In the twentieth century a very strange myth grew up about Soulton, spread by people unfamiliar with the Hall. This myth was that the big cubic Hall was one brick house built around an older timber-framed medieval house. The reason for this idea was that the internal load-bearing partitions are made of huge oak beams and wattle and daub rather than brick, and in one very special panel of plaster has incised decoration (possibly a stylised pomegranate).
Looking closely, however, everything looks designed as a single phase, and we can say with certainty that the Hall building was a corps de logis (or living block) built all in one go.
There is, however, a sense in which those mistaken commentators were partly right… The manor does indeed go all the way back to before the Domesday Book. Buildings were constantly replaced and updated in a large quadrangle that is today occupied by the Model Farm. Soulton Court contains the Moot Hall, a red brick manorial courtroom that replaced the great hall of the old manor where the community ate together and did business in the Middle Ages. It was only under the Tudors that the lord of the manor lived far apart from the hustle and bustle in a new living block. Timbers from the old great hall were used in the construction of its replacement. Can you spot the signs of the old joinery in the rafters?
