Building record 1226/1 - Over Tabley Hall

<1> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 58570 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

House. C.1760 possibly adapting an earlier building. Red English garden wall bond brick with stone dressings and slate roof. Two storeys with three storey tower. Gothick. Entrance front: nine bays symmetrical. Central slightly projecting tower of three storeys. Pilasters to either side extending to full height of tower with sunken central panels containing evenly spaced round stone flower decorations. Entablature above it is with zig-zag pattern of stretchers to architrave. Sunken panel with similar flower decorations to frieze and stone cornice above. Gable above this with stone crocketed pinacles to apex and at sides above pilasters. Central pointed-arched ground floor doorway with brick voussoirs and similar sunken panel with flower decorations as on pilasters and frieze. Glazed door. Large pointed first floor sash window of five x five panes with interlacing sash bars to top. Exposed sash box decorated with wooden flower decorations (a smaller version of the stone ones in the pilasters and frieze). Similar window to second floor of three x three panes. To either side of the central tower are two bays of Gothick fenestration with sash windows of three x three panes with similar interlacing sash bars to tops and exposed sash boxes with flower ornaments. Doorway imposed on first right-hand bay. Similar entablature as at top of tower with similar crocketed pinnacles. To extreme right and left of front are lean-tos of the same build as the rest. Gothick fenestration and sash windows of three x four lights to the right hand ground floor and a flat-linteled three x four pane sash window to first floor. The left hand lean-to has'all flat-linteled windows of varying sizes.

<2> de Figueiredo P & Treuherz J, 1988, Cheshire Country Houses, p.261 (Book). SCH785.

A Georgian gothick façade stuck to a plain earlier house, a remodelling of the old Over Tabley Hall, built for the Daniell family. Built by John Astley, the façade dates from before 1771.

<3> Hartwell C, Hyde M, Hubbard E & Pevsner N, 2011, The Buildings of England: Cheshire (2011 revision), p.522 (Book). SCH7059.

Designed between 1759 and 1771 by John Astley. It is clumsy, but engaging. The building makes no function sense, except perhaps as the gate house to something bigger. Cellars found at the back indicate that some demolition took place. Renovated and extended to the original width from 2007.

<4> University of Manchester Archaeological Unit, 2002, Over Tabley Hall: An Archaeological Building Assessment of a 17th to 19th Manorial Complex, p.37-8 (Client Report). SCH4396.

The New Hall contained three main phases of activity. The earliest pre-dated the mid-eighteenth century alterations and comprised a two storey, rectangular, handmade brick structure. The central part of this phase appears to have contained two opposing arches at the western and eastern ends. This earliest building appears not to have been a hall structure, the presence of two arches suggesting that this may have been originally an agricultural building, perhaps a stable block with a central cart way as at the nearby Dunham Hall, where the two storey stable block with its central archway was built in the 1720s.

The second major phase was represented by the Gothic rebuilding of this structure, in the period 1760 to 1780, by John Astley, which converted this structure into a New Hall. This phase appears to have involved the substantial rebuilding of the earlier structure extending it and the raising of the central bay to three storeys.

The final phase saw the reduction in height from two to one storey in parts of the building, the blocking of windows, and the insertion of new windows in the nineteenth century.