Old Abbey And Attached Outbuildings

Old Abbey and Attached Outbuildings

A substantial residential house with attached outbuildings and stable block, situated at Old Malton. The building incorporates a 12th-century undercroft from the adjacent Gilbertine Priory of St Mary, and was itself originally built in the late 17th century. Late 18th-century alterations and extensions followed, including the stable block, with further modifications in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The main house is constructed of coursed squared sandstone with areas of irregular stone, set partly on a chamfered plinth. The rear wings are built of orange-red brick in Flemish bond with dressings of gauged brick and keyblocks of sandstone. Roofs are covered with pantiles and stone slate to the verges and coped gables, with moulded kneelers and ball and pedestal finials to the earlier parts; the wing roofs are hipped. Dentil cornice brick stacks are a notable feature. The outbuildings are of coursed squared stone and rubble stone, with stone coped gables and shaped kneelers, their pantile roofs punctuated by brick stacks.

The building evolved as a hall house with later extensions to the sides and rear. The principal elevation presents two storeys and an attic, with a 4-window centre range flanked by 2-storey single-window gabled cross-wings at each end. An altered doorway at the right end of the centre range retains a surviving flat coved hoodmould from the original blocked entrance. The present door is of 4 sunk panels beneath a tall Gothick-glazed overlight. A second former door at the left end is now blocked by a 19th-century cross-window. The main windows are 12-pane sashes with painted stone sills. A coved first-floor string course and cavetto-moulded eaves provide horizontal articulation. Two gabled dormers in the attic contain 2 by 6-pane casement windows. The left wing features single-pane sashes on both floors, while the right wing has a 16-pane ground-floor sash and a 12-pane first-floor sash. All openings have painted timber lintels.

The left return elevation comprises a 2-storey 2-window cross-wing return front, with a taller 2-storey 3-window extension to the left and a further 2-storey 1-bay extension at the left end. Cross-wing return windows are single-pane sashes. The extension has a half-glazed door beneath a divided overlight, positioned to the right of two 12-pane sashes in enlarged openings. First-floor windows are squat 12-pane sashes. All openings have painted timber lintels. The end extension has no openings.

Interior features include an open-string main staircase with column-on-vase balusters, a ramped-up moulded handrail wreathed at the foot around a column newel, and a close-string secondary staircase with column balusters, moulded handrail and square newels. The original kitchen fireplace in the right cross-wing passage has chamfered jambs and an elliptical arch of voussoirs. The front room of the right cross-wing contains a brick-built bank of round-arched ovens on a stone plinth and a Yates of Malton cast-iron range in a later fireplace.

The undercroft, which lies beneath two service rooms adjacent to the kitchen, is entered from a small yard at the right end of the house down a short flight of stairs flanked by foliate-carved pyramidal stones, possibly crocketed pinnacles. The doorway is segment-arched and chamfered, with a plank and batten door. The undercroft itself is a square quadripartite vaulted room of four bays, formed by single-chamfered ribs springing from a central cylindrical column with moulded base and capital. The ribs rest on responds on three sides of the room—half-octagonal in the north and south walls, half-cylindrical in the west wall—and on moulded corbels in the east wall and each corner. A stone bench runs the length of the right (west) wall, interrupted by a deeply set 2-light mullion window with chamfered mullion and double chamfered surround. To the left of the door is a probable fireplace with a double-chamfered 2-centred arched lintel. In the rear left quarter is a round brick arch leading to a tunnel-vaulted passage.

The outbuilding is a 1-storey structure with attic space, comprising a 4-bay stable block with loft. A segment-arched opening to the right of centre sits between round-arched radial-glazed sash windows with painted stone sills; a round-arched opening at the left end is obscured by a lean-to building. Each opening has a raised archivolt over an impost band and a raised eaves band. The right return features a board door with tall overlight to the left and an offset boarded loft door above, both with timber lintels.

The house stands on the site of the 12th-century Gilbertine Priory of St Mary, which is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.