Main Hall
Crewe Hall is a grade-I-listed mansion located at SJ733540 in the civil parish of Crewe Green, ½ mile (1 km) from the edge of Crewe. Architecture historian Nikolaus Pevsner considered the main hall to be one of the two finest Jacobean houses in Cheshire, the other being Dorfold Hall at Acton. Constructed in red brick with stone dressings and a lead and slate roof, the hall has two storeys with attics and basements. The eastern half of the present building largely represents the original Jacobean hall. The exterior survived the fire of 1866 and the majority of the diapered brickwork is original, although some of the stonework of the porch and the tops of the gables was renewed by E. M. Barry.
The south (front) face of the eastern wing has seven bays, with a balustraded parapet at eaves level. The central bay is set forward to form a stone centrepiece around the arched main entrance, which is flanked by fluted Ionic columns. Immediately above the entrance are doubled tapering pilasters flanking a three-light window, all surmounted by a large cartouche decorated with strapwork. On the first floor of the central bay is a triple-mullion window, and above the parapet is a coat of arms. Flanking the centrepiece are two bays with diapered brickwork and single-mullion windows. The two ends of the south face are also set forward; they have canted, triple-mullion bay windows and are surmounted above the parapet by shaped gables with attic windows. All the main windows of this face are double transomed.
The east face of the eastern wing has four bays with canted bay windows, shaped end gables and a central cartouche. In the centre of the northern (garden) face is a large bow window, originally Jacobean, which illuminates the chapel; it has stone panels decorated with cartouches below arched stained glass lights. This face otherwise reverses the main façade, with the addition of mezzanine windows.
The western half of the building is stepped forward (southwards) by two bays from the original building. Originally the service wing, it is plainer than the eastern building and dates from the Georgian era. Though using Georgian proportions, it was built in an early Jacobean revival style which has been heightened by subsequent alterations, particularly the addition of a central gable. The main part of the south (front) face has seven bays, with a balustraded parapet running along the entire façade at eaves level. In the centre of the five east bays is a canted bay window beneath a shaped gable; the flanking bays have single-mullion, double-transomed windows. The two west bays are set backwards and have a central oriel window on the first floor with two single-mullion, double-transomed windows on the ground floor.
The western wing is dominated by a square tower of stone-dressed brick which rises two storeys above the roof and is capped by an ogee spirelet surrounded by four corner chimneys. Designed by Barry in the High Victorian style, it was added after the fire. A slender bell tower also rises from the west wing. At the rear is a loggia with a vaulted ceiling supported by Tuscan columns. The western end of this wing is a single-storey extension by Thomas Bower dating from 1896.
Read more about this topic: Crewe Hall
Famous quotes containing the words main and/or hall:
“But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward, the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“The statements of science are hearsay, reports from a world outside the world we know. What the poet tells us has long been known to us all, and forgotten. His knowledge is of our world, the world we are both doomed and privileged to live in, and it is a knowledge of ourselves, of the human condition, the human predicament.”
—John Hall Wheelock (1886–1978)