Hackness Hall and railings attached to terrace on garden front

Hackness Hall and railings attached to terrace on garden front

Country house built 1791–96, with extension wings and new entrance added in 1810. The building was gutted by fire in 1910 and subsequently restored by Walter Brierley. Designed by Colvin or Peter Atkinson senior, built for Sir Richard Van den Bempde-Johnstone. Constructed in sandstone ashlar with slate roofs.

The entrance front presents a two-storey, seven-bay elevation. The three centre bays are pedimented and project forward, with a single-storey projecting porch beneath. The porch is flanked by fluted Doric columns in antis enriched with rosettes, framing double doors of raised and fielded panelling. The overdoor panel is carved with an oak leaf garland and the winged spur crest of the Johnstone family, repeated on the porch pediment. Above, a tripartite sash window to the first floor centre features Ionic columns, carved swag frieze, and a segmental pediment. Twelve-pane sashes light the remaining ground and first floor windows, set in raised architraves with modillion cornices; ground-floor window friezes are pulvinated. A ground-floor sill band runs across the front, with a raised band featuring guilloche moulding at first-floor level beneath blind balustrades to each window. Dentilled eaves sit beneath a modillion cornice. A balustraded parapet obscures the shallow hipped roof. The pediment contains a raised oval panel surrounded by oak fronds and surmounted by an owl, inscribed "Peace be within these walls 1796".

A lower two-storey L-shaped wing extends to the left of the entrance front.

The garden front is two storeys with seven bays, accompanied by a lower two-storey, seven-bay extension wing to the right. The three centre bays project forward to form a pedimented tetrastyle centrepiece with fluted and enriched Ionic pilasters of the giant order. The tympanum displays an escutcheon in high relief surmounted by a winged spur between oak fronds. A glazed door to the centre is sheltered beneath a pedimented doorhood on incised consoles. Twelve-pane sashes throughout match those on the entrance front, with identical surrounds and detailing. Chimney stacks rise at the right end and to the right and left of the centre.

The extension wing repeats the arrangement of the main garden front on a smaller and plainer scale. A central part-glazed door features raised and fielded lower panels with fluted borders, above which a circular panel containing a winged spur is set in the pediment tympanum. The wing has a shallow hipped roof.

The west front is two storeys with three bays, the centre bay forming a full-height, three-window canted bay. Twelve-pane sashes flank the bay window in Venetian surrounds: Doric order to the ground floor and Ionic with segmental pediments to the first floor. The bay window itself contains twelve-pane sashes in surrounds matching those on the entrance and garden fronts, with other details similarly repeated.

The terrace railings comprise alternate cast-iron panels of anthemion mouldings and twisted balusters, with a Greek key band at the bottom and Vitruvian scroll at the top.

Interior features include an octagonal room to the left of the staircase hall, which contains an 18th-century Ionic fireplace with fluted attached columns and entablature. The fireplace frieze displays rinceau mouldings flanking a raised panel carved with putti. Two round-arched rectangular recesses with guilloche moulding bands survived the 1910 fire. Walter Brierley's restoration work included detailed reconstruction of the drawing room, a cantilevered staircase with fine wrought-iron balustrade, and a fireplace in the new dining room incorporating a panel carved with oak fronds.