Borwick Hall

The manor of Borwick is mentioned in the Domesday Book as being part of the estates of Roger of Poitou but the oldest parts of the building still in existence date from the 14th century when a pele tower was built on the site. It was bought c. 1590 by Roger Bindlosse. The tower was extended to a manor house by Roger in the early 1590s before he died in 1595. and was only repaired in the 1910s, when it was leased to music critic John Alexander Fuller Maitland on the specific condition that he restore the building. After the Second World War during which the hall was used as a military base, the estate was sold to Lancashire Youth Clubs Association which uses it as a residential centre for…

The house is built of stone with a slate roof. It includes a four-storey 14th-century peel tower and a five-bay 1595 expansion to the north west (left, as seen from the front); behind and to the right of the peel tower are extensions thought to predate 1595. A courtyard behind the house has an open "spinning gallery", a common feature in the Lake District, of which Pevsner says "no other example has been identified in a high status building or one so far s[outh]." The great hall has some 17th-century wooden panelling, brought from elsewhere by Maitland in his restoration of 1911, when he also remodelled the first-floor great chamber as a library. Pevsner describes the building as "highly…