Barcroft Hall With Attached Garden Wall And Entrance Gateway At Sd865304

Barcroft Hall with Attached Garden Wall and Entrance Gateway

A lesser gentry hall-house, now two dwellings, dating from the late 16th and 17th centuries and altered subsequently. The building is constructed of coursed sandstone rubble with quoins and stone slate roof.

The house follows an E-plan, facing north-west. The north-east wing is probably late 16th century, whilst the hall range and south-west wing are 17th century and possibly of different building phases. The building rises to two and three storeys on a sloping site, with the south-west wing raised over a semi-basement.

A small grass forecourt is enclosed by a high screen wall featuring a moulded and dog-toothed semi-circular arched gateway beneath a crow-stepped parapet. The gateway incorporates a datestone lettered "1636". On the same axis as the gateway stands a two-storey gabled porch, which was formerly an oriel window. A moulded doorway has been inserted beneath the hoodmould of a former window, with a frieze above lettered "William Barcroft 1614".

In the re-entrant to the left of the porch is a blocked former doorway to the screens passage. Above this is a 16th-century window of four recessed round-headed lights that originally lit a gallery. A similar window of three lights appears in the re-entrant wall of the left wing. The rear of this section has a corresponding doorway to the screens passage and a similar three-light gallery window. The rear gable of this wing has at first floor a similar but deeper three-light window and a narrow loop-light to the left. All other external openings of this earliest surviving part of the building have been altered.

The remaining original 17th-century windows of the hall range and south-west wing are largely unaltered. These are recessed with ovolo or chamfered mullions, and some at the front have hoodmoulds. On the south side of the hall is a transomed king-mullion window of 10+10 lights. The principal floor of the wing is lit by transomed windows of 10 lights in the gable and 9 and 9 lights in the return wall. At the south-west end of the hall range are three vertically-aligned three-light windows; the lowest of these is the firewindow serving a very large arched stone hall fireplace.

The interior has not been inspected. Interpretive descriptions and references appear in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments and the Victoria County History of Lancashire (VCH Lancs VI pp. 483-4). The house was the home of the Barcroft family until the estate was partitioned following the death of Thomas Barcroft in 1668.