Woodcock Hall

SD40NE 663-1/5/111

NEWBURGH COBB'S BROW LANE (East side) Woodcock Hall

11/05/53

II* Lesser gentry house, now house and office. Dated 1719 on rainwater heads; altered in C19 and C20 and recently restored. Built by James Spencer of Newburgh in Lathom (d.1723). Handmade brown brick in Flemish bond with tuck pointing, coursed sandstone rubble plinth, stone slate roof. Rectangular double-depth plan under lateral 3-span roof. A symmetrical triple-gabled facade of two-and-a-half storeys and 3 structural bays with four 1st-floor windows; with a high plinth, a one-course band at 1st floor, a moulded and coped 3-course band at 2nd floor, and restored wooden modillioned verges with bargeboards and finials. The ground floor has a central doorway with moulded wooden doorcase, a door with 2 raised moulded panels and an intermediate rail, and a floating semi-circular hood on elaborately-carved brackets; and 4 wooden cross-windows which have 6 panes in the lower lights and 4 in the upper, the lower right light opening as a casement, and deep flat-arched heads of gauged red brick. The 1st floor has 4 similar windows. The top floor has one similar but slightly smaller window in each gable, and at the junctions of the gables 2 large rainwater heads with elaborate decoration including shields of arms with griffon supporters framed by detached pilasters, and raised lettering on the base: "JSC" (= James and Catherine Spencer), and "1719" respectively. Two chimneys on an axial ridge between the gables. The left return wall has a small C20 porch at ground floor, breaking into the lower of 2 former stair-windows, and 4 other windows, all these windows segmental-headed but otherwise like those at the front; the right-hand return has 2 similar windows on each floor. The rear has a C19 single-storey kitchen wing to the 1st bay,patched brick-work to the 3rd bay (following removal of a C20 addition), and various segmental-headed windows like the others, including 2 stair-windows to the centre bay.

INTERIOR: central entrance hall containing wooden alcove with fluted pilasters, triglyph frieze and dentilled cornice with egg-and-dart decoration; large inglenook in left range, with stop-chamfered bressummer (and now restored to working condition); doglegged staircase with open-string, turned balusters and moulded handrail; fielded panel doors like the front door. An unusual example of vernacular building at gentry level in the C18, with an exceptionally complete set of cross-windows (a type particularly vulnerable to later replacement with double-hung sashes).

Listing NGR: SD4831009828