Banner Cross Hall is an

English country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

situated on Ecclesall Road South in the Banner Cross area of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

, England. The hall is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

which is now the main headquarters of Henry Boot PLC, the Sheffield-based property and construction company.

History

The present day Banner Cross Hall dates from 1821, however an

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personif ...

mansion was located on the site prior to this. This was one of the seats of the Bright family of

Whirlow Whirlow is a suburb of the City of Sheffield in England, it lies south-west of the city centre. The suburb falls within the Dore and Totley ward of the City. It is one of the most affluent areas of Sheffield, with much high class housing and ...

, who owned much land and property in the Sheffield area at the time and had connections with Carbrook Hall and Whirlow Hall. The Bright family became extinct in 1748 upon the death of John Bright of Chesterfield in February of that year and the ensuing death of his grandson and heir Bright Dalton later that year. Rotherham web.
Gives details of Bright family. Banner Cross Hall was then conveyed by John Bright’s granddaughter and heiress Mary Dalton to her husband

Lord John Murray General Lord John Murray (14 April 1711 – 26 May 1787) was a British general and politician. Life He was born 14 April 1711, was eldest son by his second wife of John Murray, 1st Duke of Atholl, and was half-brother of the Jacobite leaders, ...

, Colonel of the

42nd Regiment of Foot The 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot was a Scottish infantry regiment in the British Army also known as the Black Watch. Originally titled Crawford's Highlanders or the Highland Regiment and numbered 43rd in the line, in 1748, on the disban ...

and Aide-de-Camp to King George II. Scottish Places.
Gives details of Lord John Murray. The Murray family started off by landscaping the grounds, planting much woodland and creating a kitchen garden, when the Hall was inherited by Lt. General William Murray he employed

Jeffry Wyattville Sir Jeffry Wyatville (3 August 1766 – 18 February 1840) was an English architect and garden designer. Born Jeffry Wyatt into an established dynasty of architects, in 1824 he was allowed by King George IV to change his surname to Wyatville ...

to completely refashion the house between 1817 and 1821. The result of Wyattville’s work was an ingenious grouping of gables and turrets which gives the illusion of the hall being much larger than it actually is. The city of Sheffield expanded and surrounded the hall and it lost its rural seclusion. Some of the roads in the area of the hall reflect the Murray’s ownership of the land, for example: Blair Atholl Road, Tullibardine Road, Huntingtower Road and Dunkeld Road. The hall passed to the Greaves Bagshawes of Ford Hall,

Chapel-en-le-Frith Chapel-en-le-Frith () is a town and civil parish in the Borough of High Peak in Derbyshire, England. It has been dubbed the "Capital of the Peak", in reference to the Peak District, historically the upperland areas between the Saxon lands (bel ...

in the second half of the 19th century and was then rented out. In 1900 the tenant was Douglas Vickers J.P. a member of the eminent Sheffield engineering family

Vickers Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in ...

.''"Sheffield‘s Remarkable Houses"'', Roger Redfern, , page 42 & 43, Gives history of hall. In 1932 the house was purchased by Henry Boot PLC, a Sheffield-based construction company and has been used as their headquarters right up to the present day. Henry Boot website.
Gives date of purchase of hall.

Architecture

The hall is constructed from

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitr ...

with a

hipped In vertebrate anatomy, hip (or "coxa"Latin ''coxa'' was used by Celsus in the sense "hip", but by Pliny the Elder in the sense "hip bone" (Diab, p 77) in medical terminology) refers to either an anatomical region or a joint. The hip region ...

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

roofs in the Tudor Gothic style. The highlights of the exterior are the three storey tower

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

which has a

crenellated A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at interv ...

turret. The crenellations are continued right round the hall and are an eye-catching feature. The roof has eight significant chimney stacks. The interior has Tudor arched doorways and moulded cornices. The octagonal entrance hall has a Tudor arched fireplace and enriched plaster wall panels. British Listed Buildings.
Gives details of architecture and some history.

References

{{coord, 53.3576, N, 1.5088, W, scale:5000_region:GB, display=title History of Sheffield Houses completed in 1821 Grade II listed buildings in Sheffield Country houses in South Yorkshire