Dacre Hall

Dacre Hall is a church hall, originally the west range of cloisters of Lanercost Priory. The core of the building dates to the early 13th century, with significant alterations made in 1559 for Sir Thomas Dacre and further changes in the early 19th century. The external fabric is a mix of red and calciferous squared and coursed sandstone rubble, largely sourced from the nearby Roman Wall, covered by a graduated green slate roof and featuring a stone chimney stack.

The building is a long, five-bay range, with an upper floor dining hall that dates to the 16th century. The scriptorium on the left side has a slype entrance leading to the cloisters, a tall lancet window, a dentilled cornice, and a gabled roof.

Internally, the upper floor dining hall has a moulded 16th-century plaster frieze depicting mermaids and scallop shells, a design shared with a frieze in the Vicar's Tower. The central lower floor has undergone considerable alteration. It incorporates two two-light stone-mullioned windows and a 20th-century garage entrance to the right. To the extreme right, an undercroft contains early 13th-century stone rib-vaulting. The upper floor entrance has been blocked, with a mid-16th century chamfered surround to a flat-arched entrance on the right, accessed by a 19th-century external stone staircase. The upper floor includes three- and four-light stone-mullioned windows with 19th-century restoration. A mid-16th-century two-bay projection to the extreme right features three-light stone-mullioned windows with a continuous hood mould.

The interior of the dining hall contains a five-bay kingpost timber roof. Traces remain of a mid-16th-century mural depicting a heraldic device with vine leaf decorative borders. A 16th-century moulded stone fireplace, originally featuring a carved oak chimneypiece from 1618 (now in the Bowes Museum), is set within the thickness of the west wall, with a blocked spice cupboard to its right. A stone fireplace in the east wall is dated 1586 and bears the initials of Christopher Dacre. The remains of a mid-16th-century minstrels' gallery are behind the present stage.

Following the Dissolution, Sir Thomas Dacre purchased the Prior's tower, Dacre Hall, and the Outer Court. His alterations transformed the complex into a private house, a timeline indicated by fragments of a stained glass window now located in the nearby parish church. The Hall remained in the Dacre family until the early 18th century, occupied by John Hetherington, who died in 1745. In the 19th century, it was purchased by the Earl of Carlisle and converted into a church hall in the 20th century.