Rushton Hall School

Rushton Hall School

A great house, now a school, with perhaps an early 16th-century origin, extensively altered and enlarged in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Gables are dated 1595, 1626, 1627 and 1630. The building was altered and partly reconstructed in the 19th century, with much of the elaborate interior detail dating from the 19th or early 20th centuries.

The exterior is constructed of limestone ashlar with Collyweston stone slate roofs, coped gables and numerous stone ridge and lateral stacks. The building is two storeys with an attic, arranged on a courtyard plan of three ranges with a linking screen to the east.

The east front features a screen with a broad central entrance comprising a round-headed doorway with double studded doors. To either side are niches containing statues of warriors, divided by fluted tapering pilasters carrying a classical entablature and a Gothic-style balustrade of quatrefoils alternating with tiny trefoil-headed lights. This screen, in existence by 1741, carries a reclining figure with cornucopia and dolphin. Four bays extend to either side, divided by pilasters, each bay containing a three-light stone mullioned window. A parapet and balustrade with urns surmounts the screen. The gable ends of the wings to left and right have two-storey canted bay windows with parapet and strapwork cresting, and six-light double-stepped attic windows (six lights, then four, then two) in shaped gables with finials. Balustrades and corner finials embellish these gables. Two-storey single-bay additions to the outside of each gable have a four-light mullion-and-transom window to the ground floor and a window of two round-headed lights to the first floor, with parapet featuring blind Gothic tracery matching the central screen balustrade.

The interior of the courtyard presents varied architectural features. The south range is divided by a buttress. To the right is the great hall, lit by two four-light mullion-and-transom windows with hood-moulds and a tall bow window with castellated parapet. To the left of the buttress is a similar bow window (with some blind lights) added in the 19th century or around 1905, as dated on a rainwater head, along with 19th-century mullion-and-transom windows. The west range has been much restored in the 19th century and features a canted bay window to the right of centre and mullion-and-transom windows with hood-moulds. The buttressed north range appears to have been rebuilt following a fire in 1835 and has similar windows and two canted bays.

A string course runs below the attic storey, which has a parapet divided by pilasters decorated with strapwork, a balustrade and three gables to each range. The central west gable is shaped and contains a double-stepped mullion-and-transom window dated 1627, reflecting the gable-ends at the north and south ranges. Other gables are straight-sided, some bearing dates or carved motifs, and all have finials. Casement windows throughout feature decorative leaded glazing, incorporating some stained glass.

The south range was extended to the south between 1848 and 1852 with bow and canted bay windows. A gabled wing projects from the south end of the west front, constructed of patchy ironstone rubble with pale stone quoins and plinth, keyed for render. It has coped gables and finials with kneelers ornamented with tiny trefoils, the emblem of the Tresham family.

In the interior, the great hall features a restored hammerbeam roof. An early 17th-century-style staircase has a plaster ceiling with strapwork and a central pendant with mermaids. An oratory in the south-west wing contains a painted plaster relief panel of the Crucifixion, dated 1577. Much elaborate 17th-century-style interior detail is evident throughout.

The hall was the home of the Tresham family from 1438. It was sold in 1619 to Sir William Cockayne, in whose family it remained until 1828, when it was sold to W.W. Hope. At his death in 1854 the estate passed to Clara Thornhill (later Clarke-Thornhill). After her death in 1865 it was leased to various tenants. It is now a school for blind children.