Walled Garden and Orangery

Details

CROFT-ON-TEES HALNABY NZ 20 NE 8/32 Walled Garden and Orangery

GV II

Walled garden and former orangery. Mid C18. For Ralph Milbanke of Halnaby Hall. Red brick in English garden wall bond with brown sandstone ashlar dressings and wrought-iron gates. Wall approximately 3 metres high, quadrangular in plan, with gateway in centre of south side and orangery in centre of north side. The wall has been increased in height approximately 500 mm and has ashlar coping. In the west wall is a board door in segmental-arched opening about one-quarter way from south-west corner. In the centre of the south side the walls sweep sharply down to a gateway, with attached ashlar gate piers of chamfered rusticated quoin strips flanking plain Tuscan pilaster with horizontal tooling to north and south, on chamfered bases and with cornice capitals above plain frieze; the easternmost capital dismantled at the time of the resurvey. The gates, stored elsewhere at the time of the resurvey, have square bars with corkscrew finials at the top and inverted-V-shaped finials to intermediate bars above central scrolled decorative panels; one gate has a small wicket section; the upper cross-piece has ligatured initials of Ralph Milbanke readable from both sides, and with a 3-dimensional arrangement of branches with leaves and fruit. In centre of north side the orangery, comprising a semicircular recess in garden wall with side walls projecting forwards and roofed projection to rear; in front of it an ashlar terrace with moulded edge and protective C20 screen wall of glazed panels in brickwork (incomplete at time of resurvey). At either end of this, rusticated ashlar piers terminating the side walls which rise rearwards to similar, taller piers with pedimented capitals. In the centre, a C20 perspex protective half-dome set against a boarded gable. Rear of orangery: on ground and first floors, 2 side-sliding sash windows with flat arches, the ground-floor window frames incomplete; rear wall rises to form swept gable, formerly with apex chimney; coped gables; pitched roof of Westmorland slates. Inside the orangery, paved floor continuous with terrace; half-dome over recess has decorative plasterwork with cornice with bead-and-reel and rope motifs, half-quatrefoils with ribbon, acanthus leaf and shell motifs, and in the centre a concave quatrefoil. The wall containing the recess was heated, having cavity and stoke-holes reached from rear part of orangery (one stoke-hole later blocked, the other used for C19 boiler). The first floor of the rear part of the orangery, reached by ladder, has racks for storing fruit behind slatted partitions to protect it from vermin. Sacking, stored on rollers, and surviving in a fragmentary condition, was moved into position to protect fruit trees in orangery from frosts. To the right of the orangery are 3 altered windows to bothy behind wall and not of special interest. To the left of the orangery, a segmental-arched doorway with C18 wrought-iron gate of square bars, inverted-V-shaped finials to the intermediate bars above a scrolled central panel; added on the top, and now detached, the initials of John Todd who bought the Halnaby estate in 1843. Lead rainwater pipes and heads on the orangery, since stolen, were cast with a date in the 1750s.

Listing NGR: NZ2605806682

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322671

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