Wick Hall And Attached Walls

Wick Hall is a house dating from approximately 1720, originally commissioned for Mrs. Tomkins, with later 19th-century additions designed by Charles Bell for the Dockar-Drysdales family. The construction uses coursed limestone rubble with brick quoins and dressings, topped with a hipped roof covered in old tiles. Brick end stacks are present, one to the left and one to the right, the latter featuring gauged brick quoins and a cornice.

The house is built to a double-depth plan and exhibits an Early Georgian style. It is two storeys high with an attic, presenting a symmetrical five-window facade. The front entrance features a 18th-century two-panelled door with an overlight, sheltered by a finely plastered shell hood supported by console brackets. Gauged brick flat arches and a coved cornice top the late 19th/early 20th-century two-light casement windows. The right side wall retains its original wood-mullioned and transomed cross windows above a 18th-century plank door with an overlight and a well-defined pediment hood. A similar stair-light window is present on the left side wall.

Rear extensions, dating from the mid-1880s to the 1890s and also by Charles Bell, are in a “Queen Anne” style, mirroring the appearance of the original part of Wick Hall and incorporating tall sash and cross-windows with wrought-iron fittings.

The interior features stone-flag floors, panelled doors, and shutters. The hall showcases straight-cut panelling and a dog-leg staircase with a ramped handrail, closed string, panelled spandrel, and dado. A small panelled room sits to the left, containing a bolection-moulded overmantle. A keyed archway with moulded imposts and flanking panelled pilasters leads from the hall to a rear passage with straight-cut panelling and access to a cellar. A fine bolection-moulded panelled room is located to the left with a fireplace; an early 18th-century fireplace with spit racks is found in the kitchen to the right. On the first floor, the landing and rear passage display bolection-moulded and straight-cut dado panelling. Two panelled rooms, originally divided by a closet, are on the right side; the front room houses a bolection-moulded architrave, Delft tiles, and a cast-iron backplate to its fireplace. A fine bolection-panelled room is located to the rear left, while the room to the rear right features a deeply-moulded cornice. The winder stair to the attic is characterized by bolection-moulded panels and moulded newels.

A rear wing incorporates early 17th-century Flemish panelling originally from Exeter College Chapel, Oxford. This panelling features a tall dado, a three-bay screen, and a lavishly carved fireplace in an Artisan Mannerist style, depicting musical instruments. Another smaller room showcases early 14th-century door heads reset in an internal porch, along with a tester and sound board from an early 17th-century pulpit.

Attached to the house are two walls constructed from uncoursed limestone rubble with brick dog-tooth coping, extending approximately 40 meters to the left and linked by a low right-angled wall. A map from 1739, in the owner’s possession, shows the front of the house with cross windows. Wick Hall was purchased by the Dockar-Drysdales in 1850.