Description: Watnall Hall was a brick house of delightful colour - a house was on this site as far back as 1620, when the Rolleston family migrated here from Staffordshire. From one aspect the building looks like a solid and somewhat conventional block, from another, and this, the principal one, it is agreeably broken, and almost divided into wings. Further investigation shows that it was built upon three sides of a quadrangle, and the quadrangle, and the design has been, in a measure, disturbed by the addition of a straight piece of brickwork, which enclosed several rooms. The interior was large and roomy, the library was panelled. There were a number of bed rooms in the older part of the house, the formation of which was both peculiar and picturesque. The windows were small, and set in deep recesses. The plaster ceiling, of a pinkish colour and sloping at the sides, was extremely curious and old-fashioned. There were numbers of these rooms upstairs, and there was also a curious panelled apartment of Elizabethan date. Higher up in the house there was what Mr. Rolleston called a lumber room, but what might fitly be described as a disused armoury. It was a grim-looking apartment. Reared up in one of the corners was a rusty collection of musketry - a pile of ancient flint locks which were originally procured for the defence of the house when the neighbourhood was disturbed by the Luddite riots. Scattered about, were the ammunition cases, also much the worse for age, but preserved to give an idea how warm was the reception that awaited any invasion of the Watnall domain. Features of the old-fashioned garden were its gigantic laurel bushes, curious yew hedge which enclosed the arena wherein cock-fighting formerly took place, the old bowling green, small conservatory and thatched bee-house. The Hall was demolished in 1962. (information from www.nottshistory.org.uk)