Island Hall

History

The house was built in the mid-18th century by John Jackson. The Vane Percy family's ancestors purchased Island Hall in 1804, and eight generations have lived there since. The house was requisitioned during the Second World War and later subject to compulsory purchase for emergency housing. A serious fire in the late 1970s left it derelict before the council released the building. Christopher Vane Percy, an interior designer, began restoring the house in the early 1980s, redecorating it in period Georgian style and rebuilding lost features such as the stable cupola and the Chinese bridge.

Architecture

Island Hall is a Grade II* listed brick-built Georgian mansion, noted for its finely proportioned rooms and period detail. Reconstructed features from the 1980s restoration include an 18th-century cupola over the stable block.

Worth knowing

The social reformer and National Trust founder Octavia Hill wrote admiringly of Island Hall's atmosphere of 'stillest repose' and its 'deep attachment... to an inherited spot of old earth'.

Gardens & grounds

The grounds cover around one and a half acres of formal garden along the river, with a further two-acre ornamental island linked to the mainland by a Chinese bridge.