Upper Hall, Hartshorne

Hartshorne Upper Hall is a Grade II* timber-framed house built in the 1620s for John Benskin, a wealthy yeoman who was tenant of the Hartshorne upper manor. Originally a large high-status house, by the early 20th century it was divided into three cottages owned by George Wilkinson, an “odd-stuff maker” in the local pipeyards, who purchased it from Lord Carnarvon’s Bretby estate for £270. The rent for one cottage was 12s 3d (61p) in 1968.

The house consists of a “hall and kitchen range” with a two-storey porch and a “parlour wing” at right angles, forming a T shape. Conserved and repaired in the 1970s, it now forms two homes. Exceptionally well-preserved inside and out, with cellars, ovens, original layout, and nearly all the internal close-studded daub and wattle walls remaining intact, this rare survival has much to tell us about life in the early 17th century.