York Historic Environment Record

NMR Information:
No further description or sources provided.

Related event: ‘National Recording Project' (RCHME/English Heritage Architectural Survey). 14 Nov. 1995

The historic Haxby Hall was demolished in 1963. It was apparently Grade II listed and dated from 1790 (although some sources state 1700). It was remodelled for J T Tuite about 1827 and it is likely that this remodelling was, in effect, a complete rebuild. It was described in 1859 as "a modern brick structure‟, a description that might just apply to a 30-year old building but which would have been an inappropriate description if it bore significant traces of its 1790 form.

The hall was originally a private residence, but later served as a private school up to the 1850s (in the 1830s Mr Storey's Academy, later Revd John Heslop's Classical and Mathematical Academy for Sons of Gentlemen of High Respectability. In 1859 it was again a private residence, of a Miss Brocklesbank. It was subsequently the residence of Alfred Walker in 1881 and by 1890 was described as 'the property of the trustees of the late Alfred Walker, Esq., and the residence of Mr. Henry Leetham'. In WW2 it was requisitioned from its then owner Mr Kenneth Ward, a prominent architect with a practice in York and housed the ARP HQ, a first aid post, and was used for evacuees from Hull (whether evacuees were actually housed there or the authorities merely used it as a muster point is unclear).

Haxby Hall was brick-built, though none of the records or historic photographs indicate what colour the bricks were. Given its likely 1827 date, the bricks could have been buff or red – the only thing clear in the pictures is that the bricks were variegated rather than a single uniform colour, perhaps hinting at a lighter colour such as gault or buff but far from definitive. The bricks were likely to have been made locally as there were up to four brickworks operating in Haxby in the Victorian period. Both red bricks and buff bricks are found locally in Victorian dwellings.

The original hall’s entrance was to the northwest, and its primary elevation was to the southeast. Various architectural features are recorded in sources and shown in historic images, notably a glass cupola above the main staircase landing and a portico with four fluted pillars at the main entrance in the northwest elevation that supported a balcony and a similar doorway in the southeast elevation (though it is not clear whether this supported a balcony).

The house was in three or four main ‘blocks’, descending in height from northeast to southwest from three storeys, to two, to what appears to be a single storey. The earliest depiction (the late nineteenth or early twentieth century photograph at the head of this section) shows low-pitched roofs typical of Regency/early Victorian style. A picture dated 1940 shows that it had been re-roofed by that date with a complex multi-pitch roof now present. There were outbuildings to the south of the house, fronting York Road. These consisted of stables, two coach houses, other ancillary buildings and a fish pond. There was a utility area around the outbuildings, separated off from the rest of the gardens by a boundary (possibly a wall or fence or both). To the northwest the hall was separated from the road and the roundabout by mid-height wrought iron fencing and linear shrub planting behind it. A source from the 1930s suggests that to the south there was a high brick wall, perhaps separating the utility buildings from the road (the wall in fact mostly being the west wall of the utility buildings). Haxby Hall was demolished in c.1962/63 and the new care home was officially opened in 1965.

Parkland Associated with the Hall

The Victorian Haxby Hall was set in what was originally around 22 acres of parkland. .In 1950 Kenneth Ward, who had retaken possession of the house after the war, donated nine acres of its parkland to the village to become the Ethel Ward Memorial Playing Field, in memory of his wife - the Ethel Ward Memorial Playing Field to the south of the site is the last remaining trace of the parkland.In 1893 the are encompassed by the modern south lawn was made up of three separate landscapes: the pleasure grounds close to the house, the large fishpond and the small rectangular enclosed area in which it was situated, and the outer parkland. None of the boundaries of the lawn area correspond to historic boundaries. There is no trace or evidence of that complexity today and it would be impossible for a visitor to understand the nature of the historic landscape when looking at the south lawn.

SYO Humbled Heritage 2020 Haxby Hall Heritage Statement

Humble Heritage, 2020, Haxby Hall Heritage Statement (Unpublished document). SYO2591.