Haldenby Park House

Haldenby Park House is a mid-18th century house with alterations dating to the late 18th and 19th centuries, commissioned for the Gee family. It’s constructed of brick, with stucco rendering, and has Westmorland slates on the earlier section and Welsh slates on a later addition to the right. The original layout was L-shaped, comprising a two-room front with a central entrance hall, and a wing to the rear right, with further additions to the rear. The main front is three bays wide and symmetrical, over three storeys. A late 19th-century porch features plain columns supporting a moulded cornice and flat hood, sheltering the original six-fielded-panelled door and plain overlight. Late 19th-century canted bay windows with plate-glass sashes, beneath moulded cornices and flat hoods, are set into the ground floor. The first floor has four-pane sashes in original flush wooden architraves with sills. Shorter, similar windows are present on the second floor. A moulded wooden eaves cornice runs along the top, and the roof is hipped with side wall stacks and a ridge stack to the rear right, which has an ashlar cornice and blocking course. The right return displays two first-floor windows to the main range, alongside a later two-storey, two-window wing and a ground-floor bay window in the angle. The main range has a panelled door and overlight in an architrave, flanked by a four-pane sash to the left, a 19th-century bay window to the right with plate-glass sashes under a hipped roof, and a pair of four-pane first-floor sashes, followed by a painted dummy four-pane sash and a shallow eight-pane sash to the second floor. The wing has a pair of four-pane ground-floor sashes, and similar but narrower sashes to the first floor, capped by a hipped roof and a side wall stack to the right. All windows feature flush wooden architraves and projecting sills. Inside, an open-well staircase boasts a ramped and wreathed corniced handrail, a column foot-newel post, column-on-vase balusters with square knops, profiled cheek-pieces, and fielded panelling below. Moulded cornices, spine beams with run-out stops, and six-panelled doors in architraves are found in the main front rooms. Other rooms likely contain original 18th and late 19th-century features, although the property was not fully inspected. The house is situated within a parkland setting on the north bank of the former River Don. Haldenby Park is depicted on Jeffrey’s 1775 map of Yorkshire. The churchyard and church at Luddington, nearby, contain late 18th and early 19th-century monuments to the Gee family.