Wikimedia Commons
Peel Hall is a Jacobean-style Grade II* listedStructure of particular architectural and/or historic interest deserving of special protection. country house near the village of Ashton Hayes in Cheshire. It was built in 1637 by Henry Hardware IV, a descendant of the Lord Mayor of Chester, Henry Hardware, as a three-storey mansion, but was much reduced in size by 1812, and later used as a farmhouse.[1][2]
By the 1800s the manor house had been transformed into a farmhouse, and the original forty-two hearths reduced to seventeen. In 1812 it was once again reduced in size, with the demolition of the two-tier entrance hall. The contemporary historian George Ormerod commented following its late 19th-century restoration that the house “did but ill deserve the eulogiums which have been bestowed upon it, being but an indifferent specimen of the taste which prevailed on the restoration of Italian architecture in this country”.[3]
Architecture
Peel Hall is built in sandstone with slate roofs. It has an L-shaped plan, in three storeys with a basement, and a symmetrical five-bay south front. The doorcase has a Tuscan architrave and a fanlight. The windows are mullioned and transomed.[1][2][4]