Dean Hall

Dean Hall is a house displaying building activity from the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, with evidence of earlier work. The main fabric is stone, with a plain rendered entrance facade and ashlar windows. The left side and gable on the right are rough render, imitating wide-jointed ashlar. Brick is used in the courtyard and a back wing, while the roofs are generally tiled, with some stone slate slopes.

The house is a large, irregular square plan with a central courtyard. The main front facade is three floors high, featuring six wide, two-light windows with straight hood moulds, irregularly spaced. Mullions are present only on the top floor, while those below have both mullions and transoms. An eaves parapet tops the facade, with small gabled copings over each window containing a coat of arms. A chimney is on the left gable end, with a small finial on the right. A porch is positioned off-centre to the right, its gable mirroring that of the windows, and incorporating diagonally-set corner buttresses. The doorway is accessed by two steps, leading to a four-centred arch with a hoodmould. To the right, a set-back gable features a two-story block with a panelled door (reached by four steps with moulded treads) and a flat stone porch supported by iron brackets. A blocked window sits above the door. The left return of the front displays a single-story square bay with a cellar window below.

The long left facade is two stories high, with attics in the right-hand half, featuring a gable return at the extreme right, rendered like the front, with an ashlar base. A two-story square bay has French doors at the base and a two-light mullioned window above, topped with a crenellated parapet. Scattered mullioned or mullion and transom windows are present throughout, with timber lintels where visible; two have hood moulds, and one contains fragments of medieval glass. Behind the main facade are two gables, one with bargeboards, and one with a chimney. A lower, two-story, hipped-roofed block is attached to the left end, featuring a two-light mullioned window on the first floor.

Internally, the entrance front is comprised of three rooms. The right-hand ground floor room has fielded panelling with two dado rails, a moulded cornice, a panelled beam, and a semi-circular cupboard with a domed head. The left-hand end room retains 17th-century dust-ledge panelling and a moulded plaster cornice. A Bolection-moulded fireplace is present in the room behind the set-back gable on the right. The first floor’s two left-hand rooms have scratch moulded panelling whilst the middle room possesses ‘H’ hinges on a cupboard door. A cellar lies below the right-hand end of the block, and is older than the building above. Steps lead from the cellar to a door in the courtyard, featuring a steep segmental head carved from a single stone. A square projection into the courtyard behind the left wing contains a continuous spiral staircase with solid wood treads, surrounding a mast. The rear wing of the courtyard is brick faced on the first floor, and includes a dovecote, accessible only by ladder from the yard.

The house exhibits a complex construction history; the front section is early 17th century, rewindowed in the 18th century, and received a Jacobean-style facade after 1836. Two-story square bays at each end are likely from the 17th century (as depicted on a map in the house). This front was subsequently enlarged into the courtyard to create stairs and passages. The left-hand wing is of earlier origin. Prince Maurice reportedly used the house as his headquarters briefly during the Civil War, and two Royalist officers died within it.