Author: Lorraine

Lost Houses – Swarkestone Old Hall

If you drive along the road from Swarkestone Bridge to Chellaston you will notice, just as you turn east after passing the Crewe & Harpur Arms, a pair of sturdy stone gatepiers topped with large ball finials. Those not having to concentrate upon the road ahead will also see, in the field beyond the gate piers, an engaging stone two storey structure with a pair of ogee domed turrets. The latter, beautifully restored, is now a holiday cottage for two, although I visited once, soon after commissioning, when it was being occupied by a lady barrister appearing at Burton Crown Court. It was ferociously cold and the only way to the loo (in one turret) was to cross the leads from a door (in the other turret). On the day I called, the leads were a lethal sheet of ice, making the essential transition exceedingly hazardous! This is Swarkestone Stand, still with gun embrasures on the side facing the road, evidence of a Civil War siege. Were one to wander beyond the former bowling alley in front of the building, onto the pasture of the present 17th century Swarkestone Hall farm house, one might well notice some unusually high field boundaries, one with superimposed fireplaces still in situ. All these component parts once made up the whole of a lost mid-Tudor great house, built by Chief Justice Sir Richard Harpur (1515-1577), a Royal legal officer who dexterously served four sovereigns – Kings Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queens Mary I and Elizabeth – without losing his head.  The Harpurs were an old Warwickshire and later Staffordshire family, seated at Pelsall. Sir Richard’s branch had become merchants at Chester, of which County Palatine Sir Richard latterly became Chief Justice. In 1544 he married Jane Fynderne, whose family owned estates at Findern, Littleover and Twyford. Although she was her brother’s heiress, she was of a junior branch of her family, although when her cousin Michael died two decades after her in 1618, her children inherited all that was left of the family estates. Ironically, most of them had been purchased by the Harpurs years before to prevent young Michael frittering them away! Harpur began buying up land in and around Swarkestone, from the Wilne family, some from the Sacheverells and most in 1558 from John Rolleston. Thereafter he began to build (probably on the site of its predecessor) his ‘newe mansion howse’ which was completed in 1567. From what evidence remains, it must have been quite impressive; the house was approximately 115 ft. square and with a central court yard. The best rooms were, almost certainly, from the evidence of remains, on the first floor (the piano nobile), with others facing the church to the west. The structure was built in coarse Keuper sandstone blocks with fine ashlar quoins and detailing, all from the nearby quarry at Weston Cliff. The whole ensemble was approximately orientated north-south, the northernmost feature being the Stand added by Sir Richard’s grandson in 1632, built by Richard Shepperd at a cost of £111 – 12s – 4d and designed, according to Professor Mark Girouard, by John Smythson, creator of Bolsover Castle. The Stand, or pavilion, has a south facing arcade with a viewing room above with big windows to observe the bowling in the rectangular sward on the south side. Opposite is a re-positioned Tudor door-case set in the surviving boundary wall. Beyond again would have been the 38 foot wide two storey gatehouse, probably also embellished with onion or ogee domes, but now entirely vanished bar a few fragments at ground level. From this a straight drive took one to the north range of the house through an impressive archway and into the courtyard. The present farm house to the south east is post-civil war and some consider it was probably adapted from the original stable block and indeed, it may have served a similar purpose, at least for a while, before conversion, prior to 1750, into a farmhouse. Other schools of thought consider it to have been a factor’s house or similar, as with the equally adjacent ‘Georgian House’ at Hampton Court, but altered later. On the west side of the main house, where there is still a two storey stretch of wall with three chimney pieces surviving. To its west lay a large formal garden with cruciform paths radiating from a circle containing a pond, to divide the parterres, all revealed by work on the farm in 1988 and partly excavated. To the north west lies the so-called tithe barn, tactfully converted into a pair of luxury homes in 1988. Clearly it was never a barn as such, lacking the usual full height wide doors, but the suggestion that it was a malt-house has not found universal favour either. It probably formed part of a utilitarian yard with other buildings, but its five bays of south facing windows in moulded surrounds over two storeys and lack of chimneys would suggest some kind of storage was intended.    The best way to appreciate the entire once very grand ensemble is to stand on the leads at the pavilion and look south towards where once stood the gatehouse and main residence. During the Civil War the house, still then held by the Royalist Harpurs, held out, ultimately unsuccessfully, against Sir John Gell’s Parliamentary forces from Derby, under the command of Sir John Harpur (1612-1679) from December 1642 to January 1643. Sir John survived exile as a widower and married again after the war. In 1662 he had to pay the new hearth tax on a massive 28 hearths, one more than Sir Edward Coke at Longford (less than half of whose house survives today), two more than Sutton Scarsdale and two less than Staveley. Risley, another very similar house, was taxed on 33 hearths. William Woolley, writing about 1713, wrote of Swarkeston that it was ‘a large, convenient stone building, seated on the banks of the Trent’, but within months the house had become empty on

Lost Houses – South Wingfield Manor

Some lost houses leave no trace behind, some fragments, some a wing or two incorporated into something else, and some, like the Manor at South Wingfield, end up as a stupendous ruin. Wingfield Manor is just such a stupendous ruin, and one that never fails to amaze me once I go through the gate from the road. Its sheer size brings you up short for a moment, for here is a ruined house that once was as big as Haddon, but taller, as tall as Hardwick, but more spread out. Had it survived to the present intact, it would be a wonder of Europe and a serious rival to houses such as Penshurst. The grandest houses in the 15th century, when most of what you see at Wingfield Manor was built, were constructed around two courtyards, as at Haddon and once upon a time at Codnor Castle. Yet it took from the 12th to the 16th century to complete Haddon as you see it today, whereas the importance of Wingfield is that it was conceived as a whole and built – more or less – for one man within just over two decades. Thus it is an architectural unity, one man’s vision. The other architectural landmark at Wingfield is the seventy four foot High Tower. This, of five storeys, is only the second manifestation in Derbyshire of what one might call “high rise living”, a habit that was to take hold both here and in Nottinghamshire in a big way in the century following, reaching its apogee in houses like Hardwick, Worksop Manor and Bolsover Castle. The predecessor of the High Tower at Wingfield is Prior Overton’s Tower at Repton Hall – now part of the Headmaster’s House at Repton School. It would not be unreasonable to assume that this splendid residence was built for someone of great consequence, and it was: Ralph, 3rd Lord Cromwell, Lord Treasurer of England. The Cromwells were a family of no particular wealth, who had held only dear old West Hallam after the Norman Conquest. Ralph’s enrichment came partly through winning a long legal case in 1439 by which he obtained, as joint-heir, Wingfield and its estate, and partly through what we might term the fruits of office. Sleaze was not then considered de trop! Ralph was clearly an enthusiast for tall buildings, for he built another famous one – which also survives – at Tattershall Castle, in Lincolnshire, but this time, like Prior Overton’s, in brick. In 1441 building work began under John Entrepas, Lord Cromwell having first cleared the site of the ancient house of his predecessors, the de Heriz family and thought to have been built a century and a half before by Roger de Paveley on the site of what might have been an adulterine (i.e., unofficial) 12th century castle dating from the war between Stephen and Matilda. Heriz had also laid out hunting parkland around his house, certainly one to the north which a descendant gave to the Abbey of Darley and rented back, the charter concerning which gives us a clear insight into its extent. Indeed, that document set against the present topography, helped save South Wingfield from an opportunist building an estate of 80 odd houses within it at a recent planning appeal. The little park to the east (now mainly built over) and the huge great park to the south, extending to the Ripley Ambergate Road, were either laid out by the de Heriz family or by Ralph Cromwell. The house itself is built of local stone – Ashover Grit from Crich and Ashover Moor for the best ashlar work the masons, could produce, and Wingfield Flags, a type of Coal Measures sandstone, for the coarser work and the roofing. The High Tower was to house guests and was also put in place as an elevated hunting platform from which the ladies could watch the menfolk at the chase. In winter, this was the only viable way to obtain fresh meat. A second tower, now mainly demolished, was provided at the NE angle to aid people watching the hunt in the northern park. The house was not finished when Cromwell died in 1455, and it passed by sale to John Talbot, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury, already a major Derbyshire landowner. He managed to occupy it by 1458, so that the entire magnificent structure was completed within 17 years, which was quite an achievement. There are even surviving records of him hunting the parks, and it may well be that he acquired the house and estate specifically for this purpose. It is well known, and hardly bears repeating here, that the estate later passed to George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, the unwilling gaoler of Mary, Queen of Scots – a man who was in the invidious position of being beholden to a jealous Queen: Elizabeth I (and her efficient intelligence network) and a jealous wife: the larger-than-life matriarch, Bess of Hardwick. The Scots queen’s apartments are said to be those one encounters immediately beyond the High Tower. Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl, the heir, died without a son, so the huge Derbyshire estates including South Wingfield, were split three ways between the daughters and their husbands. Thus one of them, the Earl of Arundel (later Duke of Norfolk) got the house and 1000 acres of park. During the Civil War the house was taken for the King in December 1643 by the ‘Loyall’ Duke of Newcastle, and held by a garrison under Col. Dalby – who undertook a great deal of raiding from there – until well into the year following when, after several fruitless attempts to dislodge them, Sir John Gell, the county Parliamentary commander, managed to borrow some seriously superior ordnance, breach the walls and re-take the house. After the war, the Duke of Norfolk sold the house – which, apart from bombardment damage had been partly dismantled on the orders of Parliament in 1646 – to his steward, the Cumbrian Immanuel Halton FRS.

Lost House – Derwent Hall

Architect Joseph Aloysius Hansom undertook the work of creating an Elysium amongst the dark hills above Derwent. Next time you turn on the tap, you might spare a thought for poor old Derwent Hall. This interesting and distinguished house disappeared slowly beneath the waters of Derwent Reservoir between summer 1943 and 1945, when the last vestiges of its half-demolished shell finally disappeared beneath the waters. The culprits were the combined water authorities of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Sheffield, eager to ensure uninterrupted clean water for their burgeoning populations, and the entire operation was nationalised in 1947. So what was lost? Essentially a typical upland Derbyshire stone built 16th or 17th century gabled country house much enlarged and equipped with all the latest comforts in the late 19th century, but none the less interesting for all that. Although Derwent was part of the extensive upland parish of Hathersage, the unforgiving terrain was not inductive to the accumulation of a landed estate and the site from late medieval time was a farm held by the Barber family. The father of Henry Balguy (pronounced ‘bawgee’), a younger son of the Balguys of Aston-in-Peak, bought some land at Derwent and later acquired more at Rowlee and Henry (1648-1685) combined the two to create a modest estate, acquiring Derwent Hall, then a moderate sized farm house taxed in 1670 on four hearths, in 1672. His son – another Henry – rebuilt the house some two decades later (it bore an entirely convincing date-stone of 1692), leaving an attractive small H-plan manor house of two storeys with gabled attics, built of coarse local Kinderscout grit with ashlar detailing: coped gables, four, six and eight light mullion-and-transomed windows with string courses over, and quoins at the angles, all under a stone slate roof.  The central entrance had a round arched top with the date-stone and an armorial set above it, the string course dipping down above for emphasis. The east elevation was five bays, the two closest to the main front being full height and the three towards the north being lower with attics, representing service accommodation. In the early 19th century a pair of ten light matching windows were installed here. There was also a lower wing to the west and a stable block beyond, at right angles to the house, the whole ensemble being set on the lower slopes of the hill behind with parterres and terraces running down to the Derwent. A third Henry Balguy (1700-1770), having acquired by marriage extensive coal mining interests in the Alfreton area, sold up in 1767 and moved there, selling to the Bennet family, a numerous and well-off farming family in the Dark Peak. The purchaser’s son, John Bennet, acquired tapestries rescued from the fire that destroyed Lord Shrewsbury’s epic prodigy house, Worksop Manor and had them altered to fit Derwent’s parlour and dining room. In 1831, however, the estate was sold to John Read (1777-1862) initially as a summer retreat. He re-ordered the gardens as recorded in the lithograph by W L Walton. He sold it on in 1846 to the Newdigates of West Hallam Hall and Arbury (Warwickshire) who tenanted it as a farm. They too sold it on, in 1876, and this time the purchaser was Henry, 15th Duke of Norfolk, who vested it, as a coming-of-age present, to his younger son, Lord Edmund Bernard FitzAlan-Howard. Although the Howards were normally seated at Arundel, it must not be forgotten that they also owned Glossop Hall and the vast, if rather barren, hills that surrounded it; indeed the lad’s politician great uncle Edward, who lived there, was in 1869 created 1st Lord Howard of Glossop.    Lord Edmund, as a FitzAlan-Howard, was a strong Catholic, and also a talented and energetic fellow. He immediately set about transforming the very modest old house into a considerable seat, employing the then doyen of Roman Catholic architects, Joseph Aloysius Hansom (of cab fame) to undertake the work of creating an Elysium amongst the dark hills above Derwent. The work began in 1878 and was completed in 1882. Although the original south front was kept, the remainder of the house was almost completely rebuilt, although with considerable tact. The two cross wings were extended back into the hillside, the main range was doubled in depth, and new service wing was added to the west and the stable range was re-ordered to create a courtyard around it. The East front was enlivened with two ground floor square bays and a large projecting bay containing a vast new drawing room with a canted end, beyond which was built a simple gothic domestic chapel, slightly higher than the house itself. Attic dormers were also added, and the interior acquired new oak panelling to match the old, along with a completely new and very fine oak staircase. The interior also gained an overmantel dated 1634 from old Norton Hall (replaced in 1796 and now in Sheffield). The gardens were completely re-arranged and the estate increased to 1,274 acres. The result was a house of some style and ambition, fitted with all modern conveniences, including home-produced gas and, after a decade or so, electric light installed by George Crompton of Stanton Hall, Stanton-by-Dale, a pioneer in this field. In 1921, Lord Edmund was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland – the last person to hold that office and the first Catholic to do so since 1686 – and was ennobled as Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent in consequence. By the time he laid down office in 1922, as a result of the declaration of the Irish Free State, he had decided, with advancing years to live at Cumberland Lodge at Windsor, and the family just went to Derwent for part of the summer and the shooting season. Then, in 1920 the various local authorities determined to build a further series of reservoirs to alleviate an impending water shortage, and it soon became clear that the days of Derwent Hall were numbered. In 1920 the Norton Old

Anson Engine Musuem

The village of Poynton stands just over the western border of the Peak District. Today it is a popular residential part of the Manchester commuter belt, but at one time it was a busy mining village, exploiting the profitable reserves beneath its green fields.  Apart from converted miners’ cottages dotted in groups along the village roads, little remains of that industry. One of the last pits which helped swell the 245,000 tons of local coal mined annually was the Anson Colliery. The pit is long gone, but the site now houses the award winning Anson Engine Museum, a collection of historic gas and oil engines, many of them made in the Manchester area. Brian Spencer went along there recently to enjoy the sight of these still operating power providers. The side turning off one of the back roads between Poynton proper and Middlewood, gave little or no hint of the collection of ‘boy’s toys’ that lay ahead.  The steady thump, thump coming from one of the cluster of sheds showed that at least one (more as it turned out) of the engines was running.  These were just part of the collection of over 250 gas and oil engines mostly made by Manchester based companies like Crossley Brothers of Openshaw, Mirlees Bickerton & Day of nearby Hazel Grove, or L. Gardner and Sons Ltd of Patricroft to the west; There are even Ruston and Hornsby engines made by the Lincoln based company who turned from making agricultural equipment in the first World War, to designing the first tanks to take part in modern warfare.  Each of these companies specialised in high quality engines that are often still driving machinery all over the world.  Their engines drove everything from ships to agricultural plant, or provided power for factories and also electricity generating. Of the twenty or so engine manufacturers in the North West, Mirlees concentrated on light and heavy oil diesel engines – their first engine is displayed in the museum, together with Crossley’s first, a very rare Griffin six stroke.  A 63 ton Ruston and Hornsby was used by Ealing Studios to power dramatic special effects. There cannot be many places like this unusual museum, known at one time as one of the best kept secrets in the industrial North West.  What has become one of the U.K’s leading specialist museums was the brain-child of two dedicated enthusiasts, Les Cawley and Geoff Challinor, who started collecting engines purely as a hobby. Gradually their hobby became an almost full-time industry, so the only thing to do was to convert their hobby into a professionally run museum.  These 2 men together with a gradually swelling band of like-minded helpers whose idea of enjoyment was to spend their spare time covered in grease, spent years collecting and restoring vintage engines. Those years of effort and hard graft have borne fruit in a working collection of engines that holds interest and fascination for anyone, male, female, old or young. Unlike the current controversy over the movement of the photographic collection from the National Media Museum in Bradford to London, such is the importance of the Anson Museum that it is able to display engines donated from top Science Museums up and down the country.  The collection tells the story of engines from the cannon to sophisticated, electronically controlled engines of the future.  There is even more than just passing reference to the work done by the German engineer Nikolaus Otto and his partner Eugen Langen who in 1876 made the first successful internal combustion engine.  At first the ‘Otto’ engine as it was called, was used as a stationary producer of power, and it took another far sighted engineer, Gottlieb Daimler, to adapt Otto’s ideas into his design for an engine to drive his automobiles. Steam is not forgotten at the Anson.  The museum has a steam section with two Robey engines in regular operation; an ‘A’ frame and a beam engine.  Pride of place goes to the Stott engine that used to drive a cotton wadding mill just down the road in Hazel Grove. It was rescued by the museum and lovingly restored to working condition by the team of volunteers and ran in 2011 for the first time in 50 years. In honour of Poynton’s mining heritage, a giant scale model shows the village as it looked around 1900.  All the multitude of pits dotting the area are shown and give a clear indication of how this one-time colliery village has changed into a dormitory for twenty-first century commuters.  Made by 5,000 hours of voluntary work, the model was first put on display in 2011 alongside a display of old maps, photographs, mementoes and keepsakes from the colliery owners, the Vernons from nearby Lyme Hall, together with records of the Anson Colliery on which the museum stands. Sated by the fascination of all the lovingly restored machinery, we wandered outside to the Craft Centre.  Here skilled volunteers working in open-fronted workshops were, as the skill dictated, using foot-operated lathes to turn lumps of wood into things like chair-back spindles (the man carrying out this skill told me he was a bodger), or hollowing-out larger pieces into wooden bowls.  To their side a blacksmith hammering lumps of red hot iron into fireside implements turned out to be my cousin.  In retirement he has gone back to his first job-related activity gained from working at the Bayer Peacock factory in Openshaw, where in times gone by they made the giant locomotives, capable of heroic activities like climbing the Andes or running for hours across the African arid deserts without stopping for water. The Anson Engine Museum is open on advertised days throughout the summer when a programme of events including demonstrations of running engines is held.  To find when it is open check www.enginemuseum.org Telephone 01625 874426 The museum is situated in woodland off Anson Road between Poynton village centre and Middlewood (follow the brown tourist signs).  It is close to the Macclesfield Canal

Lost House – Parkfields Cedars, Derby

When architects design their own houses, there is always something of interest. Richard Leaper was Derby’s Regency period amateur architect who, according to historian Stephen Glover ‘…has had great taste and much experience in building family mansions…’ Leaper was a municipal grandee, a banker and tannery proprietor, but despite these responsibilities, was indeed a fairly prolific architect, a gentleman of leisure with time on his hands and a wide circle of kinsmen and acquaintances. Leaper’s father had served as Mayor of Derby in 1776-1777 and in 1753 had married Sarah Ward, sister of Archer Ward, a banker colleague of his father. Richard, born in 1759, was educated at Derby School, joined the Corporation 1790, being elected Mayor in 1794-95 and was made an alderman shortly thereafter. He served as Mayor again in 1807, 1815 and 1824, by which time he was also a partner in the bank. His earliest commission was probably the Particular Baptist Chapel in Agard Street (for Ward) built in 1796 with a good Classical facade. Unfortunately, it fell victim to the coming of the Great Northern Railway in 1876. On this page over the last two years we have looked at four of the houses he designed for friends in the Derby area, but of equal interest is the house he himself lived in, for when architects design their own houses, there is always something of interest. At first he lived at 59, Friar Gate, Derby, a house of 1770 upon which he seems to have left no discernible architectural impression, but at some time before 1819 he had decided to leave his modest Georgian house in Friar Gate and move to Kedleston Road ‘about one mile outside Derby’ where he built himself a villa, later called Parkfields Cedars. It was possibly so called from the outset indeed, but house names tend not to be listed in very early directories. The six acres of land in which it stood was part of the Park Field, one of the common fields of the Borough and which was sold off at about this time. On various parts of it were built Parkfields House (now situated off Park Grove), Highfields (off Highfields Road) and Parkfields Villa (Duffield Road, cruelly demolished in the 1990s). Two large cedar trees framing the SW front determined the choice of name. Leaper’s authorship of its design is implicit from its date and the fact that he resided there during the final two decades of his life, but no supporting documents seem to survive. Stylistically though, it had his paw prints all over it. The house was a relatively plain two storey brick and stucco villa of three bays by five, the three on the garden front, being centered by a full height curved bow. There is a typically Leaper cornice and low parapet hiding the low hipped roof. The return, SE, front appeared to have five bays with Doric pilasters framing the central trio, but actually at the right hand end there was an extra bay with mezzanine windows, marking the position of the staircase. The NW side had the entrance, very like Leaper’s nearby villa called The Leylands in that the portico was columned in antis, but Doric rather than Ionic as at The Leylands. This part was also irregular, in a typically Leaperish way in that there were two bays to the left of the portico, but only one to the right and that was a blind bay with only recessed panels, and antae (plain pilasters) at the angles. The analogous house is the extant Limes, Mickleover, which has just this arrangement, with a bowed garden front and an irregular side entrance with a portico and is thus also attributable to Leaper. Inside, the dining room lay to one’s left and the drawing room, looking out over the lawns and cedars, to one’s right. Further along the hall and the breakfast room and study/library were entered on the right with the stairs opposite. This was timber, carved with fruit and flowers and almost Jacobethan in its un-Classical exuberance. It bifurcated on a mezzanine lit by an eight light Gothick window almost exactly like that on the stairs at Leaper’s Barrow Hall, Barrow-on-Trent (see Country Images for April 2014). One of the rooms sported a Corinthian chimneypiece of local crinoidal marble, whilst another was pseudo-15th century with stone hood, very similar to an equally quirky one Leaper installed in The Pastures, Littleover (now the Boys’ Grammar School). There was also a large service wing to the NE. On Leaper’s death in 1838, the house was sold to Alderman John Sandars, a man who had, shortly afterwards, the distinction of being Mayor of Derby. When the new Guildhall burnt down very spectacularly on the night of Trafalgar Day 1841, he had left office for a year. This conflagration might have meant the loss of all the City’s records which were then stored in the building, but for the fact that the good Alderman, a former book dealer and antiquarian turned vintner, had used his Mayorial clout to take many home with him to read, thus ensuring their survival. Sandars died aged 86 in 1867, when the property was sold by his family to the Wilmot-Sitwells of Stainsby House (see Country Images January 2015) as their Derby town house. Later, in the 1850s, it became the roost of some of their maiden aunts, notably Eliza Wilmot-Sitwell, after the tenancy of whom the place was let to solicitor John Moody, founder of Messrs. Moody & Woolley, then and until recently of St. Mary’s Gate. Towards the end of the 19th century it was again sold, this time to the formidable Mrs. E. M. Pike, proprietor of the Derby Telegraph. She was something of an enthusiast for buying property, having also bought 36-38 Corn Market (formerly the Tiger); on her death in December 1905 her trustees decided to dispose of Parkfields Cedars. Thus it was in 1905 that Derby Council bought it with five and a

Lost Houses – Aldercar Hall

It was of brick with quoins and other dressings of coal measures sandstone, undoubtedly from a local quarry (or re-used from Codnor Castle, at this date, rapidly in decline). Aldercar, a portion of the parish of Heanor and in the Middle Ages being one of four parks attached to the Zouche family’s Codnor Castle estate, takes its name from the Old English for an Alder plantation. At some stage in the downward spiral of the fortunes of the Zouches, Aldercar Park was sold off. That the Codnor estate was large enough to split without too much damage to the income (mainly from agriculture and coal rents) will be apparent when it is realised that the total parkland alone ran to 3,000 acres. The purchaser was Heanor merchant Henry Hyde, although we cannot tell precisely the date of his acquisition. Probably he was a freeholding yeoman farmer who had made a fortune by letting the rights to mine for coal under his land. In those days, mining was a family or extended family affair done in bell pits, the land being rented from the freeholder for a share of the take. This indeed, was probably Hyde’s incentive for buying part of the Codnor estate. Henry died in 1610, probably relatively young, for his son and heir, John, who succeeded to the land, was only twelve at the time; a younger son was Henry, only eight. John married a lady called Joyce around 1626 and they had a son, also John, born two years later, and it may well be the death of one of other of them that allowed the estate to be sold. Whether the Hydes actually built a house at Aldercar is not wholly clear, but the elder Hyde is once or twice described as ‘of Aldercar’ which suggests they lived there rather than in Heanor. The purchaser of the estate was extractive entrepreneur Richard Milnes of Dunston Hall, Sheepbridge, near Chesterfield, but all he did was to detach part of the estate which he wished to add to some coal-rich land he already owned nearby, and in around 1667 he sold the remainder on. It was bought by his kinsman Thomas Burton of Holmesfield Hall, near Chesterfield, the scion of a then numerous but very ancient family. He too was a coal owner, but he had at first settled in Derby, building Thorntree House at the bottom of St. Peter’s Street, now the site of the HSBC. The impetus for this was his marriage, during the Commonwealth, to Frances, the daughter of the aristocratic gynaecological pioneer Dr. Percival Willoughby, who lived in the house later known as the Old Mayor’s Parlour, nearby, which I described in these pages two years ago. Frances died in childbirth, and his father died in 1657 so Thomas returned to Holmesfield. He re-married in 1662, his bride being Prudence, a daughter of Francis Lowe of Owlgreaves Hall, very close to Aldercar (now called Aldgrave and replaced). Indeed, it may have been the spur for Thomas buying land near his wife’s father’s estate. What is certain is that he built a house – or perhaps, rebuilt the one that the Hydes had. It was of brick with quoins and other dressings of coal measures sandstone, undoubtedly from a local quarry (or re-used from the castle, at this date, rapidly in decline) It was of two piles deep, plus a northern service wing, with twin gabled end elevations. The gables being straight coped and decorated with finials, with two light mullioned windows on the attic storey and mullion and transom cross windows on the lower floor. The whole being of two tallish storeys with attics. Inside there was a fine oak staircase with turned balusters and much panelling of the period.. It seems to have been taxed on seven hearths in 1670, when it must have been very new; a sundial was dated 1668, which might well mark the completion date of the building. William Woolley, writing in 1713, said of it that it was a ‘good house and a pretty commodious seat’ but by his time, Burton had died (not long after his wife, who died in 1679). He had three sons, of whom the youngest., Capt. Thomas Burton had the single misfortune to have been killed in action fighting under Marlborough at the Battle of Blenheim in 1705.Michael, the eldest, married the co-heiress of Henry Wigley of Wigwell, an opulent lead trader.Moving to Wirksworth he sold Aldercar to Richard Milnes’s grandson (also Richard), from whom it descended in 1787 to Robert Mower and through his daughter’s marriage in 1791 to Thomas Smith of Dunston, ancestor of my esteemed kin the Craven-Smith-Milnes family of Winkburn Hall in Nottinghamshire. Thomas Smith’s brother, John sold the house and estate to George Jessop, youngest son of Butterley Company co-founder William, sometime around 1848, when the latter became involved with the running of the company after his return from setting up an ironworks in India. He moved to Honley Hall in Yorkshire in the 1850s, and sold it to his Butterley co-director, Francis Wright of Osmaston, who installed his 16 year old son Francis Beresford there in 1857. In 1862 the latter married Adeline FitzHerbert (of the Norbury branch of the family), whose family occupied a superb Carolean house in Warwickshire, the hall at Wootton Wawen, which they bought outright in 1882 Aldercar failed to sell, due to the agricultural depression, and was instead let as a school for young gentlemen wishing to make a career in the colonies, run by Francis Hugh Adams and later by Ernest Nicholls. In 1895 the house was described as ‘venerable looking’. However, in 1896, the Wright’s eldest son Arthur came of age, and he re-occupied Aldercar, soon afterwards (certainly before 1908) completely rebuilding it. His architect was John Reginald Naylor of the Derby partnership of Naylor & Sale of Derby, who were then building extensively for other members of the family, enlarging Swanwick Hayes for Francis Wright’s brother FitzHerbert in 1893-96

Lost Houses – Snelston Hall

Snelston was the most ambitious Gothic house in Derbyshire, renowned for its splendour, but also one of the more short-lived Derbyshire seats. The history of Snelston prior to 1813, when the builder of this prodigy house came on the scene, is excessively convoluted. In essence, there had been three separate manorial estates at the time of Domesday Book, all tenanted by the Montgomery family, usually associated with Cubley, nearby. Another portion was owned by the Abbey of Burton. At some stage the Montgomerys divided their holding into two unequal parts, called Upper Hall and Lower Hall, these later descending to the Brownes and the Dethicks. The two portions later by sale soldiered on under two upstart houses, the Doxeys and the Bowyers. In 1777, the Upper Hall and its estate was sold to Derby banker Thomas Evans (founder a few years later of Darley Abbey mills) whilst the Bowyers let Lower Hall, letting, with the result that in 1780 it was destroyed by fire. In 1821 a dispute broke out between the heirs of the Bowyers and the two daughters of Edmund Evans, installed in the Upper Hall by Thomas. In 1813, Sarah Evans, married John Harrison, a match that changed everything. In 1822 Harrison bought out his sister-in-law and then set about taking control of the Lower Hall estate, gaining full possession in 1826. John Harrison was a remarkable man. Born in 1782, he was the son of the first marriage of another John Harrison (1736-1808) who appears to have been the man who established the family fortune. His father had been a yeoman in the village of Normanton-by-Derby but who by his death on 3rd January 1808 had become a successful attorney, having set up in business in 1778, taking Samuel Richardson Radford into partnership in 1804. Where young John was educated is not clear, but he was called to the bar from the Inner Temple around 1804. In 1808 he was in Derby, taking over his father’s legal practice in St. Mary’s Gate and in 1822 entered into partnership with Benjamin Frear, retiring in 1825. Notably, two weeks before his own marriage, Harrison’s sister, Juliana, had married John Stanton, whose uncle, James, in turn had already married her elder sister Ann, twelve years before There is no doubt that Harrison was exceedingly wealthy, however, and soon he wanted a country seat. He had by 1817 acquired a modest estate at Littleover, and proceeded to draw up plans for a house there. To this end he employed Lewis Nockalls Cottingham (1787-1847) a London based architect who had set up on his own three years before. In all nine Greek revival designs were made, all for his Littleover Villa, the finished version being built as Littleover Grange, although re-instatement after a serious fire 25 years ago has changed it considerably. Yet he seems not to have been satisfied with his Regency suburban villa, and in 1822, Cottingham drew his first design for Upper Hall, Snelston, which was, once again, Greek revival. Harrison retired from practice in 1825 (he had clearly made a killing somewhere along the line) and having gained possession of the entire estate the following year, Cottingham was put to work yet again, producing a restrained effort in castellated Gothic, but essentially a Classical design dressed up with ‘old world’ detailing. This was quickly followed by a third, more thoroughgoing Gothic design, but a visit to Alton Towers, not far away across the Dove seems to have inspired Harrison to try and emulate the fast-rising Romantic skyline of Lord Shrewsbury’s House. Cottingham, whose strength lay in his understanding of Gothic in any case, did not fail him. The next design, which was indeed built, was a bravura display of high Gothic. The main (east) entrance front was given nine bays separated by buttresses running up to the parapet and ending in crocketed pinnacles, with paired lancet windows either side divided by transoms under hood moulds with foliate stops. The asymmetrical projecting portico was gabled, two storeys, with an arch beneath a battlemented oriel window. The south front was dominated by a wide full height canted bay in similar mode whilst behind arose a dominant baronial great hall, the west gable end window of which being impressively ecclesiastical, packed with heraldic stained glass and flanked by slim octagonal turrets, a high slate roof embellished with small cupolas and a forest of decorative chimney stacks beyond. The house’s main facade continued in similar mode ending in an octagonal three storey tower on the SW angle, and indeed, from the lake in the 350 acre park (also Cottingham’s work, inspired by Humphrey Repton) the silhouette was distinctly Alton Tower like and certainly impressive. Nor did he stint himself on the interiors, which were lavishly ornate yet at the same time unexpectedly delicate, especially in the arcading in the great hall and the filigree Gothic of the staircase. Cottingham designed everything himself, including much of the furniture, the designs for which are now in the collections at the V & A, donated by the late Col. Stanton. Much of this and other ornate timberwork was fabricated nearby at the hands of a much overlooked talent, Adam Bede of Norbury a craftsman of more than ordinary talent and whose name was the inspiration for a central character of George Eliot’s, who knew Bede from her childhood at Norbury, where her grandfather had been estate foreman and is believed to have had Bede as an apprentice. The entire project took about a decade, 1827-1837, but Cottingham continued to design estate cottages, model farm buildings and the stable block (on the site of the burnt out Lower Hall). The entire combination of house, contents, gardens, village and estate were essentially the creation of Harrison and his architect. Had the house survived, it would now be an ensemble of major national importance. Harrison was appointed to both the Staffordshire and Derbyshire bench and in 1833 served as High Sheriff of Derbyshire. He obtained a

Lost Houses – Exeter House, Derby

In the early 17th century, the West bank of the Derwent was becoming very sought after for gardens and suddenly Full Street and Cockpit Hill became fashionable places to live. Exeter House, No. 1, Full Street, was the house occupied for three days and two nights by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. Derby has had an unfortunate habit of demolishing buildings connected to famous figures from the past, buildings which today could be a tourist draw. As recently as 1971 the childhood home in Wilmot Street of philosopher Herbert Spencer was demolished, preceded by only four years by that of his birthplace; Erasmus Darwin’s house was lost to a planning scheme in 1933 and Joseph Wright’s birthplace went in 1909, whilst the house he lived in until four years before his death succumbed as early as 1800. Yet the rot really started with the demolition of Exeter House, No. 1, Full Street, early in 1855, for this was the house occupied for three days and two nights by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, and in which he held the Council of War at which the fateful decision to turn back to Scotland was arrived at. Even then there were voices raised in protest. Not that it saved Exeter House, but at least the panelling from the so-called Council Chamber in the house was rescued and preserved by a sympathiser whose executors advertised it for sale in April 1872: ‘Old historic oak for sale. The whole of the oak panelling, cornicing, fittings of three window places, two fluted pilasters, two solid oak doors &c., &c., which were removed from THE OAK COUNCIL ROOM (on the pulling down of Exeter House in Derby, formerly the residence of the Earls of Exeter) in which Prince Charles Edward Stuart held his council of War previous to his retreat from Derby in 1745. The whole of the oak is of the finest grain and polish and a plan of the room having been kept (the dimensions being 20 feet square, height 10ft. 6in) it can easily be adapted and refixed. Apply Mr., Powell, 1 Full Street, 24 April l872.’ In March 1873 with buyers still hovering around, Michael Thomas Bass heard about it and stepped in himself and saved them for the Borough. In 1879 he presented the panelling to the newly-founded Museum and where they were given an allegedly ‘purpose-built’ room in which it has resided ever since. The room then spent 116 years as a meetings room, which meant that the public never got to see the fine oak panelling with its fluted Tuscan pilasters and pretty chimney piece. When I took over as Keeper of Antiquities, I lobbied consistently that we should turn it into a gallery celebrating Derby’s part in the ’Forty Five and hold meetings elsewhere. It was only after a change of Director that this got taken seriously and was finally agreed in 1995. We got a wax figure looking like Prince Charles Edward made, re-furnished the room, and the panelling (which we discovered had been seriously ‘bodged’ to fit it in the room, which was nowhere near 20 x 20ft) and disguised the Early English lancet windows with re-placement 12 pane sashes. We put out everything connected with the event, dimmed the lights, provided a moon and had a recording made of the man himself reading out loud from a letter reporting progress to his father James VII & III. Indeed, it was the last large project I was able to complete before being made redundant from the Museum in 1998. Exeter House though, had a longer history entirely. In the early 17th century, the West bank of the Derwent was becoming very sought after for gardens and suddenly Full Street and Cockpit Hill became fashionable places to live. Thus it was that on the outside of the curve Full Street used to make towards the Market Place, the Bagnold family erected c. 1635/1640 a two storey brick house with two straight gables over five bays of windows, probably at that stage, mullioned ones, although possibly also with a transom too. The gardens stretched down to the river bank, whilst the front door was virtually on the street. The son of the household, John Bagnold, rose from high municipal office (he had been town clerk) to be elected one of the two MPs for Derby in the 1680s, the first under the new 1682 Charter granted by Charles II. He resolved to enlarge the house, adding an impressive parallel range nearer the river, of two storeys with attic dormers in a hipped and sprocketed roof, embellished by tall panelled chimney stacks, linking the old house to his new creation by a short block. This new house was nine bays wide and was in the latest architectural manner. Although we have no account of the interior then, the surviving ceiling from contemporary Newcastle House (see Country Images July 2014) suggests lavish plasterwork and frescoes, along with fielded panelling and so forth. Bagnold died in 1698 aged 55, yet the daughter and ultimately co-heiress of this grandson of a yeoman farmer from Marston-on-Dove married one of the first of the ‘super-rich’, as we call them today: copper and lead entrepreneur Thomas Chambers (1660-1726) a London Merchant whose coat-of-arms has three copper cakes upon the shield and a miner in a mine for a crest, carved on his lavish marble tomb in Derby Cathedral by no less a sculptor than Louis-Francois Roubiliac. He even commissioned Robert Bakewell to surround the structure with a fine iron railing. Thomas Chambers’s father had been a Derby lead trader and he added to the grounds, acquiring a tract of land on the opposite side of the river to the house from the Sitwells as his pleasure grounds. He also built the delightful brick pavilion, boat house or summer house on the Derwent’s edge visible in the old East Prospect of the town. He too left an heiress and she made a glittering marriage in

Lost Houses – Castlefields

With heavy machinery at work and much building going up in the tract of land between the Railway Station and Traffic Street in Derby, the site of the most ambitious country house close to Derby will be developed for the second time since its demolition nearly 180 years ago. The area is now called Castleward – the name of the voting district, of course – but derives from Castlefields, the ancient name of the area and of the later house. That in itself derives from the shadowy castle at Derby, of which no trace remains, nor has since the Civil War, when a bank and ditch were reported, roughly where Albion Street is now. Castles, even totally vanished ones, usually leave a documentary trace, if only because if the Crown did not build them, one of the great magnates will have done so and not without Royal approval either. Yet no documents survive concerning a castle at Derby, although place name evidence is early enough to be convincing as proof that one did exist. In many of these undocumented cases, the missing fortification turns out to have been a prehistoric (often Iron Age) fort, but this is exceedingly unlikely at Derby, the topography being all against it. The discovery of a previously undocumented motte and bailey castle at Repton by Professor Martin Biddle in the Headmaster’s garden in 1989 (at first thought to have been a Viking dock!) gave the key. It was established as part of a chain of fortifications set up by Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester around 1141, during the anarchy of King Stephen’s reign. He hoped to use the chaos to secure a separate Northern sovereign principality for himself, and these unauthorized or adulterine castles to defend his southern border, roughly along the Trent Valley, were the result. That at Castle Gresley is another example, and it rapidly became clear that the one at Derby fitted the distribution pattern perfectly. After the war, when Henry II managed to establish order again, they were mainly destroyed, Derby and Repton amongst them. Only the toponym lingered on, in the SE corner of the town. The Castle Fields lay south of Cockpit Hill (possibly the site of the castle’s motte), west of the Derwent and east of Osmaston Road, there being no London Road as we know it then. Before the early 18th century, one went to London following the Roman/Prehistoric route along Osmaston Road to Swarkestone Bridge and thence to Leicester. London Road was only formalised in the age of the turnpike. In order to raise funds, the Corporation, the rather paltry income of which derived from stall rents at fairs and tolls, from time to time sold some of the generous quantities of land it controlled around the edge of the town, the original common fields, of which Castle Fields was one. Others included Parkfield, Whitecross Field, Newlands and so on. At the end of the first decade of the 18th century money was required to build a new Guildhall to replace the 15th century one camped out in the middle of the Market Place. Castle Field was therefore sold to Isaac Borrow of Hulland Hall (1673-1745), whose father John had migrated from Gotham, Notts., and was descended from a family living at Thrumpton in the 16th century. The historian William Woolley wrote of ‘…Castlefields, where Mr. Boroughs [sic] builds a very good house (with a curious garden and paddock for deer)’. Woolley’s MS is undated but internal evidence suggests that he wrote the Derby portion in 1713, which fixes the date for a house that one would on architectural grounds describe as ‘Queen Anne’ fairly firmly. Castlefields was a provincial Baroque house in brick of three storeys oriented east – west. The two main fronts were astylar, seven bays wide, the central three recessed on the east side and breaking forward by a brick’s width on the west. The two entrance aedicules have segmental pediments, and the angles are marked by stone quoins. It is difficult to tell whether the fenestration is set in stone surrounds, but if it is, they were clearly fairly skimpy. There were also recessed blind brick panels above the windows on the second floor forming the parapet, which had no cornice only copings, as at Clifton Campville (Staffs., 1708 by William Dickinson) and the Wardwick Tavern, Derby (also 1708). There are no sill or plat bands and no visible string courses. The north & south sides appear to have been of two bays if the painting is to be trusted, but south and north Bucks’ 1728 view suggests a much more credible deeper, double pile house, probably giving five bays on the returns. Both pictures suggest that the south front at least projected by a further bay, recessed from the main facade, like the central section on the east. From Woolley’s description the park was intended for deer, and the curious garden may have been the rather dated looking parterre seen in the picture. There were two slightly detached service wings to the north and south, too with stables beside the former. The whole ensemble was really quite grand. I am coming to the opinion that its similarities to the square, three storey houses without an order of columns or pilasters (astylar) like Wingerworth (1725), Umberslade (1700, Warw.), Newbold Revel (Warw. 1715), Longnor (Staffs. 1726) link it firmly to the oeuvre of Francis Smith of Warwick. He designed all the foregoing (or is firmly linked to them) and whilst building All Saints’, Derby for James Gibbs seems to have acquired seven other Derbyshire commissions from amongst the subscribers to the new church (now the Cathedral). Nor was Smith unknown locally before that, having designed and built Kedleston (1700-1721) and rebuilt Etwall Halls. Indeed, the very year Castlefields was ‘building’, 1713, he was providing a design for a new Guildhall for the Corporation of Derby. As Isaac Borrow was a member of the Corporation then, this may be the link between

Lost Houses – Crich Manor House

Crich is really rather a confusing place, not least in respect to its country houses. The descent of the manorial estate since Hubert Fitz Ralph, the Domesday proprietor has been something of a saga, and many of the subsequent lords were non-resident. This phenomenon certainly would have put paid to the original manor house, built, as one might reasonably expect, beside the church. Quite when it was built is not really known. Hubert was a tenant-in-chief of the Crown and was described in several documentary sources as ‘of Crich’ or ‘Lord of Crich’ which would suggest that he was probably seated there. There is, however, some room for doubt as he held 25 manorial estates in Derbyshire alone, of which only eight had recorded sub-tenants holding under him in 1086. Hubert’s father was a Norman called Ralph de Ryes, and a younger branch of the family were the Ryes of Whitwell. As there is a field to the NW of the church at Crich called Hall Croft, it would seem safe to conclude that this is where one of the FitzRalphs built their capital mansion, although it is not mentioned in any document until it had passed via an heiress in 1218 to Ralph de Frecheville. He certainly, therefore, lived at Crich, but his son, Anker, married the heiress of the much richer manor of Staveley and re-located thence. At this juncture, the house at Crich may have been used either as a dower house or by younger members of the family. Eventually, the Frechevilles decided they no longer needed the manorial estate and sold it to Roger Belers of Kirkby Park, Leicestershire (hence Kirkby Bellairs) around 1301. They were a branch of the Norman family of d’Albini, so were much out of the same mould as the FitzRalphs. They were also descendants of the FitzRalphs, as Alice de Wakebridge, Roger’s wife had Juliana, sister of a later Hubert FitzRalph of Crich for a mother. Although his son Sir Roger is also frequently described as ‘of Crich’, his brother Thomas seems to have been the one that lived in the manor house. Despite four wives, Sir Roger left only daughters, between whom the manor was split, but the elder, initially married to Sir Robert Swillington of Swillington, in Yorkshire, had a son, Sir Roger, who managed to re-unite the two halves of the patrimony. One of his two sons may have lived at Crich, but the family by and large remained in Yorkshire. Eventually, both died without have had children, and the estate passed by marriage to Sir John Gray of Ingleby, Lincolnshire from whom it came to Ralph, Lord Cromwell, Henry VI’s Treasurer, who already owned the South Wingfield estate. Thus Crich became for nearly 150 years, part of the extensive holdings of the Cromwells and their heirs the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury. It was without doubt from this point (1467) that the original manor house would have disappeared. The patrimony of the Shrewsburys was eventually split three ways amongst his daughters, on the death of the 6th Earl in 1616, Two thirds of the manorial estate were sold off by their descendants, a third in 1660 to a group of seven rich local farmers, and another third in 1710 to William Sudbury. From these, the manor was rapidly split into a number of small freeholds. Nevertheless, under the long sequence of absentee chief lords, there were families who held sub-tenancies of parts of the estate, Anthony Babington of Dethick (the plotter) being one. Just prior to his fall, trial and execution, probably in anticipation of the possibility of the plot to free Mary Stuart failing, he off-loaded some of the family holdings, including an estate at Crich, held under Lord Shrewsbury. So it was, that in 1584, John Clay, grandson of another John, who held a modest but lead-rich estate at Chappell in Crich, purchased this Babington tenancy, by this date a rich one, through the exploitation of its minerals. He twice married well, obtained a grant of arms at the Heralds’ Visitation of 1569 and died in 1632, by which time he had built himself a manor house, thought to be the one visible on the celebrated early 18th century panoramic painting bought by the late Col. Denys Bower of The Grove and now at Chiddingstone Castle in Kent. Here we see a stone built L-plan house of two storeys and attics, the gables being coped with ball finials on the kneelers. The windows are clearly mullioned and the house is set in a garden on the SW and a farmyard on the SE with a range of outbuildings to the north. It much resembles houses like Goss Hall in Ashover, Rowtor in Birchover or Allen Hill at Matlock. John Clay’s monument in Crich church establishes that his two sons William and Theophilus, died before him and his daughter Penelope married Thomas Brailsford of Seanor in Ault Hucknall, not far from Hardwick, who duly inherited what amounted to an extensive estate. One of their eight sons was duly named Theophilus after his uncle and the eldest John after old Clay himself. It seems unlikely that the Brailsfords altered the house and it was taxed on six hearths in 1670 when it appears to have been let to the Wood family, the Brailsfords being still ensconced at Seanor. Towards the end of the 17th century (certainly before 1712) it passed to the Flint family of Crich and they seem to have rebuilt the house fairly extensively. This seems to have taken the form of demolishing the cross wing and extending the hall range by three bays, but in a fashionable classical style, with vertical mullioned and transomed cross windows (later adapted as sashes). A new entrance was included where this new range joined the 16th century or early 17th century work, so that to the left there was this new two storey range, and to the right the old three bays, which included the original attics. Hence