Harrowby House

House. The main body of Harrowby House dates from the 13th to 17th centuries, with substantial 20th-century renovations, and an 18th-century extension. The main part of the house has a facade of ashlar limestone, while the other walls are of coursed limestone rubble. The 18th-century extension is built of squared limestone with irregularly bonded brick, and has brick at the rear. It has limestone slate roofs. A projecting chimney stack is at the rear right, with a pair of 20th-century replica stone diagonal stacks, matching a pair to the left. The main body extends to the left with a former garderobe projection in the angle. The interior plan of the main body was reconfigured in the 20th century. The house has two storeys and a cellar under the right end. It has three windows on the front, with 2- and 3-light stone, ovolo-mullioned windows and 20th-century metal casements with leaded panes, each with a stopped hood. A blocked, flat-chamfered, stone-mullioned cellar window is in the right wall. The rear has 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The extension to the left has a single window in its left gable end; a 2-light, flat-chamfered, stone mullioned window with leaded panes. The central doorway has a 20th-century unpainted, studded plank door with cover strips set in a 19th-century flat-chamfered stone surround with a stopped hood. There is a worn stone step in front of the door and an eroded stone carving of a cow in relief above the door (a detail referenced in “Under the Oaks,” Bloomfield and Son, 1978, Chapter 5 "The Story of the Cow Charity"). This doorway may have replaced an earlier similar entrance and is aligned with a 13th-century pointed arched doorway with a moulded chamfer in the rear wall. On the ground floor, the interior contains a stone inglenook fireplace with a 4-centred arched lintel and the remains of a bread oven to the right. There are deep chamfered beams. One room has a large fireplace with a wood bressumer bearing compass-drawn, incised decoration. Upstairs, one fireplace has a 4-centred arched stone surround, and remnants of original painted line decoration. Another stone fireplace has traces of curvilinear painted decoration on the lintel, above which is a blocked round-headed arch. The cow above the front door suggests an association with the Keyt family.