Horsley Hall

Horsley Hall is a 17th-century country house, now in use as a hotel, near Stanhope, County Durham, England. It is a Grade II listed building. The farmhouse at Horsley was part of the estate purchased in 1808 by the Reverend Henry Hildyard of Stokesley Manor House, a member of a junior branch of the Hildyards of Winestead, Yorkshire (see Hildyard Baronets). John Richard Westgarth Hale inherited the estate from his uncle Col. Robert Hildyard of Stokesley, changed his name by Deed Poll to Hildyard and bought the Hutton Bonville estate from the Beresford-Pierce family, employing the architect Anthony Salvin to convert the farmhouse at Horsley into a 17th-century-style manor house for use as a 'shooting box' for the grouse shooting season. The outbuildings included game larders, gun room, laundry, lamp room, stables, harness room, blacksmiths forge and carpenter's workshop. Westernhope Moor was part of the estate, and other grouse moors were rented. Several members of the Hildyard family served as High Sheriff of Durham in 1850, 1863, 1900 and 1947. The Hildyards sold the estate in 1954 and moved to Yorkshire. Horsley Hall was purchased for £800 by a former Under Gardener who bricked up the servants' quarters and kept pigs in half the house, after which it was acquired by a builder who salvaged architectural elements from his demolition contracts to add features to the house: a clock in one of the gables, and notably a large complete panelled dining room which replaced the original, necessitating removal of the existing main staircase. Eventually the house was converted into a hotel, then a riding school or stud, and finally converted back into an upmarket hotel.