Hooton Pagnell Hall Including Archway Flat Numbers 1 And 2 Hall Cottages, Ground Floor Flat, First Floor Flat And Pump End

Hooton Pagnell Hall including Archway Flat, Nos 1 and 2 Hall Cottages, Ground-Floor Flat, First-Floor Flat and Pump End

This manor house, now converted into seven residences, dates from the 14th century with an 18th-century rear wing and a garden front of 1787 said to be designed by William Lindley. The building was extensively restored between 1894 and 1904. It is constructed of ashlar and rubble limestone with stone slate roofs.

The house is arranged in an irregular L-shaped plan. The roadside front faces three storeys and features a gatehouse to the left with a moulded plinth bands and offset buttresses flanking a moulded Tudor-arched carriage entrance. A pointed-arched pedestrian entrance sits to the left of the carriage entrance. Above is a trefoil-headed single-light window. A polygonal oriel window occupies the top-left corner, with cusped windows to each face and a dripmould extending to the right above a 2-light window with cusping and hood.

To the right of the gatehouse, the housepart contains two further buttresses. On the left are two double-chamfered cross windows and a similar 3-light window, each with hoodmould. The first-floor windows feature trefoil-headed lights, with a similar 4-light window positioned beyond the buttress to the right. Two oversailing courses support a total of five 2-light windows with cusped ogee lights and hoodmoulds linked by an oriel dripmould. Two windows bear shields beneath the hood. The corniced parapet retains traces of earlier gables. The hipped roof has corniced ridge stacks and an embattled turret set to the rear.

The garden front on the right return displays a 3:3:3 bay arrangement with outer bays bowed and containing brickwork between ground-floor and first-floor windows. A central French window is housed in a corniced doorcase with paterae. Windows throughout have plain ashlar surrounds, with 20th-century casements to the ground floor; sashes with glazing bars to the first floor except the central three bays which have 4-pane sashes; and 6-pane sashes to the second floor. The hipped roof carries two corniced ridge stacks.

The left return contains a 19th-century principal entrance to the right beneath a bay window, with an older oriel window to its right featuring apron shields and cusped lights. An embattled turret occupies the angle with the gatehouse, with much 19th-century embattlement above. A 2-storey service wing to the left has casements and sashes in square-faced surrounds. An off-centre gable features a round-arched panel enclosing a tripartite window on each floor. Ridge stacks are corniced.

Interior features include an entrance hall with a late 17th-century staircase from The Palace Yard, Coventry, which has a balustrade with raking panels depicting birds and beasts within foliage scrolls and finialled newel posts. Oak panelling appears to be 19th-century work. The rooms on the garden front retain 18th-century details: the ground-floor sitting room contains a fireplace and glazed bookcases in Adam style, a columned screen, and an anthemion frieze. Other fine fireplaces are found in the first-floor rooms. The first-floor room on the roadside front features a 17th-century plaster ceiling encasing beams. A room facing the left return has barley-sugar columns flanking the window, possibly from the same source as the staircase. A concealed chamber above the carriage arch is reached by steps down from the room with the corner oriel. The Tudor room on the second floor contains an early fireplace with corbels and an ovolo-moulded surround, together with later oak panelling.

The building has had many owners throughout its history. It was held by the Crown at various points in the 15th and 16th centuries and passed from the Gifford family to John Hutton in 1605. By 1681 it was sold to Sir Patience Warde, then Lord Mayor of London, and has remained in the hands of his descendants.