Hollin Hall

Hollin Hall is a country house of late 17th-century origin, possibly built for Sir William Thomson, with extensive alterations carried out in the early 19th century for Richard Wood. The building is constructed of red brick, stuccoed and painted, with ashlar dressings and stone slate roofs to the main ranges. The outbuildings are of coursed rubble and brick with pantile roofs. The structure features quoins throughout.

The house has a complicated plan composed of three main elements. The principal range is L-shaped in plan with two storeys. The east front, which serves as the entrance, has five bays, while the south front displays six first-floor windows. Attached to the north end of the rear of the entrance range is a two-storey L-shaped kitchen and service wing with three bays to each side. A single-storey corridor connects the kitchen in this range to the dining room in the south-facing block. The third component is an L-shaped range of single- and two-storey outbuildings attached to the north end of the main east front, enclosing the north and east sides of a courtyard, with the service range enclosing the south and west sides. A wall with a double gateway links the outbuildings to the north end of the service range.

The entrance front features quoins to the end bays, which project slightly, as does the central bay. A central 20th-century glazed door with fanlight is flanked by narrow windows within a Tuscan portico of paired columns supporting an entablature, deep cornice and blocking course. Paired eight-pane sashes sit above. Other windows are sashes with glazing bars and projecting stone sills; those to bays two and four have lower sills and contain 15 panes. Two glazed blind windows occupy the ground floor to the left. An ashlar first-floor band, wooden dentilled eaves cornice and blocking course are cut by a triangular pediment with an oeil de boeuf over the central bay. The steeply pitched roof has hips over the outer bays, with ridge stacks positioned between bays one and two, and between bays three and four.

The rear elevation features a central round-arched staircase window, 16-pane sashes and 19th-century casements. A steeply pitched gable appears on the left, partly obscured by the attached service range, and another at the centre; both have gable copings. The left return on the south front has quoins to the left. Tall 15-pane sashes light the ground floor, with sashes with glazing bars above, the window to the right being blind. The first-floor band, cornice and blocking course match those of the east front. The service range on the west side has tripartite windows, a servant's bell on the hipped roof and two ridge stacks. A high wall attached to the left has a segmental carriage arch with board double doors.

In the courtyard, the north range comprises a two-storey block on the left with a pigeon loft above. To the right is an opening with a wooden lintel flanked by segmental-arched cart entrances, all with dentilled eaves cornice and pent roof. The west range contains board doors and small-paned windows to a privy on the left, a wash house and fuel stores to the centre and right, all beneath a pent roof.

The interior of the main east range centres on a central entrance hall with a stone floor and egg and dart ceiling moulding. Fine carved wooden fireplaces are found in the morning room, library, drawing room and study, with motifs from the latter repeated in a glass-fronted cabinet against the west wall. Additional good fireplaces occupy the first floor. The morning room features a dentilled cornice, the drawing room a moulded cornice, and the dining room an elaborate diamond-shaped ceiling moulding. Ground-floor doors are of six fielded panels; all windows have panelled rebates and shutters, with original cast-iron grates to the fireplaces. The staircase has plain balusters with a moulded mahogany handrail rising in two straight flights to a landing with two fluted columns in antis and acanthus-like decoration to the capitals. A curved balcony links the first-floor east and south landings. A first-floor room on the left retains some 17th-century panelling and a narrow stair beside the chimney, providing access to a room hidden within the roof space.

Hollin Close Hall is recorded in the Ripon Cathedral registers in 1589. It passed to the Thomson family in 1649 and to John Wood of Copmanthorpe in 1719. Richard Wood, who died in 1815, made extensive alterations to the house around 1811. Family papers record that the foundations of the new dining room were laid on 4 June 1811, this likely comprising the western three bays of the south range. A painting of around 1700 kept at the hall shows this front with five windows and much narrower overall than the present façade. Internal changes and differences suggest that the south façade was refenestrated when the addition was made. Other alterations executed by Richard Wood include the addition of the portico, lowering of window sills on the east front, rendering that conceals the refenestration and was not shown in the early picture, renewal of the eaves cornice, and probably the construction of the rear service range and alteration to the courtyard. Despite the drastic nature of such alterations, the east façade retains a strong similarity to the west front of Newby Hall, built around 1695 and located only two miles to the east, though omitting the third storey and featuring a triangular rather than segmental pediment.