Moseley Old Hall And Attached Garden Walls, Gatepiers And Gate

Moseley Old Hall and attached garden walls, gatepiers and gate

A house with attached garden walls, gatepiers and gate, located on the north-west side of Moseley Old Hall Lane in Featherstone.

The building has a late 16th-century timber-framed core that was encased in brown brick with blue brick dressings around 1870. The roof is plain tile, with brick chimney stacks featuring star-shaped shafts. The house follows an H-plan with a hall range aligned north-south facing east, a projecting porch, a parlour wing to the south, and a service wing to the north, with a minor extension to the north-east corner of the north wing. It rises two storeys with an attic. The irregular multi-gabled front of six windows includes a two-storey extension bay to the right. The windows are casements with segmental heads and sill bands. A full-height porch projects towards the right-hand end of the slightly recessed hall range, featuring a 4-centred outer arch with a 3-centred arch door inside. Brick walls enclose a front garden with pairs of square gatepiers at the centre of three sides; those to the south and east have 17th-century stone caps.

Interior features include a large open fireplace in the south-east corner of the entrance hall and an open-well staircase of around 1700 to the west, with crossed string, panelled newels, turned balusters, a ramped handrail and oak dado with bolection-moulded panels. The parlour on the ground floor of the south wing retains early 17th-century wall panelling with a simple patterned frieze and a spine beam with wide chamfers.

The King's Room on the first floor of the service wing displays exposed timber framing, low oak wall panelling and a bolection-moulded wooden fireplace surround. In the north-east corner, a camouflaged plaster door opens to an original oak door with an ogee arch, concealing a cupboard in the space between the chimney stack and the north wall. Beneath the floorboards of this cupboard lies a hiding place believed to have sheltered King Charles II after his defeat at Worcester in 1651.

Whitgreave's Room, above the hall range, displays exposed square-panel timber framing on one wall, while two walls are covered in early 17th-century oak panelling incorporating cupboard doors on either side of the fireplace. The intersecting cross and spine beams have wide chamfers. A door in the west wall opens to a small room within the porch, formerly used by Thomas Whitgreave as a study.

A chapel occupies the attic of the parlour wing, featuring plastered walls with trompe l'oeil decorative panelling and a vaulted, painted plaster ceiling. The other attics contain considerable exposed 16th-century timber framing. The house contains several 16th- and 17th-century panelled doors throughout.

Henry Pitt purchased the estate in 1583 and was almost certainly the builder of Moseley Old Hall, as the house was referred to as 'Mr Pitt's new Hall at Moseley' in 1600. His daughter Alice inherited the house upon his death in 1602 and subsequently married Thomas Whitgreave. Alice and her son Thomas provided sanctuary to King Charles II following his defeat at Worcester; he arrived from Boscobel House in the early morning of 8 September 1651 and departed for France on the night of 9 September. The house is owned by The National Trust.