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BISHOP AUCKLAND

NZ1826 MANOR ROAD, St Helen Auckland 634-1/10/156 (North side) 21/04/52 St Helen Hall

GV I

House. Post 1622. For James Carr, extended c1735 for William Carr, MP for Newcastle. MATERIALS: C17 build incised render on rubble, with ashlar dressings. Concrete roof tiles with stone gable copings. C18 build ashlar with rusticated basement. Roof graduated Lakeland slate with ashlar chimneys. PLAN: L plan, C18 Palladian wing breaking forward from right end of C17 house. C17 house: originally with earlier cruck-framed build at left, demolished before 1972. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, 3 windows. Label moulds over central 6-panel door and 3-light windows with chamfered stone mullions, and casements with glazing bars. 3-light casements, the central light opening, under label moulds in 3 gabled dormers rising from eaves. Roof has left end chimney. Gable copings rest on moulded kneelers. C18 addition breaking forward at left has rear elevation on this front, with 2 blind windows on piano nobile floor band. Mid C20 ground floor corridor addition with arch to half-glazed door at left with one shaped stone bracket for former doorhood. Small section of wall to left of C17 roof is brick. Garden front: 2 storeys, 5 windows. Ashlar plinth to sill level. Basement has richly varied and intricately carved vermiculate rustication, with wide-splayed voussoirs to central half-glazed door and 6-pane ground floor sashes which slide into slots above. Ashlar band below raised piano nobile floor band supporting blind balustraded aprons, with square-section balusters, to moulded sills of sashes in architraves with bolection-moulded frieze and cornice. All windows have broad glazing bars. Ashlar courses thinner at sill and lintel levels. Dentilled eaves cornice. Steeply pitched hipped roof oversailing eaves, with right end and rear chimneys rising from eaves. Left return from garden front faces road and has 3 blind windows on each floor. Right return has tall round-headed stair window over flat-roofed mid C20 extension. INTERIOR: C17 house shows much C17 panelling, and 2 stone fire surrounds with Tudor arches and ogee-section stepped moulding, transferred here from West Auckland. Roof of this house collared trusses with raised cruck principals, and 2 levels of purlins. Carpenters' marks. Palladian wing has ground-floor entrance passage and stair well parallel to rear wall extending through 2 right bays. Left ground floor room, with door from garden, has raised fielded panelling with dado and cornice. Library and dining room in ground floor also have original detail. Wide stair at rear of right part, with moulded treads and shallow risers, has ramped moulded handrail. Piano nobile has drawing room at right. Principal room at left is salon with 3 windows, proportions one and a half cubes with rear wall brought forward into one plane, accommodating chimney without internal or external projection. Decoration of extraordinary richness includes enriched skirting board, dado and panel mouldings, pedimented surports with bolection frieze; richly carved painted wood chimney piece with female terms and broken pediment. Stucco ceiling decoration of rococo character, artist unknown but work reminiscent of the York school. Probably original to the building, since after Carr's death in 1741/2 entertaining was less important, and if that is so it is very early for the style. Rich classical cornice mouldings include banded laurel leaves. Symbolic figures of eagles with snakes in their grasp, and of monkeys, recur around edge of principal ceiling panel, with classical masks and arrangements of grapes in asymmetrical swagged corner panels from which intersecting curves trail towards the centrepiece which has figure of Cupid in ornate frame. William Carr was MP for Newcastle upon Tyne and entertained frequently at St Helen Hall. (Surtees H C: History of the Parish and Township of St Helen Auckland: Mainsforth: 1924-: PAGES 1-8; Whittaker N: The Old Halls and Manor Houses of Durham: Newcastle upon Tyne: 1975-: 47-51).

Listing NGR: NZ1894626772