Hall And Chapel

The Hall and Chapel at Exton Park is a Grade II listed building, constructed in stages around an earlier core, beginning in 1811 and primarily completed between 1850 and 1851 by John Linnell Bond in a Jacobethan style that reflects the design of the old hall. The chapel was added in 1868 by Charles Alban Buckler following the conversion of the 8th Earl of Gainsborough to Roman Catholicism. It is built of coursed rubble with quoins and string courses, and has a stone tiled roof throughout.

The building features two storeys with attics and presents an asymmetrical south front, which includes octagonal turrets capped with ogee roofs at the outer angles, two full-height squared bay windows set in shaped gables, and various tall mullion and transom windows. To the right, there are three bays with tall sash windows and a projecting porch with a 4-centred arch, featuring glazed double entrance doors and a 12-light mullion and transomed window with a cambered head above the porch. A continuous eaves parapet, a detail borrowed from the old hall, runs along the front.

Attached to the right of the house is the chapel, designed in a 13th-century style. It has two paired and foiled lights in the nave, which ends in an apse with a decorated eaves cornice. The south side of the chapel is quite plain, while the north side features a large projecting porch and an adjoining vestry beneath a gable that contains a rose window and culminates in a bell turret, which is more decorative.

The west front of the house is designed in a different style, featuring triple-light sash windows on the ground floor and Venetian windows above. A curved two-storey flanking wall connects this section to a larger advanced section to the west, which runs north-south and is also in Jacobethan style, complete with gables and a large octagonal turret decorated with a lozenge motif taken from the old hall. The building is adorned with ornamental parapets and gable finials.

The rear of the hall reveals the piecemeal nature of its construction, showcasing a three-gabled range belonging to an earlier building, which has a coped gable and flat stone lintels over casement windows. This is partially concealed by a brick-built link to a four-gabled range to the right, which features gothick lattice-work in its windows.