Building record 327/1 - Cholmondeley Hall or The Old Hall

<1> Cholmondeley Estate, C12th-C20th, Cholmondeley family of Cholmondeley, records, DCH (Manuscript). SCH406.

The plans of the great formal garden built in the 1690s shows that the hall of that day lay in a large trapezoidal moat.

<2> IPC Media, 1897-Present, Country Life, 19/7/73 Jackson-Stops G (Newspaper-Magazine). SCH993.

The hall was a large timber framed Elizabethan structure which became incorporated into a large house of c.1707 by William Smith of Warwick. The Old Hall at its full extent is illustrated in Country Life.

<3> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 1135851 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

House, circa 1707 by William Smith of Warwick for the first Earl of Cholmondeley. The Hall incorporated an Elizabethan building but in 1801 the structure was reduced to the size of the present dwelling. The hall is now called the Old Hall.

<4> English Heritage, 2001, Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest, GD1629 (Report). SCH2822.

The Old Hall, rebuilt in 1571, lay lkm to the east. In 1702 the London surveyor Robert Jones was apparently engaged to refront the timber-framed house, but in 1707 passed over the commission to William Smith (d 1724) of Warwick. He in turn was replaced in 1712 by Sir John Vanbrugh (d 1726), although how much of his scheme to complete the modernisation of the house was actually carried out is uncertain. After a half century of neglect the Old Hall was largely demolished in 1801. What survives, remodelled as a modest estate house, is listed grade II. Extensive formal gardens in the French style were laid out around the Old Hall in the years after 1688 (see CHER 327/3).