Longford Hall And Attached Garden Wall

Longford Hall and Attached Garden Wall

A country house built in the late 16th century for the de Longford family and altered in the early 18th century by the Coke family, who inherited around 1620. The house was severely damaged by fire in 1942 and underwent restoration from approximately 1960 onwards.

The building is constructed of red brick with stone and gauged brick dressings, stone quoins, and a brick plinth with stone copings. The first and second floors feature plain stone bands, and there is a moulded stone eaves cornice. Balustraded parapets with plain stone piers are topped by ball finials and urns at the corners, behind which the roof is hidden after being rebuilt at third storey level following the fire.

Originally built in an H-plan, the western half of the north range has since been demolished. The south front is 15 bays wide and rises three storeys, though the top storey is now only a façade. Four large external 16th-century quoined brick chimney stacks, topped by octagonal brick pots with stone bands and cornices, punctuate the south elevation. The south front is divided into five groups of three windows, separated by these four stacks. The ground floor contains two groups of three glazing bar sashes with a stack between them to the west, and single glazing bar sashes flanking a glazed door in the two eastern groups; the central group has two glazing bar sashes to the west and a similar glazed door to the east. All these openings are set within flush stone surrounds that preserve the original mullioned and transomed window frames. The first floor above contains 15 glazing bar sashes. The second floor has 15 blocked early 18th-century windows with gauged brick, flat arches, and double stone keystones. Immediately above these is a triglyphed frieze with decorative circles flanked by flowers on the fronts of the stacks and at the centre of the façade.

The west gable wall of the south range features a two-storey balustraded 19th-century bay window with 3-light cross windows to the south and a moulded doorcase, possibly with an original open scrolled pediment, to the north. Above this, on the north side, is a 2-light recessed cross window with a relieving arch over it, and above again are two 2-light recessed mullion windows, now blocked.

The east facades of both the north and south ranges have three bays of glazing bar sashes with blocked windows above, similar to the south facade. A central single-storey wing has been almost completely rebuilt and features three central advanced bays with quoined pilaster strips, flanked by single bays. Each flanking bay has a tripartite glazing bar sash in a quoined surround, whilst the central, narrower bay contains only a single glazing bar sash. A balustraded parapet with stone piers topped by ball finials surmounts this section. The central bay originally featured a stone porch, which has been removed to the rear of the south range. The porch itself has a quoined doorcase with pilaster strips to the sides, over which is a moulded cornice and scrolled pedimented parapet with an ostrich carved in a laurel leaf circle at the centre, flanked by pilasters.

The side facades of the north range are much altered, and the interior is a gutted shell. All fenestration consists of glazing bar sashes. Attached to the north-east corner is a high 18th-century brick garden wall with flat stone copings and large semi-circular headed niches to the east side.

The interior of the house was completely rebuilt after the fire, with the exception of 16th-century panelling in the dining room, which retains its original strapwork frieze to the top.