Cookridge Hall With Flanking Screen Walls Gate Piers And Gates

Cookridge Hall with Flanking Screen Walls, Gate Piers and Gates

A country house with flanking screen walls, gate piers and gates, built 1754–5 for Charles Sheffield to designs by architect Mr Stox. The building retains a 17th-century rear range at basement level and incorporates a kitchen of 1748. The rear wing was extended in 1787, with probable early 19th-century additions and alterations undertaken in 1992. The house was vacant at the time of survey.

The building is constructed of stone from nearby Weardley Stone Delph, using ashlar and coursed squared gritstone, with slate hipped roofs. It is arranged in an L-plan with a rear service wing and main range facing south.

The south front presents two storeys across five bays. The central three bays break forward slightly and are topped with a pediment. The centrepiece features double doors with flanking margin lights, console brackets and entablature. Sash windows with glazing bars are fitted throughout, though most were blocked or boarded at the time of survey, with incised wedge lintels. A central Venetian window sits within a round-arched recess to the first floor. A string course runs across the first floor, with cornice and blocking course flanking the pediment. Two large square multi-flue chimney stacks rise to the rear of the ridge.

The right return displays five bays on sloping ground, rising two storeys on the left and four storeys on the right. According to stewards' accounts, the building phases are documented as follows: the first bay (main range of 1754) has a blind window to the ground floor with a sash above; the second bay (incorporating 17th-century remains and the new kitchen range of 1748 with improvements around 1820) features coursed rubble walling with recessed chamfered mullion windows to the basement built in edge-tooled ashlar, flat-face mullions to the ground and first floors, and two small windows in plain stone surrounds to the second floor; the third bay (1748 servants' quarters with a top storey added in ashlar in 1755) displays irregular fenestration with plain stone surrounds; the fourth bay (1755) has paired sashes with plain surrounds; the fifth bay (the steward's 'New House' added in 1787, with probable early 19th-century alterations) shows plain surrounds.

To the rear, a service yard is set down from the main drive, bounded by a low wall with a flight of stone steps. The rear of the main range is supported on keyed round arches, with a 17th-century-style door and mullioned windows below. The north side of the small yard is enclosed by a single-storey salting room with stone shelves and a game larder. The salting room features chamfered surrounds to panelled doors with ventilators, mullioned windows, hoodmoulds, a string course and moulded blocking course. An elaborate stepped arch forms a gateway through to the front of the 'New House' in the rear wing. The 'New House' has a central door with plain jambs and raised lintel, with plain window surrounds.

The interior of the main range retains significant period features. The entrance hall has egg-and-dart moulding to the ceiling cornice, a round arch and a step down to an inner hall now partitioned, with the stairs removed. Reeded architraves frame the doors, and a modillion ceiling cornice is present. To the front left, an elaborate architrave surrounds the doors, with panelled window reveals and a deep cornice.

Curved flanking walls screen the main façade and drive from the service range and coach-house/stables. The left wall is approximately 85 metres long and 3 metres high, built of dressed gritstone. Near its centre is a pedestrian gateway with a plain stone surround and remains of a wrought-iron finial. At the outer (west) end stands a pair of octagonal inner gate piers with shallow pointed capstones, the gates now missing. Outer piers are square with shallow pyramid capstones. Attached to the outer pier is a 1-metre railing with arrowhead finials and a short wall ramping down to the former ha-ha. The right wall screens the kitchen gardens, constructed of coursed stone backed with red brick, approximately 50 metres long with flat coping. At its outer end is a pair of gate piers with gates, the piers built of rusticated ashlar with missing capstones. The gates have bars with spearhead finials, dog-bars, and circles in the lock rail.

The 17th-century estate was owned by Thomas Kirke and was acquired by Charles Sheffield in 1722. Stewards' accounts document extensive alterations: in 1748 a new kitchen and servants' quarters were built; in 1753 preparations began for altering the hall, with James Lapish of Horsforth as master mason, Thomas Kemp as master carpenter, and Richard Carr as plasterer. The interior rooms included a drawing room, dining room and Miss Sheffield's chamber. 50,000 bricks were made on site. The ha-ha wall was built about 1760, and the screen walls were probably constructed around the same period. In 1787, the 'New House' was built for the steward, though beds were placed there when the main hall was full.

In 1820, Richard Wormald, a Leeds woollen merchant, purchased the estate and undertook further extensive alterations, including building a coach house, stable, gatehouse and gates, icehouse and heated garden wall. His work on the house probably included the replacement of the 17th-century mullioned windows and the construction of the game larder and store.