Old Lea Hall Farmhouse

Old Lea Hall Farmhouse is a Grade I listed building, a farmhouse adapted from the only surviving domestic range of a late-medieval manor house of the de Hoghton family, probably re-clad with handmade brick in the late 17th or early 18th century. An early 19th-century addition of less architectural interest was made to the complex. The building has a steeply-pitched slate roof.

The principal range is rectangular, measuring approximately 75 by 16 feet (25 by 5 metres) on an east-west axis. It contains a 5-bay timber frame, now partitioned internally to make 3 rooms with one lateral passage. The structure is 2-storeyed with an attic at the east end.

The south front is built of handmade brick on a plinth of sandstone blocks. Apart from the first bay, which is distinguished by a vertical facing-strip of sandstone at each side, the façade features a moulded 5-course band with remains of a stone coping. At first floor level there is a moulded single-course band between the windows at approximately mid-point, and over the whole an embattled wallplate (moulded in the first bay) with half-timbered coved eaves, over which the roof is swept. The openings were formerly regular with 10 on each floor (2 to each structural bay). Those at ground floor are segmental-headed, giving an impression of an arcade, though some have been blocked or altered. The building now retains five 12-pane boxed sashed windows at ground floor and 6 above, mostly irregularly disposed, with simple board doors in the 3rd and 8th ground floor openings. The left return wall, now forming 2 gables with the addition, is rendered. The right gable has 2 attic windows. Chimneys are positioned at both gables and another on the ridge of the 4th bay.

The interior timber frame has survived largely intact, although some elements are concealed by later walling or inserted ceilings. It is a 5-bay post-and-truss frame spanning about 16 feet, with the first frame at the west gable wall. Each bay is slightly less than 16 feet long, with intermediate posts at the mid-point of each bay. The 5th bay has been shortened and a former cross frame at the east end removed. The wall posts rise from plinth level, support ceiling beams approximately 9 feet above ground level, and terminate approximately 10.5 feet above the level of the first floor, carrying deeply-cambered tie-beams. The ground floor has 2 longitudinal sets of principal joists with no other joists visible. The posts and beams, which are about one foot wide, and the joists, which are only slightly smaller, are decorated with deeply-undercut triple roll moulding, the outer rolls tongue-stopped and the middle one carried over from posts to beams on the soffits of concave braces. These details differ in the 4th and 5th bays, where 3 of the 4 beams have hollow moulding between the rolls, and the last 2 are supported at their north ends by moulded stone corbels. Blocked mortices in the post and beam of the 3rd cross frame indicate that this was originally closed. The kingpost roof trusses have angle struts and concave longitudinal braces to the ridge. The principal rafters carry 2 pairs of trenched chamfered purlins. Carpenters' marks number the trusses from east to west in series beginning "II", indicating that there was originally one other at the east end. The arch-braced and cambered tie beams, with moulded decoration on the sides, are visible at first floor of the west bay; the others only exist in the roof space above a relatively modern inserted ceiling, but the decoration suggests that all roof trusses may formerly have been open to the first floor.

The Hoghton family acquired the manor of Lea by marriage in the early 14th century, enlarged the estate by further acquisitions in the 14th and 15th centuries, and apparently regarded Lea as their principal residence until Hoghton Tower was built in the later 16th century. Accounts of a feud in 1589, when Thomas Hoghton was killed in a "great affray" here, refer to "the outer court of the manor house". The function of this surviving building is not known.