doorway, which is sheltered by a flimsy porch. The porch has an eared wooden architrave with a dentilated frieze and triangular pediment, panelled soffits, and a six-panelled door. Piecemeal extensions extend to the rear, and one gable reveals the original timber framing. A stone garden wall of two heights is attached to the front.

Internally, the basic plan survives downstairs, though the entrance has been relocated. The timber frame is visible in the rear wall and survives within the brick skin elsewhere. It comprises two phases: firstly, square panels with wattle and daub infill with an original two-light mullioned window and braces to a wall plate; above this are later square panels with brick infill and a square-faced mullioned window with leaded glass. The entrance hall contains a restored inglenook fireplace with an original ashlar reredos featuring two triangular-headed niches; exposed framing in the rear wall incorporates a two-light mullioned window. Most beams are boxed in, those on the ground floor to the left having plaster cornices. An early 19th-century staircase was inserted, featuring a round arch near its foot and various six-panel doors. The principal-rafter roof trusses span the centre; the truss against the right crosswing has a doorway with a 17th-century ledged and boarded oak door on strap hinges.

Of extraordinary interest are a series of five naive mural paintings in the first-floor room of the left crosswing. Two panels are complete, two are damaged, and only about one-third survives of the fifth. One complete panel, measuring 195 centimetres by 109 centimetres, depicts Marbury Hall (now demolished) in its gardens and grounds beneath a clouded sky with a rainbow. A strong narrative element comprises scenes of a carriage procession, hare coursing, boating on a lake, a dovecote, and agricultural activities in the background. The other complete panel shows a winter scene with skaters on Frodsham Marsh at the foot of Helsby Rocks, with woodcutters and a farmstead in the foreground, outside which a man shoots at roosting birds. A damaged panel depicts two tower mills on cliffs above a shoreline with an inn, possibly representing Nelson in Wirral. Another panel shows Beeston Castle with a large house and agricultural scene in the right foreground. The final panel (about one-third complete) is dominated by a tall tree set before a castle or church, beyond which lies a large river with buildings on its far bank, a country house in the distance with mountains beyond, possibly Conway or Chester. Each panel is set within a trompe l'oeil bolection-moulded frame complete with gilt slip and ear plates, hung on stout nails. A trompe l'oeil dado of fielded panels completes the scheme. The paintings date from around 1740. No other mural scheme of this kind is known to survive in England, though single overmantels exist elsewhere. Extensions to the rear include former cheeserooms and a barrel-vaulted half cellar.