Nidd Hall

Nidd Hall is a country house, likely begun around 1825 for Benjamin Rawson, and significantly enlarged and remodelled between 1890 and 1893 in a Classical style for Henry Butler, heir to the 13th Viscount Mountgarret. The house is constructed of coursed squared gritstone and ashlar, with grey slate roofs. It has three storeys and a nine-by-eight-bay arrangement, the central three bays on the west side reduced to two storeys.

The west front, which serves as the entrance front, features a three-bay block to the right with a central six-panel double door topped by a wrought-iron fanlight and sheltered by a portico with Ionic columns in antis, a cornice, and an entablature decorated with an open-fret key pattern. Above the entrance door is a large window with a consoled cornice, flanked by rusticated pilaster strips supporting a cornice surmounted by the carved stone arms of the Viscounts Mountgarret. Large four-pane or fifteen-pane sash windows are found throughout, with those in the earlier part of the house having plain surrounds. A deep eaves cornice and parapet with a balustrade and panelled piers, topped by urns, runs around the entire building. Hipped roofs flank multi-flue corniced chimneys.

The east front, facing the garden, is a long facade with a central two-storey semicircular bay window with the date 1893 carved into its parapet. Flanking this are three-storey canted bays; the bay to the left has sash windows with glazing bars in plain surrounds, indicative of c.1825 work and a smoother, pinker stonework. The south return features an addition of three bays to the left. Of the five bays to the right, the central three project slightly; a central doorway with architrave and consoles, now a window, likely represents the original c. 1825 main front.

The interior boasts richly decorated principal rooms, including the outer and inner entrance halls, morning room, dining room, staircase, and landing, with mid-to-late 19th-century classical plasterwork on walls and ceilings. The inner hall contains paired Ionic columns, an elaborate wrought-iron balustrade, and a large marble fireplace with masks and therms. A corridor extending northwards from this hall connects to the dining room and billiard room on the east side, and to the kitchen and service rooms on the north and west. Rooms in the south-east corner maintain the proportions of early 19th-century classical buildings, although one dividing wall has been removed and fireplaces remodelled.

Nidd Hall was previously the residence of the Dacre and Trappes families until 1825, when Francis Trappes sold the estate to Benjamin Rawson, Lord of the Manor of Bradford. This is the probable date of the earliest part of the house. His daughter, Elizabeth, bequeathed the house to her grandnephew, Henry Butler, upon her death in 1890. Following his inheritance of the Rawson family wealth, the 14th Viscount Mountgarret extended the building and embellished it with the arms and the date 1893. The house originally contained 54 bedrooms and, around 1970, was sold by the 16th Viscount Mountgarret.