Hollowforth Hall

Hollowforth Hall is a large house largely dating to the 1850s, incorporating elements of a late 17th or early 18th century farmhouse. It is constructed of red brick with rusticated yellow-brick quoins, sandstone dressings (including reused fragments from the demolished Preston Parish Church, circa 1853), and fishscale slate roofs with projecting eaves. The building is approximately rectangular, with a four-by-four bay layout, and the original three-bay farmhouse forms a recessed eastern wing.

The south front has three stepped gables set back from the right, with a west wing at the left end. The earlier farmhouse wing is set back and angled with a porch. The embattled single-storey porch has a Tudor-arched entrance with a moulded sandstone surround, stone battlements, and a large crocketed finial on the corner. The gables each feature lozenge attic lights and barge boards with apex finials. The central gable has a single-storey stone canted bay window with an embattled parapet, a six-light mullioned and transomed window with a hoodmould, while the left gable has a tall mullioned and transomed window on the ground floor (with round-headed lights and hollow spandrels), and an altered window above. The right gable has a tall segmental-headed window with margin panes, and a shorter revised window above with a figured keystone. The eastern side, set back, has a stuccoed screen wall with an arched doorway and parapet, topped with another reused crocketed finial. Behind this is the side wall of the earlier farmhouse, stuccoed with an embattled parapet and crocketed finials, featuring three openings per floor, including an altered doorway and recessed square 12-pane sash windows with hoodmoulds at the first floor. The rear and west sides are in a similar style; the rear features a gabled porch incorporating various reused carved stones and a massive lintel, and a re-set datestone lettered “H I M 1719.”

Inside the earlier farmhouse wing, the inglenook fireplace has a heck, a cyma-stopped chamfered bressummer, two boxed beams, and a dentilled cornice. Opposite the fireplace is an alcove which formerly housed a built-in 18th-century organ. The service wing to the south has built-in cupboards with shouldered fielded panels. Elsewhere, the interior decoration is in a Gothick style, with trefoil-headed dado panelling, Tudor-arched doorways, and vine friezes. The drawing room has a reused Tudor-style 19th-century fireplace previously located in Samlesbury Hall. Extensive repairs to the roof of the east wing were ongoing at the time of inspection.

Hollowforth Hall was the home of the Threlfall family; Richard Threlfall (1840-70) was a wine merchant and mayor of Preston in 1855, and Richard (1861-1932) was a physicist and the first professor of Physics at the University of Sydney, Australia.