Ashby Hall

Ashby Hall is a country house, now a country club, with significant alterations dating from the early and late 16th century, the early and late 18th century, the late 19th century, and the 20th century. It is constructed of coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and has a fishscale tile roof with coped gables, kneelers, finials, and a pierced quatrefoil parapet. There are multiple moulded ashlar stacks, including a large external stack to the northwest.

The house is arranged around a U-shaped plan, with the central courtyard now filled by a 20th-century single-story kitchen. The north front has six irregular bays, and a projecting two-story gabled porch with a moulded four-centered arched doorway and double doors. Above the doorway is a four-light oriel window topped with a quatrefoil parapet and battlements, and above that, a single light window. West-facing bays have two blocked two-light mullion windows and two unblocked similar windows above, with a capped external stack with set-offs in between. To the east is a five-light cross-mullion French window, followed by a four-light cross-mullion cambered bay window with strapwork gables. Above are three two-light mullion windows; above the central one is a small gable with a single light casement. The east gable wall has a large, late 18th-century semicircular bow window with three glazing-bar sashes to each floor, topped with a cornice and a plain parapet. A large 20th-century white brick extension obscures much of the east front.

The west front, built in an E-plan style during the late 19th century, features a central two-story gabled porch with a re-sited late 16th-century finely moulded round arched doorway flanked by fluted Roman Doric columns and an entablature surmounted by a re-cut pediment containing the coat of arms of Edward King and the date 1595, with crocketed finials. Above is a 19th-century ornately carved three-light oriel window with carved animal heads on the hood, and a small pointed arched niche in the gable. Two two-light mullion windows flank the porch, with two similar windows above, and a single light window in a small central gable above those. Projecting side wings each have two-story four-light cambered bay windows topped with a quatrefoil parapet and battlements, and small single-light windows above.

On the inner court wall of the west wing is a finely moulded, early 16th-century four-centered arched doorway at first-floor level. Internally, there is a fine early 16th-century moulded four-centered arched doorway, various early 18th-century moulded round arches, an ashlar, bolection-moulded fireplace, and a single moulded plaster ceiling.