Condover Hall

Condover Hall

Country house, now school. Built in 1598 for Thomas Owen, Justice of Common Pleas, on behalf of his son Roger. Walter Hancock was probably the master mason.

The house is constructed of red sandstone ashlar with yellow stone dressings. The roofs are machine tile with coped verges and prominent red brick stacks, some with attached shafts of star section, largely rebuilt in the late 19th century.

The building follows an E-plan with a shallow projecting full-height porch to the centre. It has two storeys with gabled attics. A moulded band with strapwork decoration runs across the first floor, and there is a moulded eaves cornice. Cellars are present beneath. The window arrangement is 1:3:1:3:1 bays. Mullioned and transomed windows appear throughout, with those on the ground floor having two transoms and those to the first floor and attic having one. Blind oculi flank the attic windows.

The projecting wings feature shallow two-storey seven-light canted bay windows. The central full-height entrance porch has five-light canted bay windows to the first and second floors. The shaped gable carries obelisks and strapwork achievement with a small pediment and finial to the top. The round-arched doorway has a wide low pediment supported on Doric columns, richly carved late 19th-century double doors, and the Owen coat-of-arms above, positioned below the first-floor window. Eighteenth-century lead downpipes run to the corners.

The north return has a rectangular tower with two-light mullioned and transomed windows and a partly open parapet to the centre, with prominent lateral stacks to left and right. Below the tower is a two-storey projection with four-light mullioned and transomed windows, flanked by three-light mullioned and transomed windows to left and right. Mullioned and transomed windows to the outer sides of the stacks are mostly blocked except the upper left and lower right, which are painted with imitation Gothic glazing.

The west front features five gables—three to a recessed centre and two to projecting wings. Like those on the entrance front, the wings have shallow two-storey seven-light bay windows. The centre displays a nine-bay round-arched arcade to the ground floor, probably once open (comparable to Burghley and Hatfield) but now glazed with 19th-century Gothic work. The mezzanine storey above has three-light mullion windows with wide pediments. A shallow five-light canted bay to the centre rises from the mezzanine to the gable. Mullioned and transomed windows throughout (except to the mezzanine) all have single transoms.

The south return's original design is partly obscured by additions from the late 19th century, circa 1927, and late 20th century. A 20th-century extension of a rectangular tower (originally like that on the north) projects to the centre. A small elaborately decorated porch is attached to a lateral stack to the front, probably late 19th-century work.

The interior has been much altered in the late 19th century and during the 20th century. An original stone fireplace in the room to the right of the entrance porch features coupled Ionic columns below with pillars above, three round-headed arches above the overmantel with two standing figures in the outer arches flanking the coat-of-arms of Roger Owen at the centre. A late 19th-century staircase in the room to the left of the entrance porch has four flights to landing and carved lions to the newels. Restored early 17th-century panelling survives in the centre rooms and projecting left wing, the latter decorated with rosette and other floral motifs. Some panelling is probably original to the house, though some is said to have been brought here from elsewhere.

Condover Hall is considered the finest large house of its date in the county.