Swaithe Hall Farmhouse, Rosebower Cottage And Swaithe Hall

Swaithe Hall Farmhouse, Rosebower Cottage and Swaithe Hall form a farmhouse with a large attached house, dating back to the 16th century. The building underwent alterations in the early 17th and early 19th centuries, with a substantial addition constructed around 1870 for Joseph Mitchell (Wilkinson). The construction employs deeply-coursed dressed sandstone, stone slate, and Welsh slate roofing.

The building has an irregular U-shaped plan, comprising a central farmhouse with a rear wing and an interlocking T-shaped house on the left return. The farmhouse section is two storeys high, featuring a narrow, one-bay hall-block flanked by gabled cross-wings. The hall-block has a doorway on the right side with a panelled door, a fanlight beneath a round-arched hoodmould, and a transomed four-light window on the left. A 17th-century dormer is visible, with three-light casements and replaced bargeboards, beneath a jetty. A 19th-century brick ridge stack is also present. The altered left cross-wing features a French window and flanking casements beneath a four-pane sash, all with hoodmoulds, and adjoins the 1870s house. The right cross-wing has sixteen-pane sashes to each floor, hoodmoulds, an eaves dripmould beneath a blocked two-light attic window with a hoodmould, cavetto-moulded gable copings with a pedestal finial, and a brick shaft to a lateral stack on the left return.

The rear of the farmhouse has a gable on the left with four-light, double-chamfered mullioned windows on two floors, and a blocked two-light attic window. An adjacent return wing features a 19th-century porch (leading to Rosebower Cottage) flanked by two-light horizontal-sliding sashes. The right return displays a gabled projection with double-chamfered windows and an A-strutted king-post truss, along with some framing to the first floor of its left return. The c1870 house has a tall, three-storey gabled bay on the left of the farmhouse, featuring a canted ground-floor bay window and two-light windows above, along with heavy kneelers to roll-moulded gable copings. The entrance front on the left return presents a balanced elevation with a central one-storey porch, a gable on the left, and a lateral stack on the right.

The interiors of Swaithe Hall Farmhouse and Rosebower Cottage include 17th-century panelling in the front ground-floor rooms. The building was formerly the home of the Micklethwaite family; the dormer formerly bore the date and initials ‘R 1618 M’, indicating the insertion of a floor over the hall by Richard Micklethwaite. Later, it became the home of the Wordsworth family.