Aylestone Hall

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 07/12/2012

SK 50 SE 17/156 23.2.55 5304

AYLESTONE Aylestone Hall

II*

Mediaeval with later alterations of all periods, the external appearance, with all the windows, being largely C19. Two storeys grey roughcast, windows generally painted wood mullion and transom. The house consists of a centre with two wings all in one place, the divisions being marked by changes in roof shape. At the left hand is a hipped slate roof portion, the central portion a tall slate roof, then to the right a continuation of the same roof but to a lesser height. To the left of the centre part is a two-storey gabled porch of Jacobean type, but possibly of C19 date, the ground floor having a four-centred archway giving access to a simple C18 door. Large chimney stacks, roughcast, but apparently old with grouped hexagonal shafts rising from massive bases. Rear has two projecting wings, the right hand gabled, the left with a hipped roof. Door to right hand with open pediment and round arched fanlight with Gothic tracery. The outside has a rainwater head with initials of the Manners family F.J.M. 1768. Interior almost certainly had a central great hall open to the roof with solar and kitchen wings the porch opening into a screens passage. In the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries a floor was inserted probably retaining the ground floor as a great hall, and later further partitions and other features were inserted. The northern ground floor room is lined with early mid. C17 oak panelling; inserted C19 mantelpiece, The new stairs have reused C17 splat balusters. Upstairs certain of the rooms have beamed ceilings with a chamfered tie-beams supporting Queen posts etc. There are no features visible which can certainly be described as mediaeval, but the proportion and general shape and form of the structure indicate that period. The house is supposed to have been where Prince Charles Stuart (Charles II) lodged during the Battle of Leicester. The south wing has an exposed stud partion on the upper floor with arched braces supporting the tie beam, and the partly exposed roof structue also has arched braces to the purlins. This suggests that this southern wing was the earliest section of the building, probably early C16, which was probably the original hall, which was converted into the solar wing when the larger central hall was added.

Listing NGR: SK5743101132