Chingle Old Hall (With Bridge Over Moat)

Chingle Old Hall, originally a farmhouse, dates from the early 17th century and was extended in the 19th century, with further alterations in the 20th century. The building is constructed of brick, now covered with white-painted roughcast, and features a slate roof. It has a cruciform plan due to the 19th-century extension at the rear and a 20th-century enlargement to the left. Originally, it was a single-depth baffle-entry layout, likely consisting of three bays, with a large projecting porch at the junction of the second and third bays.

The hall is two storeys high, and the two-storey gabled porch has a wide doorway with a cambered head, an old board door with ornamental iron fittings, and small square peep windows on each side wall, although the left side window is blocked. The only chimney stack is square and located behind the ridge in line with the porch.

Inside, the house has been altered, but the house part in the second bay features an 18th-century stone fireplace with a moulded surround, corbelled jambs, and a moulded cornice. The former kitchen in the third bay has a small inglenook fireplace with a stop-chamfered bressummer. This room also contains a vertical rectangular recess in the rear wall with a wooden cross set in it. The house part has ex-situ stop-chamfered cambered beams, possibly once bressummers, supporting modern softwood joists. On the first floor, the porch has a blocked four-light mullioned window in the east wall, while the room above the kitchen has a similar blocked window in the front wall and two lights of another in the east wall. There is a cavity in the front wall of this room, said to be a priest hole, revealing an outer layer of woven reed wattle, and a cavity beneath the flagged floor of the kitchen fireplace is also believed to have served the same purpose.

The hall is situated on a moated site, which is now rare in this district, featuring a bridge in front of the porch and a path leading to it, flanked by walls of handmade brick with pitched stone copings.