New Hall

House. Dating to the late 15th century, New Hall began as an open hall house situated on a moated site. In the 17th century, it was extensively altered and converted into a house designed to accommodate two households. The building is timber-framed with roughcast rendering and some brickwork, covered by steep roofs of old red tiles. The house faces north with several gabled rear projections arranged around an E-plan.

The central portion contains the former open hall, which exhibits some sooting from past use. There is a jettied western crosswing originally used as a parlour, and a service bay. The 17th-century conversion involved an unusual division into two separate dwellings. An upper floor was inserted into the hall, and the hall’s height was increased, with a chimney stack constructed partly within the cross passage. The present wide fireplaces and chimney shafts are likely late 17th century, replacing an earlier timber chimney that served the hall. The left-hand unit’s entrance is located in a lobby beside the stack. The service bay of the second unit was heightened, its upper floor raised, and a jettied eastern crosswing was added, comprising two ground-floor rooms: the front room unheated and the rear room containing a wide kitchen fireplace. This unit's entrance is through the present cross passage behind the stack. Originally, there were two separate front doors positioned side by side, and similarly placed staircases within each unit.

The house is two storeys high, with five windows across the front. A central set of double doors, featuring round-arched panelling, is sheltered by a two-storey porch with scratch-moulded panelling and seating inside. The upper room of the porch has a casement window and a bargeboarded gable, supported on timber posts. Flanking the porch are bays containing two triple-casement windows each (one above, one below), set within flush moulded frames with pointed ‘Gothic’ arches and small hoods. The end bays are slightly projecting crosswings, with steep gables, bargeboards, and finials. The right-hand wing retains its jettied upper floor, supported by brackets, along with a small canted bay window below. The left-hand wing has a rectangular triple casement on the ground floor. Both end wings have a triple casement on the upper floor, with ‘Gothic’ fenestration, each framed by a triangular pediment. A central chimney stack features clustered diagonal shafts. A painted brick wing on the rear left is dated 1866.

The interior includes extensive scratch-moulded oak panelling, a heavy late 17th-century staircase with a string and turned balusters (in the western part), a marble buffet in the rear wall, and a heavy crown-post roof over the western crosswing.