DENBY OLD HALL AND ITS OWNERS. 3 



and Pryor Leyes were part of the parke, and within the pale 

 Deere grazed and hunted therein." The park was estimated 

 to contain a little over 200 acres. 



Of the mediaeval hall which must have stood here there 

 are, so far as the writer can ascertain, no documentary records, 

 nor are there any structural remains with the exception of 

 the moat. The moat is, as might be expected in so hilly a 

 country, rather an ususual feature in Derbyshire, but it gives 

 us no clue as to the date of the house, as houses were 

 occasionally moated even so late as the Elizabethan period.* 

 The moat, long since disused, lies about 50 yards north of 

 the present house; it is about 33 feet wide at the top and 

 6 feet deep, and encloses a rectangular platform measuring 

 about 58 feet by 80 feet; on three sides it is excavated in 

 the solid ground, but on the north it is confined by an 

 artificial bank on the edge of a small ravine formed by a 

 stream coming down from Marehay, from which it was pro- 

 bably fed. Except in very wet weather, it is now dry, but 

 in the memory of the present tenant of the farm it was filled 

 with water, and only a very slight diversion of the stream 

 would be necessary to bring the water into it again. 



What the original hall was like we have, of course, no 

 knowledge; from the fact of its being moated, it would seem 

 to have been a place of some importance, for a keeper's 

 lodge in mediaeval times was an official residence. It would 

 probably be built of timber. Though the usual building 

 material of the district was formerly stone and is now brick, 

 timber was, in the middle ages, much the most usual material, 

 even in stone districts, and there would no doubt be abundance 

 of good building oak in the park or the neighbouring forest. 



The present hall consists of two distinct buildings; the older 

 portion is much the more perfect and is an interesting example 

 of a small Elizabethan country house. It is difficult to definitely 

 say who was its builder; from the depositions in the law-suit 



* See Parker & Turner's Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages, 

 Vol. II., p. 15. 



