Swanland Hall

Swanland Hall

Swanland Hall was built in 1760 for John Porter, a wealthy merchant trader from Hull. The house has been extended and altered during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The building is constructed of rendered and painted brick with string course bands. The roofs are clad in cement slates, both hipped and gabled, with timber dentil eaves and paired eaves brackets supporting concealed gutter housings. Modern plastic rainwater goods have been installed. The chimney stacks are of fair-faced brick.

The plan comprises a rectangular central range flanked to the north and south by projecting rectangular wings, with various extensions to the rear. Internally, the house has a central entrance hall flanked by former reception rooms, with a staircase to the rear that rises to the second floor. The first floor of the south wing is set at a higher level than the main body of the house.

The main east elevation is symmetrical, featuring a central five-bay, three-storey range flanked by a historic two-storey south wing and a modern pastiche north wing with north wing extension. The central range has a rendered plinth and four rendered string courses, with the first and second-floor courses forming window sill bands. The central front door is painted oak, 18th century, with six raised and fielded panels. It is set in a door frame with a leaded semi-circular fanlight within an architrave supported by engaged pilasters. The doorway has a Greek Doric porch with a leaded flat-top canopy and entablature supported on four columns, flanked by canted bay windows with matching entablatures and multi-pane sash windows. The windows to the first and second floors have gently cambered lintels, graduated in size, with twelve-pane sashes to the first floor and unequal nine-pane sashes to the second. The hipped roof is clad with cement slates and has a flat rectangular leaded central area with a pair of brick chimney stacks at each end.

The south wing has a single string course at first-floor level, wrapping around the end elevation, set between three 15-light ground-floor and 12-light first-floor sash windows. To its rear is a slightly lower and recessed two-bay, two-storey extension extending back to the south wall of the central range. Two square-plan differential height single-storey former tack rooms with pyramidal roofs are attached to the rear wall of the south wing. A single-storey former billiard room is situated within the re-entrant angle formed by the rear of the house and the tack rooms. It has a gablet roof with a large ridge skylight lighting the interior.

The west elevation has a plain timber door and a tripartite multi-paned window. The blind north wall of the billiard room is built against the projecting stair bay, which is lit by a half-landing sash window and a tall semi-circular headed stair window with leaded glass and coloured glass detailing. A former single-storey kitchen range projects to the rear of the north-west corner of the main house.

The interior has been largely reworked with modern Georgian-style decorative plasterwork, timberwork, fittings and fixtures. However, the central range, the former kitchen range, and the south wing retain most of the original structural walls and plan form. The entrance hall and staircase occupy the central bay and span the full width of the building; the majority of the hall joinery is original. The four flights of the 18th century dog-leg staircase have a central well hole, moulded strings, turned balusters, moulded handrails, and a turned vase-shaped newel post at the base.

The former dining room to the north of the entrance hall retains its arched servery in the west wall with two fluted pillars. The basement beneath the kitchen range has a half-arched east-west axial corridor, leading to two barrel-vaulted cellars and a stone-shelved storeroom. A wine cellar is reputed to be located beneath the south wing, but this was not inspected. The upper floors of the main house and the roof spaces were not inspected.