Brumby Hall

Brumby Hall is a country house with a front range dating back to the 17th century, significantly widened and extended in the late 1790s by George Pycock of Hull for Thomas Pindar. Later alterations and extensions occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. The house is constructed primarily of local red brick, with the 17th-century section in English bond and the 18th-century addition in Flemish bond. Ashlar dressings are used, particularly on the ground floor of the porch. The roof is covered in Westmorland slate, with brick stacks.

The building is rectangular, comprising a front range and a double-span rear wing housing a stair turret. It stands three storeys high with an irregular arrangement of windows. A prominent, full-height porch is situated to the right of the centre, featuring a brick plinth, ashlar quoins, and an ashlar-faced entrance with double-panelled doors under a plain rectangular overlight. Flanking the entrance are Doric pilasters supporting a moulded string course. A carved stone sundial, dated 1637, is inserted into a brick panel between the ground and first floors, above which is a large first-floor casement. The porch’s upper stage is topped with stone-coped battlements and a panel displaying strapwork grotesques supporting a shield bearing the arms of Nathaniel Fiennes (added in 1962).

The front of the building also incorporates two 24-pane sashes to the ground and first floors, and a second-floor round-headed casement with glazing bars. A moulded ashlar basement string-course and a flat first-floor band are visible. The right return features 17th-century ashlar quoins, a first-floor band, and a pair of blocked basement windows with decorative hood moulds. A Venetian stair-window, dating from the 1790s, is positioned above the right-hand window. The left return displays two and three storeys and nine bays, with a first-floor brick band and 24-pane sashes under flat brick arches. A two-storey, four-bay range on the left has cogged brick eaves, tumbled gables, and a large axial stack.

Inside, Pycock's stair hall features a re-used closed-string staircase dating from around 1700, with vase balusters and a later swept handrail, complemented by an Adam-style plaster ceiling with a dentilled cornice, sculpted columns and pilasters, and a Venetian stair window. Historically, Brumby Hall served as the residence of Richard Bellingham, a founder of Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1630s, and later became the home of Nathaniel Fiennes, a Parliamentarian colonel and Speaker of Cromwell’s Parliament. The ‘P’ tie bar on the stair turret turret is connected to the Pindar family, who owned the Hall from around 1700 to 1813.