Cleasby Hall

Cleasby Hall is a manor house, likely dating from the 15th century, with substantial alterations and additions in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. It is constructed of roughcast rubble with a pantile roof. The building has an irregular plan, originally open, with a probable addition to the west and further additions over time. Originally two storeys, parts of the west and south sides were formerly three storeys. The windows have 20th-century frames, but most retain exposed or hidden mullioned window surrounds.

The west front, formerly an internal wall, features a 20th-century six-panel door set within reset 16th-century moulded jambs and large rounded corbels that carry the lintel. It is flanked by sixteen-pane sash windows. The first floor is offset, with the wall decreasing in thickness, and has two unequally hung, twelve-pane sash windows. Above, the gable-end of the hall range contains a two-light, double-chamfered window with a replaced mullion.

The south front has projecting side wings. The left wing formerly featured a very large multi-light mullion-and-transom window. Now it has a three-light chamfered mullion window on the ground floor, a sixteen-pane sash window above, and a coped gable with an external stack to the right return. The centre range, from left to right on the ground floor, has paired sash windows with glazing bars, and a sixteen-pane sash window. The first floor features a three-light double-chamfered mullion window and an eight-pane sash window. A large central ridge stack is present. The right wing has sixteen-pane sash windows on both ground and first floors, and a two-light double-chamfered mullion window in a coped gable above; both floors of the left return have a blocked two-light double-chamfered mullion window.

The east front has a blind left end, formerly with a very large external stack removed below the eaves. To the right of this are two sixteen-pane sash windows on each floor, a 20th-century six-panel door in a rusticated, quoined surround below a nine-pane unequally hung sash window, and a further sixteen-pane sash window on each floor. Stone slates are visible at the eaves, and there is ashlar coping.

The interior of the south-east room features a very large 17th-century fireplace with chamfered jambs and a segmental arch of even voussoirs with masons' marks and a scar from a spit; the arch is likely a replacement. The doors are made of six fielded panels, with fielded-panel shutters. A chamfered, pointed-arched doorway in the east wall of the central hall has been rebated for a door opening eastwards, and it was probably moved from a similar position in the present external east wall, as the fireplace above has been damaged to accommodate the arch's head, and matching base stones survive in the east wall. In the ground-floor south-west room, a 16th or 17th-century Tudor-arched ashlar fireplace has been brought down from a second-floor location. Finally, a large rounded corbel survives in situ in the east side of the present west wall and was probably formerly on the outside of the building further west. Despite significant alteration, Cleasby Hall is one of the oldest houses in the area.