Shandy Hall

Shandy Hall is a Grade I listed building on the north side of Coxwold village street. It is a medieval hall house, probably originally built for a priest around 1450, which was subsequently altered and enlarged when it became a rectory and farmhouse.

The building has a timber-framed core that was refaced in brick in the late 17th or early 18th century. It comprises a central hall of one-and-a-half storeys with added rear outshut, flanked by two-storey cross wings dating to the 15th century. The roof is covered with graduated stone slate to the front and stone slates to the rear.

The front elevation of the hall features, on the right, a part-glazed door to the screens passage with a commemorative inscription above. To the left is a ground-floor 16-pane sash window in a header-brick segmental-arched opening, with a first-floor 12-pane unequally-hung sash window above. The right cross-wing has a ground-floor 16-pane sash window and first-floor sash windows with glazing bars and 16-pane lights, all within header-brick segmental-arched openings. The left cross-wing has 16-pane sash windows on each floor in similar openings. Further to the left, a screen wall masks the reversed lean-to roof of an extension added by Laurence Sterne in 1767. The rear elevation displays gables flanking the outshut with side-sliding sash windows, two gables to the left and one to the right forming a stair turret.

The left return (Sterne extension) is constructed in irregular-bond brick with windows having header-brick segmental-arched openings. The ground floor contains a 16-pane sash window, a round-arched recessed part-glazed door, a round-arched shell niche, and another 16-pane sash window. The first floor has two side-sliding sash windows of different sizes with a central stack rising from the parapet. To the left is a 20th-century arcaded loggia that replaced 19th-century coal sheds.

The right return features a small external stack of largely brick construction, with a tall leaning superstructure serving the Study and Eliza's Room. A very large external stepped stone stack serves the kitchen, with a brick top and a side-sliding sash window within it. An early bread oven is extended onto it to the right.

The screens passage contains doors of two fielded panels, some with original door furniture. Near the front door is a 17th-century oak staircase with splat balusters. To the front right lies Sterne's Study, which contains an inserted Carron cast-iron fireplace grate in an eared surround. To the rear right is the kitchen, which features a 18th-century corner cupboard with plate rack and shelf. The external fireplace has a moulded bressummer and jowelled post with an inserted late 18th to early 19th-century ashlar surround with rounded inner corners to the lintel, containing a cast-iron range with crane. To its right is a later bread oven with a cast-iron door bearing the coat of arms of William IV by J Walker of York. In the left reveal of the large fireplace opening are a salt box and the outline of an earlier bread oven.

To the left of the screens passage is the Dining Room, featuring 17th-century painted oak panelling with a wooden cornice and an inserted 18th-century hob grate in the fireplace, later than the timber-frame. The door has four fielded panels with H-hinges. The room contains stop-chamfered beams. In the rear wall, visible from the modern kitchen in the outshut, is a 15th-century oak four-light mullion window with two lath panels above, relating to the hall before a floor was inserted.

Off the rear of the Dining Room is an early 18th-century pine splat baluster staircase in a turret. To the left is the Parlour with stop-chamfered beams of inferior quality to those in the Dining Room. It retains a fragment of Elizabethan panelling with frieze, 17th-century panelling, and behind this on the inner wall, mid-15th-century painted wall plaster showing vine foliage and the Sacred Monogram. An 18th-century shell niche, largely renewed in the 20th century, occupies a corner near a door of six fielded panels unusually disposed. Off the Parlour is an annexe added by Sterne and a side entrance hall providing access down to a wine cellar with twin barrel vaults.

On the first floor, Sterne's Bedroom above the Parlour has behind restored panelling on the inner wall an early 16th-century painting of a man in Tudor costume with a halberd, along with other fragments of stencil decoration. A Carron cast-iron grate in an 18th-century fire surround with acanthus motif on the mantel is accompanied by painted fielded panelling and an oak door. Above Sterne's Study lies Eliza's Room, fitted out by Sterne for Eliza Draper in 1767, with fielded panelling below a dado of ovolo section with an ornament rack above. It contains a cast-iron fireplace in a surround with Greek key motif and retains original floorboards. A nearby dressing room to the rear has 18th-century pine clothes hooks.

The building underwent alterations in the 17th century with an inserted floor, and further alterations and additions in 1767 when Laurence Sterne, the perpetual curate of Coxwold, enlarged it. It was restored in the mid-1960s.

Laurence Sterne lived at Shandy Hall between 1760 and 1768 as perpetual curate of Coxwold, and it was in this house that he wrote his most famous novel, Tristram Shandy.