Hall Farmhouse

HALL FARMHOUSE, KINGS CLIFFE

This is a farmhouse, now residential, originating as a late medieval hall house and subsequently developed as a courtyard plan with attached barn, stables, flat and outbuildings to the south. The building is constructed of squared coursed limestone with ashlar dressings and a roof of limestone ashlar and Collyweston slate. A datestone records 1603. The structure evolved through the late 18th century and early and late 19th centuries.

The house is two storeys. The entrance front to Hall Yard is an irregular range of four windows. Two tall 6-panel unhorned sash windows to the left, with ashlar surrounds and stone lintels featuring keyblocks, serve the music room. Two 8-paned unhorned sash windows to the first floor left have similar surrounds set under the eaves. A similar ground floor window to the far left has a gauged stone head. A 6-panelled door is positioned left of centre, with a moulded stone surround and 4-centred arch-head; the date "Anno 1603" is inscribed above. The elevation features ashlar gable parapets and ashlar ridge and end stacks.

The elevation to the left of the entrance front has a central 6-panelled door with a plain stone surround, flanked by sash and casement windows under wood lintels, and a leaded cross window to the first floor left, with a gable to the right.

The garden front to the rear is ashlar with a 2-window range of 8-paned sash windows at first floor, each with moulded stone surrounds and keyblocks. At ground floor are two late 19th-century canted stone bay windows. A bay attached to the left is 17th-century with a 4-light stone mullion window at ground and first floor levels.

The courtyard elevation to the rear of the entrance front contains three tall window openings, now blocked. The elevation to the right has a central 4-panelled door, a leaded cross window to the right, and two sash windows, one serving as a stair window. The courtyard elevation to the rear of the garden front displays a 2-light stone mullion window, a central projection with a leaded casement, and a lean-to projection attached to the left. A single-storey ashlar quadrant with a circular window stands to the left at the intersection of the ranges.

The interior contains a dining room to the left of the entrance, occupying part of the medieval hall. This room retains a mid-17th-century fireplace with an eared architrave, scroll decoration at the sides, a plain central panel, and a moulded frieze and cornice, together with a horizontal wainscote dado. An early 19th-century doorcase with reeded pilasters, to the right of the fireplace, leads to the staircase hall. The staircase itself is early 19th-century with stick balustrades. 19th-century panelling incorporates fragments of 18th-century fielded panelling.

The music room, at mezzanine level to the right of the entrance, was created in the late 18th century. It features a deeply coved ceiling decorated with plaster swags and intersecting circles within a guilloche border. The moulded wood fireplace surround contains an oval central scene.

The roof structure of the former open hall retains the upper sections of two smoke-blackened trusses with collars extending beyond the principals to support the purlins. The hall was subdivided in the early 17th century and a stack was inserted at that time.

The house was occupied from 1744 to 1761 by William Law, the 18th-century divine. During this period, Hester Gibbon and Elizabeth Hucheson also lived at the house, where they sought to establish a household based on Law's book published in 1728, "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life". On Hester Gibbon's death in 1790, the house reverted to the Law family, who remodelled the entrance front around that time. The house remained in the Law family until the late 19th century.