Gartage Hall

Gartage Hall is a farmhouse, later a house, dating from the mid to late 17th century, with substantial remodelling and extensions in the late 19th or early 20th century. The original structure is timber-framed with rendered panels, set on a plinth of squared stone. In the late 19th century, the framing was exposed for visual appeal, replacing the original render. The building has a steeply pitched slate roof with lead rolls to hips and ridge, and boxed eaves, supported by widely spaced timber brackets along the front. A central brick stack stands axially. Rear extensions, mostly rendered with hipped and gabled tiled roofs, add to the building’s footprint. A late 19th-century timber-framed entrance porch, constructed from old timbers with a shallow hipped slate roof, has been added to the front.

The original house consisted of two rooms arranged around a central lobby. This lobby is accessed from the added porch and leads to a cross passage on the left side of the axial stack. Later rear extensions may incorporate earlier service rooms.

The main block's front and sides are box-framed, featuring sill, first-floor, and top plates, along with straight tension braces to the corner posts on both floors and closely set studs. The front elevation is nearly symmetrical. The two-storey framed porch is centrally positioned with an upper floor originally supported by round timber posts. The ground floor sides of the porch were later filled in with leadlight windows, and the front features an entrance doorway with an ovolo-moulded frame and leaded sidelights. Boards applied to the first-floor bressumers of the porch, and to the bases of the first-floor corner posts, are carved with scroll relief. On the first floor of the porch, each side has a two-light, diamond-leaded casement. To the right of the porch at ground level is a late 19th or early 20th-century bay window, and to the left, an 18th-century, three-light, rectangular leaded, wrought-iron casement. Similar three-light casements are on the first floor to the sides of the porch. Ground-floor bay windows are present in the end walls, and first-floor, three-light, rectangular leaded, wrought-iron casements are found on the first floor of each end wall.

Internally, the house was largely refitted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but retains 17th-century features. The porch contains reused carved panels from the early 17th century, and a staircase with twisted balusters leads to a landing in the upper level of the porch. In the left-hand room, likely the original parlour, the ceiling has deeply chamfered beams with hollow step stops. The right-hand room, probably the hall-kitchen, has ceiling beams with straight cut stops, a large fireplace with chamfered stone jambs, and a chamfered timber lintel. Gartage Hall is a notable example of the final phase of the timber-framed tradition in the Vale, and exemplifies the centralized lobby-entry plan type.