York Historic Environment Record

House. 1824 with C20 alterations. Built for Mrs Mary Thompson, widow of Henry Thompson of Kirby Hall. White brick with Welsh slate roof. 2 storeys, 7 first-floor windows with central 5-bay section breaking forward. Double-leaf glazed door in Doric porch flanked by unequal 6-pane sashes. Left wing: three C20 casements. Right wing: C20 conservatory. First-floor band forms continuous sill to sashes with glazing bars. Flat brick arches to all windows. Band above first-floor windows. Wide cornice. Hipped roof to central section. Stacks to left end and rising through pitch of roof. Interior: much altered during conversion of house into 2 dwellings. Hallway has round arch held on fluted pilasters and moulded frieze. Doors to reception rooms in fluted architraves. Fine cast-iron grate to study. Original staircase with cast-iron balustrade survives but is no longer in original position. Stapleton and Thompson: Skelton Village 1971.
Listing NGR: SE5690156620

Derived from English Heritage LB download dated: 22/08/2005

The builder and first owner was a Mrs Mary Thompson, the widow of Henry Thompson of Kirby
Hall. Mrs Thompson had long had an interest in the church of St Giles, Skelton (she was
instrumental in its restoration) and after the death of her husband lived at The Lodge, a house
to the north of the church. From here she supervised the construction of her new home – called,
by her, rather confusingly, Skelton Lodge – which, with its extensive stables and offices, was
built on the opposite side of what is now known as Foster’s Lane. This was not necessarily a
virgin site. Halfpenny, in 1816, published an engraving of the church with the future site of
Mrs Thompson’s house in the background and he shows there a small vernacular building with
a thatched roof. Stanhope, in 2005, repeated an old story that the field had long before
been the site of an ‘ancient cell’ of St Mary’s Abbey. There is no sign of any earlier buildings
today.

After the death of Mrs Thompson the Hall was bought and sold a number of times; it was also
let for long periods in the late C19 and early C20. Between 1939 and 1945 it was used by the RAF, perhaps for an
officers’ mess. There is no surviving evidence of major alteration. After the war the Hall was
sold again and according to Stanhope became the property of Dick Thorpe, an architect, in
1952. Thorpe divided the Hall into two spacious houses – an east house and a west house –
and it remained in divided occupancy until 1998. In that year Mr and Mrs Cook bought both
houses and immediately removed Thorpe’s dividing walls and a post-war inserted stair to create
a single dwelling. Further works were carried out following a sale to Mr and Mrs Mellor in
2001; the Hall was sold to the present owners early in 2019.

The original plan of Mrs Thompson’s house has been significantly compromised by subdivision and changes in room function.

Colin Briden, 2019, Skelton Hall Building Assessment (Unpublished document). SYO2261.