Nidd Hall

NIDD TOWN STREET SE 36 SW (east side, off)

2/52 Nidd Hall

GV II

Country house. Probably 1825 for Benjamin Rawson, greatly enlarged and remodelled 1890-93 in Classical style for Henry Butler, heir to the 13th Viscount Mountgarret. Coursed squared gritstone and ashlar, grey slate roofs. 3 storeys and 9 x 8 bays, the central 3 bays on the west side reduced to 2 storeys. West (entrance) front: 3-bay block to right has central 6-panel double doors with wrought-iron fanlight under a portico with Ionic columns in antis, cornice and entablature with open-fret key pattern. Above the entrance door is a large window with consoled cornice flanked by rusticated pilaster strips supporting a cornice surmounted by the carved stone arms of the Viscounts Mountgarret. Large 4-pane or 15-pane sash windows throughout, those to earlier house in plain surrounds. Deep eaves cornice and parapet with balustrade and panelled piers topped by urns which continues around the entire building. Hipped roofs flanked by multi-flue corniced chimneys. East (garden) side: a long facade with central semicircular 2-storey bay window which has the date 1893 carved on the parapet. Flanking 3-storey canted bays, that to left has sash windows with glazing bars in plain surrounds to ground floor, this and the smoother pinker stonework suggests work of c1825. Right return (south): the left 3 bays are additional; of the 5 bays to right, the central 3 bays project slightly and there is a central doorway with architrave and narrow consoles, now a window. This probably forms the original c1825 main front. Interior: principal rooms including outer and inner entrance hall, morning room, dining room, staircase and landing are richly decorated with plasterwork to walls and ceilings in mid-late C19 classical manner. The inner (staircase) hall has paired Ionic columns, an elaborate wrought-iron balustrade and large marble fireplace with masks and therms. A corridor extending northwards from this hall leads to the dining room and billiard room on the east side of the house and to the kitchen and service rooms on the north and west. The rooms in the south-east corner have the proportion of early C19 classical buildings but one dividing wall has been removed and the fireplaces remodelled. Nidd Hall was the home 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 most likely date for the earliest remaining part of the house. His daughter Elizabeth left the house to her grandnephew, Henry Butler when she died in 1890. On inheriting the wealth of the Rawson family the 14th Viscount Mountgarret extended the building and embellished it with the arms and the date 1893. It has 54 bedrooms. It was sold by the 16th Viscount Mountgarret in c1970. H Speight, Upper Nidderdale, 1906, p 125.

Listing NGR: SE3019760774