Belsay Hall is a

Regency style Regency architecture encompasses classical buildings built in the United Kingdom during the Regency era The Regency era of British history officially spanned the years 1811 to 1820, though the term is commonly applied to the longer perio ...

country house located at

Belsay Belsay is a village and civil parish in Northumberland, England. The village is about 5 miles from Ponteland on the A696, which links the village with Newcastle upon Tyne and Jedburgh. The population of the civil parish was 436 at the 2001 censu ...

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

. It is regarded as the first British country house to be built entirely in the new

Greek revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

style. It is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. It was built to supersede

Belsay Castle Belsay Castle is a 14th-century medieval castle situated at Belsay, Northumberland, England. It is a Scheduled Monument and a Grade I listed building. The main structure, a substantial three-storey rectangular pele tower with rounded turrets a ...

and its adjoining earlier hall just a few hundred yards away, and is part of the same estate.

History

The house was built between 1810 and 1817 for

Sir Charles Monck Sir Charles Miles Lambert Monck, 6th Baronet (7 April 1779 – 20 July 1867) succeeded to the Baronetcy of Belsay Castle on the death of his father in 1795. Born with the surname Middleton, he adopted the surname of his maternal grandfather Laure ...

(then of

close by) to his own design, possibly assisted by architect John Dobson. It is built in

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

with a Lakeland slate roof in the

Greek Doric The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of colu ...

style. The house measures square, with a lower kitchen wing attached to the north side. Externally the house appears to have two stories, although there is an additional storey hidden within the roof space to provide servant accommodation. This service side of the house was badly affected by

dry rot Dry rot is wood decay caused by one of several species of fungi that digest parts of the wood which give the wood strength and stiffness. It was previously used to describe any decay of cured wood in ships and buildings by a fungus which resul ...

in the 1970s and, following remedial work, it has been left as a weather-proof shell to illustrate how the house was built. The hall was the residence of the

Middleton family Members of the Middleton family have been related to the British royal family by marriage since the wedding of Catherine Middleton and Prince William in April 2011, when she became the Duchess of Cambridge. The couple has three children, Geo ...

until 1962.

Present day

The entire Belsay Hall house is unfurnished and maintained in a condition of benign decay, with only necessary structural maintenance undertaken. This allows it to be used as a setting for bespoke art installations each summer. There are extensive gardens, formal and naturalistic, such as the linear Quarry Garden. There is wheelchair access to the Quarry Garden, the ground floor of both the Hall and the Castle, and to the café. The gardens are also Grade I listed on the Historic England Park and Garden Register. Belsay Hall is administered by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

and is open to the public.

Notes

External links

Official Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens website
- ''at English Heritage'' {{English Heritage properties in North East England Grade I listed buildings in Northumberland Country houses in Northumberland English Heritage sites in Northumberland Neoclassical architecture in England Houses completed in 1817 Historic house museums in Northumberland Gardens in Northumberland Greek Revival houses in the United Kingdom

Hall In architecture, a hall is a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age and early Middle Ages in northern Europe, a mead hall was where a lord and his retainers ate and also slept. Later in the Middle Ages, the gr ...