Former Masonic Hall

A former Masonic Hall of 1885 by Paley & Austin but incorporating the rear parts of a late C17 building. The former Masonic Hall has a squared sandstone front elevation with ashlar dressings and a coursed rubble rear elevation.

Exterior: the Masonic Hall has a pitched roof and is of two and three storeys with a basement. The front elevation has been executed in a restrained Jacobean style. It has a deep plinth, a sill band on the first floor and a band with a parapet above the first floor windows. The doorway is to the right. The first floor is symmetrical with a central canted oriel window beneath a gable that is flanked on each side by a window. All these windows have a stone mullion and two transoms, all chamfered. The oriel has a panelled dado and is carried on a heavy corbel which springs from a shallow buttress. On the ground floor to the left of this buttress is a pair of two-light windows while to the right is the doorway with a battlemented lintel and a two-light window on its right. The rear gable wall has, at different levels, three two-light windows with chamfered mullions.

Interior: The Masonic Hall has been extensively modernised but retains a fireplace of probable Victorian date on the ground floor. There is a late C17 dogleg staircase rising from the basement to the upper floor, with closed strings, rectangular newels, turned balusters and a moulded handrail. There is a blocked mullion window on the staircase between ground and first floor and two others in a WC. The front first floor room contained the former temple and possesses a well-executed decorated plaster ceiling in blue and white with circular plaster wall plaques in relief containing paintings of masonic insignia. On the rear wall there is the temple's decorative timber entrance door having knockers to both the temple and landing and immediately above this there is an organist's balcony beneath a decorated arch that is now blocked to the rear. Upper rooms contain some early timber beams.