Moreton Hall And Attached Walls To Left And Right

Moreton Hall and Attached Walls to Left and Right

A manor house, latterly a farmhouse and now a school, located in Weston Rhyn. The main building dates from the early 17th century, extended in the early to mid-19th century with further later additions and alterations.

The main hall is constructed of red brick in English Garden Wall bond with sandstone ashlar dressings and alternating angle quoins. It has a hipped plain tile roof and displays a moulded string course and wooden sprocketed eaves cornice. The building is arranged on an H-plan with a 3-bay hall range and 2-bay cross-wings to the left and right. It comprises 2 storeys and an attic.

The facade is organized as 2:3:2 bays. Windows are stone mullioned and transomed, though some were renewed in the 19th century. The centre window on the first floor was infilled, with a 19th-century transomed window inserted in its place. Cellars beneath the cross-wings are lit by 2 small mullion windows to each wing, now partly blocked. The building has a chamfered plinth.

The central entrance features a moulded stone door surround with a restored cambered arch. The door itself is a nail-studded plank, appearing to be 20th-century work but fitted with 17th-century fleur-de-lys pointed strap hinges.

The external stacks vary in condition. The stack to the right cross-wing has its top and diagonal twin shafts rebuilt in 20th-century purple brick. To the left, a 2-light mullion window has been infilled. The left cross-wing has similar stacks with original shafts serving small gabled projections.

A twin-gabled range occupies the rear angle between the cross-wings. The left gable contains a 19th-century stone mullioned and transomed window to the first floor, while the right has a 4-light mullion window to the first floor and a sash window with thick glazing bars to the ground floor. A large stack behind the back wall of the hall range displays three 20th-century diagonal shafts.

A range extends to the left of the left cross-wing. Its right bay below eaves level shows late 17th-century red brick, but the remainder, including the 3 crow-step gables above a toothed eaves cornice, appears to be 19th-century work. The range features three 19th-century wooden mullioned and transomed windows to each floor, and the tile roof includes a brick ridge stack with 3 attached and rebated shafts to the right of centre.

Prominent 19th and 20th-century additions to the rear and right of the right cross-wing are not of special architectural interest.

Two curved boundary walls are attached to the hall. The wall to the left, probably of late 17th or early 18th-century date, is constructed of red brick with sandstone coping ramped down in 3 sections, following a curve for approximately 60 metres. A similar wall is attached to the front right corner of the right cross-wing, also following a curve for approximately 60 metres. Each stretch of wall includes a narrow segmental-headed arch.

The interior is notably rich in period features. The entrance hall preserves early 17th-century square oak panelling and a bench with turned balusters along the front and right walls. Two panelled doors flank a 19th-century fireplace in the back wall, with 2 boxed-in cross beams above.

The room to the left of the entrance is also panelled, though the panelling is either 19th-century or brought in from elsewhere. It contains 2 chamfered cross beams with stepped stops and later decoration to the underside, plus a moulded cornice. A richly carved overmantel featuring naked human figures in 17th-century style—possibly a 19th-century imitation—decorates the left wall. A similar fireplace overmantel appears in the room to the right of the entrance hall.

An 18th-century stone staircase with stick balusters and a wreathed handrail with turned baluster is situated in the passage to the left of the entrance hall. The main staircase, located in the rear right gable of the hall range, is of mid-17th-century date and dog-leg type, featuring openwork splat balusters with strap-work decoration to the closed string. The newel-posts are carved with pointed finials. The handrail is moulded, and carved pendants decorate the underside. Nineteenth-century stained glass fills the mullioned and transomed window on the staircase.

First-floor rooms feature wide boarded oak floorboards and chamfered ceiling beams with straight-cut stops. An infilled mullion window opens from the original rear gable of the right cross-wing.

The roof structure consists of a collar and tie beam roof in 3 short bays to the main range and in 3 bays to the cross-wings, with a half bay to the front forming the hip of the hipped roofs.