Kiddal Hall Farmhouse

Kiddal Hall Farmhouse

This building, probably dating from the early 17th century but retaining earlier roof structures, was originally the kitchen to Kiddal Hall with accommodation or storage on the first floor. It now serves agricultural purposes and includes a garage. A minor amendment to the listing was made on 17 December 2020.

The farmhouse is constructed of coursed gritstone with a Welsh blue-slate and corrugated iron roof. It is L-shaped, two storeys tall, and arranged in three bays. The elevation facing the hall features a wing projecting to the right, with quoins marking the angles. Though it now lacks a chimney, it originally had a large stack.

The main range has an inserted garage door with a two-light chamfered mullioned window above. To the right are two small chamfered lights, one of which is blocked, with a two-light window above near the junction with the right-angled wing. A coped gable rises to the left. The wing has quoins, a former blocked doorway converted to a window with a two-light chamfered mullioned window above, and a small chamfered light at the apex of the coped gable with kneelers.

The rear of the main range displays an inserted doorway flanked by windows. The left window has a three-light chamfered mullioned lintel. At the right end stands a two-light chamfered mullioned window. The first floor has three two-light chamfered mullioned windows. The right-hand return of the wing features a first-floor doorway with a depressed Tudor-arched lintel and stop-chamfered surround, reached by a flight of 14 stone steps, with a small chamfered light to its left and a two-light mullioned window to its right. The gable of the main range has a small chamfered light at its apex. The left-hand return of the wing contains two doorways with Tudor-arched lintels and chamfered surrounds, with a small chamfered light set between them and a two-light chamfered mullioned window to the left. The first floor has two chamfered lights.

Internally, the main range is divided by an enormous chimney breast into sections of five and three bays. The chimney originally contained several brick beehive ovens backing onto a main fireplace with a wide lintel, now blocked. The spine beams and floor joists are stop-chamfered. The first floor reveals a roof of exceptional interest featuring raised crucks with blades tenoned to the right. Intermediate trusses are supported on the side walls with struts to the tie beam. Long purlins, some 30 feet in length, support common rafters of one piece running from ridge to wall plate. The wing's ground floor has been altered to a mistal (cattle shed). Its first floor displays a two-bay roof with angle-strut trusses of different design, the southern principal morticed into the northern principal rafter, each carrying two purlins. The two doorways in the wing possibly originally gave servants access, carrying food from the kitchen across the yard to Kiddal Hall, facing directly the central doorway in the hall's west wing leading through to the screens passage.

If this interpretation is correct, this represents a very rare and important survival of a late medieval kitchen separate from the hall. The building underwent 20th-century alteration.