Durham House

DURHAM HOUSE

House, now shops and offices, on the east side of Northallerton High Street. Built around 1754 by John Carr of York for Mr D Mitford.

The front elevation is faced in ashlar sandstone, with the sides and rear built in brown brick laid in English garden wall bond with some ashlar dressings. The roof is Westmorland slate. The building is three storeys with five bays across the front.

The High Street elevation features a central part-glazed door of 20th-century date in an architrave that is stepped at its base, with a swept outer architrave. Above the door is a tripartite keystone and pediment supported on consoles. Flanking this are 20th-century plate glass shop windows sitting on a plinth and below the main cornice. The first and second floor windows appear to retain their original glazing, bars and crown glass. The first floor has sash windows with glazing bars set in architraves with pulvinated friezes and cornices, with a continuous sill band. The second floor windows are 6-pane sashes in architraves. A modillion cornice runs across the facade, below a hipped roof with corniced end stacks.

The side and rear elevations display special bricks forming flat arches to openings, which are characteristic of Carr's brick work. These arches have ashlar keystones. The rear features sash windows with glazing bars and ashlar keystones to the flat arches. Both sides have flush ashlar quoins at their front ends. The left return includes a round-arched landing window with thick glazing bars, radial at the top. The right return has pilaster buttresses forming chimney stacks and a ground-floor tripartite opening of a door flanked by windows, now converted to three blocked windows with a cornice supported on consoles.

Internally, the first floor contains a landing that originally crossed laterally between two staircases. The left staircase, which served only from ground to first floor, has been removed, though the shouldered internal architrave of the top of its landing window survives. The staircase itself is now destroyed. The lesser staircase at the right end survives from first to second floors in a dog-leg plan, with turned balusters incorporating a column on a small vase. The landing features very fine doorways with 6-fielded-panel doors, panelled door reveals, and deep architraves with pulvinated friezes and cornices. The doorcase to the back stairs has a flat frieze with scrolled ends to distinguish it from the others. The landing ceiling has a dentil and egg-and-dart cornice.

The saloon occupies the three front bays on the left of the first floor. It has a panelled dado with chair rail and a ceiling cornice with acanthus and egg-and-dart motifs. The windows feature ovolo moulding on the thick glazing bars, fielded-panel shutters, and architraves with acanthus and bead-and-reel motifs. The door architrave has an acanthus motif. The smaller front room to the right has a plainer cornice and no architraves.

The name of the house commemorates Northallerton's link with the Bishopric of Durham. Northallerton was a Peculiar of Durham, and the Bishop's Palace here served as the Bishop's southernmost residence. The lands the Bishop held in Northallerton were sold more than a century before this house was constructed. The Peculiar was abolished in 1837.

Originally, the ground-floor front elevation had sash windows in architraves with pulvinated friezes and alternating triangular and segmental pediments. The forecourt featured ornamental railings and gates, all of which have been removed. A 20th-century flat-roofed rear extension is present but not of special interest.