|Home |  Text Only |  Bigger Text |  Smaller Text |  Default Text  

|A-Z |  Contact us |  News |  Events |  Jobs 

Search:

Name of Building: Annesley Hall
Address: Annesley Park, Annesley
Grade of Building: II
Date of Listing: 14/05/52
Grid Ref: SK 55 SW
Group Value: Yes
Serial No: 6/1

Country house, originally aisled hall. Now in course of conversion to Old People's Home. Mid C13, altered and extended mid and late C17. Remodelled and refenestrated mid C18. Additions 1838 and 1885. Re-roofed, interior stripped and partly restored c.1975 and 1985.

Coursed and squared rubble dressed stone and brick. Steep pitched gabled slate roofs, Ashlar dressings, chamfered and rebated plinths, two moulded string courses, moulded coped parapet and gables with kneelers. Two ridge, two gable and two external side wall stacks.

Three storeys, six bays wide and U-plan. Windows are glazing bar sashes and late C19 margin light and mullioned casements, many unglazed.

North east front has slight protecting central bay flanked by projecting gabled wings c.1691. Central keystoned ashlar doorcase flanked by single mullioned casements with hood moulds. Each gable has C18 venetian window. Beyond, to sashes. Beyond again, to the left, C19 casement flanked by single casement. Beyond two sashes. Beyond again, to the left, C19 casement. Above again, each gable has a sash. All have projecting architraves.

Double gabled south end, C19 has two large mullioned casements. Above, four casements, and above again, two casements. To the left, set back roofless C19 service wing with off-centre reeded doorcase with broken pediment, flanked to the left by single and to the right by two sashes. Above, three sashes on each floor, to the second floor smaller. Return angle to the south has a sash on ground and first floor.

To the right, Great Hall, two storeys, has four mullioned casements on each floor. To the right again, two storey square stair turret in return angle with chamfered doorway. Above, large wreathed oval sundial, 1691, flanked by single mullioned casement on each floor.

C19 entrance court and service wing partly demolished and roofless. Interior has C13 aisle post at the north end of the hall chamber, with moulded capital. Late C17 dogleg ashlar stair with iron balustrade. Early C18 dogleg north staircase, restored, with square newels, bulbous balusters and square finials, matching landing balustrades.

Two rooms have full-height C18 panelling with dentillated and foliate cornices. C18 panelled landing has doorcase with pulvinated frieze and scroll brackets.

Bedroom to the east of the Hall Chamber has corniced doorcase and mirror door. C18 Classical slate fireplace and early C19 carved wood fireplaces.

Annesley Hall was the home of the Annesley family, passing to the Chaworth family in the C16. It remained in the hands of the Chaworth family until 1972. Its purchasers carried out extensive internal alterations and removed many C17 fittings.

History of Annesley Hall

Annesley Hall is an ancient manor house set in a seventeenth century landscape park of around 250ha.

The hall is grade II listed, as are other parts of the park, such as the terrace to the south-west of the hall, and the gate-house. Nearby are the ruins of the grade I listed Old Annesley Church.

The hall has associations with the poet Lord Byron through being the home of the sweet-heart of his youth, Mary Annn Chaworth.

There used to be, preserved under glass, a signed transcription of the poem "Hills of Annesley" written by Byron after the marriage of Mary Chaworth in 1805.

Mary Chaworth was the heiress of the Annesley estate, and with her marriage to John Musters it passed down their joined line, the Chaworth-Musters, until 1974 when Major Robert Patricius Chaworth-Musters purchased and moved to Felley Priory. Since that time the hall has stood empty, its future not yet decided.

The Chaworth family had owned the estate since the reign of Henry VI when George Chaworth, third son of Sir Thomas Chaworth, Knight of Wiverton, married Alice de Annesley in circa 1442. The first lord of the Annesley manor to take their name from the estate was Ralph Britto de Annesley, who died sometime between 1156 (when he founded Felley Priory) and 1161.

The hall and grounds are not open to the public, but can be viewed from the A611 and by foot from Dog and Bear lane.

Above is the hall as it is usually seen from the A611 north just before the roundabout with Sherwood Business Park. You can just make out the grade II listed walled terraces of the formal seventeenth century garden to the left of the hall.

Annesley Lodge and Ice House

On the A608 side of Annesley Hall, at the other end of Dog and Bear Lane (a public bridleway) is another grade II listed building, Annesley Lodge (pictured above).

Across the A608, to the right of a Public Footpath leading into the trees, is a restored ice house. This used to stand closer to Annesley Hall but was rebuilt in its present location in 1995 to avoid its destruction during widening work to the A608.

Ice houses were used in the past for the same reason we have a refrigerator in our kitchen, to keep perishables fresh. The first recorded ice house in Britain was built at Greenwich in 1619. The heyday of building them came in the eighteenth century, when no aristocratic estate was without one, and Annesley was no exception. Ice houses were built underground, as a brick-lined pit 25 to 30 feet deep, usually in the shape of a blunt cone with the point downwards. The pit was covered by a domed superstructure with a north-facing entrance passage.

During the winter, ice would be cut from the frozen lakes in Annesley Park and packed into the ice house stacked between layers of straw. The insulation of the straw, bricks and earth packed above it would keep the ice frozen. The ice would be used to keep meat fresh and cool down larders and dairies. It is believed that ice could be preserved in an ice house like this for up to three years.