Bramall Hall

Today I visited Bramall Hall south of Manchester. It’s a ‘Cheshire black and white’ timber house, one of my favourite styles of architecture. The ballroom walls are covered with colourful and strangely cartoonish medieval wall paintings including a horse with the head of a cockerel. Bramall Hall has been altered a lot since it was built in the late 14th century – it is mostly 15th century – but the additions such as Elizabethan vast arrays of leaded windows, a green man carving and oriel window just make it more fascinating. It is without symmetry or clear design – it is a maze of staircases leading to narrow, twisting passages.

The servant’s quarters in the attic gave a good insight into their hierarchy and the cramped, poor conditions they endured compared to the family they served. However Bramall didn’t have enough smell – there was no patina of atmosphere of polish, dust and old metal. I suppose it has been too long since it was lived in. Hall i’ th’ Wood and Little Moreton Hall are probably better examples of the ‘black and white’ style.

In the Fourlands two of the Plainslands manor houses – Eske and Fescue – are timbered houses and look much like this. They have lots of decoration – quatrefoils and carved barge boards. They have gatehouses like that of Stokesay Castle. Eske is moated, and inside the ceilings are open timber and the furniture is heavy, dark wood. Shivel Manor, however, is one of the older Fourlands manor houses; it is also moated but is built of brick, much like Rosenholm in Denmark or Markenfield Hall in Yorkshire.Bramall Halleast front