Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Spondon House
Spondon House was a fine Georgian mansion, in reality a secondary seat on the Locko estate of the Drury Lowes. Yet it was not without presence, and its history not without interest. All accounts of the house, the building records for which are absent from the Drury-Lowe archive at the University of Nottingham Library, aver that it was built as a dower house, and its plain, well-proportioned appearance suggest that this event took place in the last quarter of the 18th century. The house itself, as built, was of brick, a single pile with three bays and two and a half storeys, gable ended with prominent kneelers, with a central arched entrance under a broken pediment, standing in landscaped grounds. By the time of the first known illustration of it – a lithograph of c. 1840 – the ground floor windows flanking this door had been modified with canted bays under perfunctory hipped roofs, part of a Regency makeover which included the addition of a lower, two bay matching wing on the SE angle, still of two and a half storeys. The north side, too, apart from (probably) two ground floor tripartite windows, was quite devoid of fenestration. In the mid-Victorian period, the house was extended yet again by a two storey wing with service accommodation on the NE side. This included the provision of the second staircase and the moving of the main entrance from the centre of the original range to the angle of that and the Regency SE addition, making way for a conservatory, very like that of Spondon Hall, along the south front. The new staircase was lit by an octagonal, conical top-light with a shallow roof topped by a jaunty ball finial, sitting a little awkwardly on a flat section of roof where the two additional ranges met, at the east end of the main range. The first Lowe of Locko, was John (1704-1771), eldest of the four sons of Vincent Lowe of Denby by Theodosia, a daughter of John Marriott of Alscot, Gloucestershire. John married his mother’s niece, Sydney Marriott, herself the sole heiress of the family’s Gloucestershire estate, but they had no issue. His next brother, Vincent, had pre-deceased him unmarried, whilst the next, Stead Lowe, migrated to America, leaving a son, Stead. The youngest brother, Richard (1716-1785) therefore succeeded John at Locko in 1771. Most genealogies sanitise the family history at this point, having him die unmarried but, late in life, he did marry, his bride being his long-standing maîtresse en titre, Ellen Leyton, previously mother by him of three daughters. On Richard’s death, however, the estate reverted, not to the American Stead Lowe, junior, as one might expect, but to William Drury, a Nottingham-born London merchant, whose grandmother had been Vincent Lowe’s sister, and in 1790 he assumed the additional surname and arms of Lowe by Royal Sign Manual. He then set about greatly enlarging the reasonably modest provincial Baroque Smith of Warwick Locko Hall, but died in July 1827 leaving only a daughter and heiress, Mary Anne, who had run away to get married at Gretna Green in August 1800. Why the skulduggery – which drew down the displeasure of her parents – is unclear, because her swain was entirely suitable: Robert Holden of Nuthall Temple and Darley Hall (1765-1844). Indeed, the Holdens were of rather more distinguished lineage than the Drurys, and just as well off! Spondon House, being so plain and simple, was probably built for the widowed Ellen Lowe and her three daughters, which would suggest a building date of 1785, which looks entirely right. Possibly William Drury wanted nothing much to do with poor Ellen, and Spondon House would have been provided with the minimum of ornament and a lowish cost, probably built by the Locko estate foreman using a plan and elevations from one of the many well-illustrated builders’ manuals then available. The rooms inside, according to a late friend who was educated there, were quite plain and the staircase (albeit moved, as noted above) was typical of the period, being timber with mahogany rail and stick balusters. It is not clear when Ellen Lowe died but, by 1801, runaway Mary Anne and Robert Holden were in residence, and they not only re-named it Aston Lodge (after the Aston-on-Trent estate from which these Holdens sprang) but set about enlarging it. They appear to have put in the windows either side of the entrance and also added the substantial, but slightly lower range to the right of the entrance. However, by 1814, Aston Lodge, as it now was, became vacant yet again, which must suggest that, with the then recent improvements wrought to Locko by John Dodds and William Lees of Derby, there was room for two households there. Thus in that year Spondon House was let to Miss Edwards who founded an ‘Academy for Young Ladies’ which flourished there until 1844. That was the year Robert Holden died, and Miss Edwards was obliged to re-locate to Derby, so that his widow Mary Anne could move in, her son William Drury Holden (thereafter Lowe) having succeeded to Locko. For her, without doubt, was the NE extension built, resulting in the new entrance, conservatory and moved staircase with the accompanying strange roof arrangements at the east end of the house. Yet in the event, she died only five years later, in 1849, leaving Spondon House (as it was once more) vacant. In 1854 a new lease was acquired by Revd. Thomas Gascoigne, who founded a prep school called ‘Spondon House School for the sons of Gentlemen’ there. He was joined in 1874 by Revd. Edward Priestland, who married his daughter and later took over as proprietor and headmaster of what, under his enthusiastic guidance, was to become one of the best schools of its type in the area; the Australians even played their cricket team in 1898! So much so, that following Priestland’s retirement, and under his successor, C. H. T. Hayman, it amalgamated with Winchester
The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Willesley Hall, Ashby
Until the local government reforms of 1888-1889 Derbyshire did not sit inside a single boundary; it has detached ‘islands’, mainly to its south, created in the Saxon period by assarting – clearing of woodland by men of Derbyshire in un-adopted regions. The settlements so created, once the County system had become established in the mid-10th century, tended to become detached parts of the area (county) of the people who had initially created them. Several counties had them. Derbyshire itself boasted Appleby Parva, Chilcote, Clifton Camville, Donisthorpe, Edingale, Measham, Oakthorpe, Ravenstone (the most southerly), Stretton-en-le-Field – and Willesley. Since 1889 they have been divided amongst Leicestershire and Staffordshire. Several of these ‘islands’ had substantial country houses, and indeed most of them have vanished, some almost without trace. Willesley was probably the grandest though. The place itself was one of those granted by the Mercian grandee Wulfric Spott to the Abbey of Burton in his will, but post-Conquest it was divided between the de Ferrers Earls of Derby (later the Duchy of Lancaster) and the Abbey. The manorial estate was initially tenanted under them by the de Willesley family who built a chapel, before passing it on to the Ingwardby family and then, also by inheritance, to the Abneys of Ingleby, who eventually united the estate. These families had few properties outside Willesley, so it is likely that there was an historic manor house, probably on the site of the house that was demolished in 1953. Unfortunately, nothing is known of its early appearance. The later house, which formed the core of the later one, was described by William Woolley in his History of Derbyshire (1713) as ‘a good seat’, with the Lysons’ brothers (1817) adding ‘The manor house which is in the form of a letter H, appears to have been built in or about the time of Charles I’ – that is the period 1625-1649. It was taxed on 16 hearths in 1670 suggesting that it was a substantial building. The earliest picture is an engraving of 1820, showing a substantial brick house of two stories and attics, with an eleven bay façade, the projecting cross-wings at each end of the main block being of three bays. The gables were elaborately shaped, rather similar to those of contemporary Thrumpton Hall, on the County’s Nottinghamshire border, and these may well be original to c. 1630, suggesting its builder was George Abney or his son James. However, the late Professor Andor Gomme, looking at the heavily stone-clad rusticated façade with its Ionic pilasters enclosing a swagger pedimented doorcase, was confident in attributing these later features to a fairly drastic 1720s rebuilding by Francis Smith of Warwick, architect of Sutton Scarsdale, a house which it closely resembles in these details. Smith, judging from some later accounts, also opened out the interior to create a double height hall and installed a fine timber staircase behind it, whilst at the same time endowing the gables with slim Baroque urn finials. The windows were deepened, sashed and given stone key-blocks. The rhythm of the façade has much in common with another work by Smith, Stanford Hall on the Leicestershire-Northamptonshire border, just off the M1. The rustication probably owes its inspiration to another Northamptonshire house, Lamport Hall, where a similar treatment was meted out to an earlier house by Wren’s follower, John Webb from 1655. A landscaped park of 155 acres was created, including a modest lake, and this may have been later and attributable to William Emes (1729-1803), a locally based follower of Capability Brown. The man who commissioned these works was probably not Sir Edward Abney (died 1728), a senior retired judge, who has been blind for the last twenty years of his life, but his son, Sir Thomas (1691-1750). And so matters rested until 1791 then Thomas Abney of Willesley, the last of his direct line, died, leaving an only daughter, Parnell, married to a member of an illustrious neighbouring family, Maj. Charles Hastings, a French-born natural son of Francis, 10th Earl of Huntingdon, whose chief seat was then Ashby Castle. Thomas, who had a distinguished military and diplomatic career was raised to a baronetcy in 1806, assuming the surname and arms of Abney-Hastings by Royal Licence. During the Napoleonic Wars he entertained at Willesley numerous officers of the French navy and Grand Armée with whom he felt to a degree at home, being a fluent French speaker and the son of a Parisian actress. He was also a prominent Freemason, as trait he shared with many of them. His younger son, Francis (born at Willesley in 1794) was a distinguished naval architect and commander. He was recruited by the Greek insurgents, financed by the Byzantine grandee and banker Prince Paul Rhodokanakis-Doukas, to oversee the building and to command the Karteria, the first steam powered warship ever to see action. At her helm, he effectively reduced the threat of the Ottoman navy and, despite being carried off by disease, like his friend Byron, at Missolonghi in 1828, made a considerable contribution to the liberation of Greece. His bust in bronze may still be seen there. Unfortunately Sir Thomas shot himself in 1823, and the estate passed to his elder son, the 2nd baronet. He later set about enlarging the house. The south front acquired a pair of small gables over the bays flanking the entrance and a coat-of-arms above an inscribed tablet was placed between them. The formerly plain west side was much extended, with similar gables, but largely lower and irregular, extending back to the small stone chapel, founded by Michael de Willesley before 1270, but later clad in stone and embattled some years before. But the changes did not stop there. A medium sized manor house was about to become a major seat, for the north side, where there was previously a re-entrant courtyard, was replaced by a three storey square plan diapered brick tower ending in four ogee topped pinnacles at the angles, all joined by a pierced stone balustrade,
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Oak Hurst, Alderwasley
As one travels north on the A6 one of the less uplifting sights in an area of stunning beauty is the wire works, covering the valley floor not many hundreds of yards south of the bridge by the former Derwent Inn, now a tea-room. Should you be caught in slow traffic – fairly likely at any time of the year – and should it also be this time of the year, when the leaves are coming off the trees apace, you might well catch a glimpse of a large, clearly ruinous house on the far side of the works, embowered in trees. This is Oak Hurst, a house of considerable merit, despite its relentless faux timbering, pointy-roofed corner bartizan and tricksy, late Victorian fenestration. As one travels north on the A6 one of the less uplifting sights in an area of stunning beauty is the wire works, covering the valley floor not many hundreds of yards south of the bridge by the former Derwent Inn, now a tea-room. Should you be caught in slow traffic – fairly likely at any time of the year – and should it also be this time of the year, when the leaves are coming off the trees apace, you might well catch a glimpse of a large, clearly ruinous house on the far side of the works, embowered in trees. This is Oak Hurst, a house of considerable merit, despite its relentless faux timbering, pointy-roofed corner bartizan and tricksy, late Victorian fenestration. The site was originally part of the Hurt family’s Alderwasley Hall estate – indeed, that fine house, now a special school, but erected in 1790, is perched on the hill top not very far away. In the 1760s, the family, ever enterprising, started an iron works in the valley bottom; certainly it was up and running by 1775 when Joseph Pickford ordered iron grates for some of the fireplaces at Kedleston Hall and balusters for Robert Adam’s bridge over the lake when he was clerk of works there. One thing that marked Francis out in this enterprise was that he, as a major landowner, was making a considerable investment in the iron industry at a time when most gentry families were content to lease works on their estates to professional ironmasters at a fixed rent. Hurt, on the other hand, was acting as entrepreneur and, as with his family’s lead mining enterprises, taking the profit. The original Ambergate forge did not survive beyond 1794 before being completely rebuilt, but vestiges of the original blast furnace, set up on the earlier site, were visible amidst the sprawl of Johnson’s wire works at Ambergate until they were destroyed in 1964. A substantial stone house was also built for the forge manager, Forge House, across the river in Alderwasley parish at the foot of Shining Cliff woods, but alongside the works, probably designed by George Rawlinson of Matlock Bath, a friend of Pickford’s and who seems to have worked extensively for both Sir Richard Arkwright and the Hurts. It was lived in by Francis Hurt’s manager, Matthew Bacon for some years. In 1848 the works were leased to John and Charles Mould, Forge House included and one of the brothers took up residence. The upwardly mobile Moulds re-named it Oak Hurst and lived in it until 1865, when they became bankrupt, new technology by that time having made their haphazardly up-dated first generation ironworks obsolete. For over twenty years the house reverted to being let, mainly to the Hurts, as a residence for their estate manager, and the works appear to have remained in the doldrums. In around 1880, however, the Midland Railway purchased it (or possibly did so slightly earlier) and in that year extended it, giving it a sturdy Neo-Jacobean cloak. The architect was their “in-house” man, Charles Trubshaw, a talented member of a long established Staffordshire dynasty of builders and architects. His Railway Institute in Derby has outlasted his Station façade by 20 years. It thereupon became the residence of Richard Bird, the superintendent engineer of the railway. However, on his leaving the post, it was in 1887 let (and soon afterwards sold) to John Thewlis Johnson, (1836-1896) a Mancunian who had already bought the old forge site from the Hurts and turned it into a wire works. Johnson, grandson of John Johnson of Pendleton, was the ‘nephew’ in the well-known firm of Johnson & Nephew, started by his uncle Richard Johnson (1809-1881), and of which the Ambergate works was a subsidiary. He lived at Broughton House, Manchester, dominating the Manchester Chamber of Trade for many years and serving as its president in 1892. He was also a director of Nettlefolds, the Birmingham foundry. His father Thomas Fildes Johnson of Pendleton had been a successful cotton spinner. In 1888 Johnson completely rebuilt Oak Hurst and considerably extended it so that he could dwell cheek by jowl with his latest enterprise. A new full height canted entrance boasted a tablet above with his initials and the date. It is not clear who the architect was but John Douglas of Chester has been plausibly suggested, who also built Brocksford Hall near Doveridge at about this time for a fellow industrialist. The house had a thorough Arts-and-Crafts makeover, and the interior fitted up very sumptuously with panelling and all the latest contrivances, including electric light and modern central heating. Furthermore, it was lit by electricity throughout, then something of a novelty. He also landscaped the grounds. By two wives – Aurelia and Anne Higgins, cousins to each other – he had five sons, of whom two lived in Derbyshire, the fourth, James, being at one time tenant of Foston Hall. The eldest, Herbert Alfred (1866-1923), who succeeded his father when he died aged only 59 in 1896, had a glamorous American wife who could not stomach living cheek-by-jowl with a wire works, and they moved, taking a lease of Farnah Hall from Lord Curzon and later were the last private owners of Allestree Hall.
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Thornhill, Kingsway, Derby
This impressive Regency villa was built on an elevated site in the district of California, Derby, looking south but with an easterly vista across The Rowditch towards the town, but one later spoilt by the erection of two brickworks on the west side of the brook. It is one of three such houses, which Stephen Glover tells us were designed by the amateur architect Alderman Richard Leaper (1759-1838); the other two being now listed grade II. Leaper was also a director of the family bank, receiver of customs for Derby, four times mayor of Derby and a partner in a tanning firm. Subsequent research has identified a group of other local villas firmly attributable to him, all of considerable interest and charm. The client was Major John Trowell JP, DL, who came originally from Long Eaton where his family had been considerable landowners since the Restoration. Born in 1744, son of another John Trowell, he had been appointed to the Bench in 1776 and made a deputy lieutenant of the County six years later. His public service was by no means over, however, for in 1787 he was gazetted Major in the Derbyshire Volunteer Militia. At the time Thornhill was actually commissioned he has living as tenant at Offcote Grove, near Ashbourne, where he was recorded in 1809. Prior to that he had been living in the large house in Friar Gate designed by William Strutt (now no. 65) which Roy Christian used to point out had originally been intended for Strutt’s father Jedediah, who unfortunately died before he could move in. His presence there is accounted for by the fact that he had married at St. Werburgh, Derby, on 27th September 1792, Dorothy Webster, daughter and sole heiress of William Woollatt, Jedediah Strutt’s original partner and brother-in-law, who had occupied the house on its completion. This match, needless to say, further enriched him. His wife died in December 1852 leaving a daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1798, but who died unmarried in November 1876. Unfortunately, like Jedediah Strutt and the Friar Gate house, Trowell had died by 1821 when the house, originally modestly called Trowell Hall, was completed in 1821. It was finished against a bond for £7,000 dated 27th March that year between Mrs. and Miss Trowell and Thomas Cooper (died 1850), a prominent Derby mason and contractor. This refers to the completion of the ‘remainder of the buildings’ at Thornhill. The money appears to have been in the form of a loan from Thomas Cox of 41, Friar Gate, also a banker; this was probably because the Major’s estate was still in probate. The two storey house was built in brick and originally rendered in Brookhouse’s Roman Cement – one of several forms of external stucco, in this instance manufactured locally in The Morledge, Derby – and grooved to resemble ashlar. The main SE front, was originally of five bays set under a wide, low hipped roof. Here the ground floor windows were originally carried down to terrace level. The NE front is of three bays and was originally the entrance front, entry being gained via a Tuscan portico, but unfortunately, that was replaced much later by a much larger brick affair on the SW front when the house became an institution. The two substantial service ranges were originally of three bays and two storeys, neither exactly alike, but lower and built side by side. They were done in a much more vernacular style, originally with unstuccoed brickwork, brick lintelled windows, dog toothed eaves cornices etc., as with other houses by Leaper. The interior was relatively plain, partly following local tradition at such residences and partly, one suspects, because the flamboyant Major Trowell was then but recently dead, his widow probably did not feel it appropriate to finish the interior in as bravura manner as her husband might have done himself. The main staircase, however, latterly reached right from the hall, was top-lit and consisted of a dog-leg, turning in an apse on the north side. The mahogany balustrade was supported on plain locally made cast iron square section balusters with generous spiral terminals, again all much resembling that at Mill Hill House (see Country Images article, July 2015). In 1987 a number of good quality contemporary chimney pieces in various local polished limestones survived, albeit securely boxed in. The gardens were terraced down on the east, where Sainsbury’s car park now is, and were shielded from the brickworks by planting. Parkland, originally nearly 100 acres, stretched south towards Rowditch and east to the Uttoxeter turnpike, then newly pitched and from map evidence was partly wooded. Much of the parkland was preserved when the Borough Lunatic Asylum (later Kingsway hospital) was built to the designs of Benjamin Jacobs of Hull from 1888 being retained with little alteration to provide the unfortunate inmates with a life enhancing environment. . The entrance was reached from the Uttoxeter New Road at The Rowditch via Trowell’s Lane (metalled and built up from 1888), which had a neat contemporary brick lodge about half way along it, which survived until c. 1930. Mrs Trowell swiftly re-named the house Thornhill from the eminence upon which it stood. Her daughter, however, refused to sell some land to the Corporation in 1873 in order to build the Asylum, probably out of what today we would call NIMBY-ism, but on her death it passed to her nearest heir, Edward Strutt, 1st Lord Belper, and he sold the Corporation the house and land they required – about 24 acres – and more to the Trustees of the Derbyshire General Infirmary to build a temporary typhus hospital. The house was subsequently sold to the Mosleys of Burnaston House – descendants of Sir John Parker Mosley, 1st Bt., of Rolleston Hall, Staffs; becoming the home of the eldest daughter of Ashton Nicholas Every Mosley of Burnaston House: Isabella Ashton Mosley, who died there unmarried 27th July 1912. The family trustees, having failed to find a tenant, finally sold it
Lost Houses of Repton Park
Sir Vauncey Harpur-Crewe of Calke, 10th Bt. was a true eccentric; unpredictable, obsessive and solitary. One of his pastimes was the catching of specimens various types of fauna and having them stuffed, mounted and parked in the great saloon at Calke Abbey. Smaller creatures, including butterflies he dried and pinned to boards. One summer morning in July 1893, he was spied, with his trusty gamekeeper and companion in all outdoor matters Ag Pegg, on the lawn of a villa on the Calke estate, south of Repton called Repton Park, set romantically amongst trees above a modest but beautiful lake. It was a good place to find the odd Fritillary. Unfortunately, the resident of the house, his cousin, John Edmund (Harpur-) Crewe did not view their intrusion with approval, he felt affronted and thought that common decency would suggest that the pair might have asked his consent, prior to appearing in front of the house in full cry after some hapless specimen of lepidoptery. A heated argument ensued, during which Sir Vauncey pointed out that John was his tenant and had no right to complain. The upshot was that poor John was summarily evicted (moving a short distance away to Bramcote House at Milford, on the Foremark estate), whilst the estate foreman was sent in to pull the house down. In a few years, dense bocage had taken over the site and it was as if the house had never been. It was like that, too, when Mick Stanley and I went there in 1981, in the process of compiling our two volume epic, The Derbyshire Country House. The land by then had become attached to the policies of Repton Hayes, a few hundred yards across the shallow vale, and the late Miss Theresa Woolley very kindly allowed us a visit. We had seen a small oil of the house when visiting Charles Harpur-Crewe at Calke earlier, hung between two of the windows of the saloon (which he kindly allowed me to photograph) and thought we ought to visit. We approached southwards along a delightful avenue of trees and thence into the woodland that surrounds the site and once surrounded the house. The site was featureless except for a single mullioned stone window at ground level, clearly part of a cellar, but 75 yards before encountering this we had passed a fairly substantial ruin of Keuper sandstone with a fine Jacobean classical arched entrance and more mullioned windows, left like a forlorn sentinel at the approach to the house. The house was Repton Park, formerly Repton Park Lodge, built on that part of the ancient Repton estate that had come to the Harpurs from the Fynderne family. Probably in the early years of the 17th century, about when the Swarkestone Stand was built, the first baronet, Sir Henry, built a hunting lodge here with a small separate stable block, recessed between two stubby wings. We only get confirmation of its existence in the hearth tax return for 1662, which records ‘Sir John Harpur Bart., his lodge…’ All we get from William Woolley in 1713, ‘Sir John Harpur has a very pretty park here’ – no mention of a lodge. Neither do we know exactly what the building looked like, but a lithograph of it after it was rebuilt in the Regency period shows that the stable block was castellated, and this suggests that the main house was also treated in this way. Indeed, Professor Mark Girouard has suggested that it may have been designed (if not built), like the Swarkestone Stand, by the architect of Bolsover Castle, John Smythson. Smythson was a master of the chivalric revival style, which emphasised details like battlements and towers. Thus the original house, probably a very modest 48 by 24 feet and two storeys high, may have resembled old Wingerworth, Highlow or Holme Hall, Bakewell and as a result, in its bosky setting must have look very romantic, as a lodge, like Wothorpe in Lincolnshire. Dr, Bigsby, the mid-19th century historian of Repton averred that the lodge was erected ‘…upon the foundations of an ancient structure that formed the manorial residence of the Finderne family…beneath the later fabric are extensive subterranean remains of the former edifice.’ In 1252 the manorial estate of Repton (excluding the Priory’s demesnes) had been split four ways, but most of it was either given to the Priory or came to the Crown, from which the Fyndernes of Findern bought it. They sold most of their estates to Sir Richard Harpur of Swarkestone in the 1550s and hence its descent to the Calke branch of the family. On a plan drawn by Samuel Wyatt (cousin of the architect, and a local surveyor) in 1762 the house appears as a rectangle with a narrower wing to the SW, probably a later addition to house the offices. The lake, bordered to the west by Hartshorne Road, was only of a modest size in 1762, but by 1800 had been considerably enlarged, probably as part of a deliberate exercise in landscaping, probably at the hands of the incomparable William Emes, who was working at Calke in the 1770s. The earliest view of the house, a lithograph from the lake taken in the later 1840s, is confirmed by a dreadfully faded Calotype photograph, possibly taken before 1851 by Canon Abney and W. H. Fox-Talbot on one of their tours by carriage from Markeaton Hall, the latter’s in-laws’ house. This shows a two and a half storey house with three bays facing north embellished with an outlandishly Gothic porch, complete with four crocketed pinnacles, and a five bay west front with towers at the angles. They are impossibly romantic towers too, not really octagonal, more square with chamfered angles, and the two that flanked the entrance opened into loggias at the foot. These towers were crenellated and the upper storey of the house defined by a sill band and a string course above, whilst the parapets were also embellished with crenelles The windows, however, where
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 – 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
Lost Houses – Oldcotes
On the vast, exuberant and lavishly decorated monument in Derby Cathedral to Bess of Hardwick is an inscription, lauding the late Derbyshire grande dame, which includes the lines: ‘This most illustrious Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, built the houses of Chatsworth, Hardwick and Oldcotes, highly distinguished by their magnificence.’ In fact, this is only some of what she was instrumental in building or rebuilding, for it makes no reference to her hunting lodge at Blackwall-in-the-Peak, nor of her impressive town house in Derby Market Place, nor of various other family enterprises in which she was in one way or another involved. Chatsworth, of course, and the two houses she built at Hardwick are well known, but what of Oldcotes, today rendered as Owlcotes? Oldcotes was part of the estate of the very grand family of Savage of Stainsby, and was held under them by the Hardwicks of Hardwick, and thus became the property of Bess of Hardwick on the death of her brother James, whose father also bought out the Savage interest. It was when her son by Sir William Cavendish came of age, that she resolved to build a new house there for him, he being her favourite son. Bess made William Cavendish payments between 1593 and 1597 for the construction of this house, which was going up concurrently with new Hardwick just a couple of miles away. It is thought that the architect for the house was without doubt Robert Smythson, then working on Hardwick and who also designed Wollaton for the Willoughbys and Worksop Manor (another lost house, but in Nottinghamshire) for Bess’s fourth husband, the much put upon George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury. Smythson also designed Bess’s monument in Derby Cathedral, all made and paid for nine years before it was required!. The contract for the stonework at Oldcotes is dated March 1593, and involved six men already working under Smythson at Hardwick. The new house also appears to have included part of its predecessor, as at Hardwick Old Hall, was two rooms deep, had two turrets with a 20 foot high great hall. As no ashlar work was involved, it was clearly to be constructed of coursed rubble, and it was to be finished in eight months – that is, by January 1594. As Bess was still giving further subsidies to William of £100 five years later, we may be sure that, like all builders, they fell behind on the job, and furthermore, that Bess having a reputation for changing her mind in mid-contract (witness the chaotically planned old hall at Hardwick) delays were also thus incurred . Clearly the house was considerably smaller and simpler than Hardwick, but that notwithstanding, the Pierrponts (its owners in 1670 when the assessment was made) still had to pay tax on 48 hearths there, the same total as Haddon, and exceeded in Derbyshire only by Bretby, Chatsworth and Hardwick. A drawing for an unknown house in the RIBA Smythson Collection is generally thought to represent Oldcotes as built, and shows a two storey house on a high plinth, with a three storey two bay centrepiece supported on a three bay loggia and topped with shaped strapwork, with a raised portion behind supporting a group of chimney stacks. The house then – most unusually, even for Smythson – receded back in three stages, as the drawing clearly implies with its return cornices appearing to overlap the following bays, implying recession. Most of Smythson’s houses receded from the edges to the middle and allowed the centre section to advance. An exception is Chastleton, Oxfordshire. There was a cornice over each floor at lintel height and a balustrade on top. A three storey tower was added at each end in the middle of the return elevation (as at Hardwick). Like Hardwick, the windows were all tall, multi-section, mullioned and transomed ones, the largest one of fifteen lights each. It may be, of course, that inside, there were more than two storeys, as at Hardwick and Bolsover, where the changes in level frequently bear little resemblance to the external regularity of the fenestration. We can also be sure that the 20 ft high hall would have run through the house from front to back, as at Hardwick, then a new and innovative feature in great houses, with an elaborate carved stone or timber screen with a gallery upon it. A map of 1609 by William Senior also appears to show the house as two storeys, although the representation is rather formulaic and uninformative, rendering it impossible to be certain whether what we are seeing is the same as the RIBA drawing or not. Nevertheless, a further map, of 1659, now in the Manvers archive at Nottingham University Library, certainly does show the house as it then was. This image, however, comes as something of a surprise as it shows the house with three storeys. This suggests that the house was raised by a storey (except the centrepiece) some time between 1609 and 1659. As it was sold, with its estate to Robert Pierrepont of Holme Pierrepont and Thoresby, 1st Earl of Kingston, in 1641, one might expect that this was done subsequent to that date, but the fact that the Civil War was then raging, followed by the uneasy calm of the Commonwealth, throughout the time between the Pierrepont’s purchase and the 1659 map, the suggestion might seem hard to countenance. More likely it was done by the future 2nd Earl of Devonshire, who lived there before his father’s death in 1626 and was a fairly extravagant young man, who lived in great state. If this suggestion is tenable, then the architect for the enlarging of the house would almost certainly have been John Smythson, Robert’s son, then building for Devonshire’s cousin, Lord Newcastle at Bolsover. It is a shame we have no better image of the place. It is thought that the gabled house in front of the main façade of Oldcotes on the 1659 map is the rebuilt previous
Lost Houses – Barbrook Edensor
It is unfortunate that the first really substantial house that Sir Joseph Paxton built was knocked down in the early 1960s, for today, I suspect, it would be greatly valued as an early example of the architectural talents of this highly talented man. It was built for himself, was grade II listed, but, when it became infested with dry rot and bedevilled the lack of a suitable role, it was still the era when all the owner of a listed building had to do, was to notify the Local Authority and the Ministry of Works, that he intended to demolish; no consents then had to be sought. Readers of this magazine will not need reminding that Paxton was born the son of a tenant farmer at Milton Bryant, Bedfordshire, on 3rd August 1803. He learned the gentle art of gardening under his elder brother, who was head gardener at Wimbledon House, going on to work at Chiswick horticultural gardens, which adjoined those of Chiswick House, then still owned by the Dukes of Devonshire, and hence he came to the attention of the 6th (“Bachelor”) Duke. This celebrated individual was known amongst his family and friends as Hart, from the courtesy title he bore until his succession in 1811 (Marquess of Hartington), bestowed originally upon him by his mother, the unforgettable Georgiana. From May 1826, the young Paxton was gardener at Chatsworth to the Duke, moving in to the modest, but then fairly new stone built house, near the entrance to the kitchen garden, on the east side of the Baslow Road at Edensor. In 1827 he married Sarah Bown, a local girl descended from a family of moderately competent Matlock clockmakers of the previous century and descended from a blacksmith, recorded in the 16th century. Paxton swiftly rose in the Duke’s esteem to become, eventually, agent for the estate. In 1840, he built, in association with the Duke’s then architect Decimus Burton, the “Great Stove”, a cast iron and glass building of extraordinary ingenuity, having already displaced Burton in the designing of the new village of Edensor from 1838. He also designed Burton Closes at Bakewell, for the Allcards (whom he met in his role as railway company director and friend of George Hudson of York, the ill-starred “Railway King”), and his career culminated in the sensational Crystal Palace – a clear architectural offspring of the Great Stove – and its successful transplantation to Sydenham Hill. He was knighted in 1851 and elected Liberal MP for Coventry in 1854, dying at Rocklands, Sydenham, 8th June 1865. As a follow-on from the development of the new Edensor, Paxton was allowed by the Duke to aggrandise his cottage to make a suitable new residence for himself and his family. Consequently, between 1842 and 1847 he completely transformed it, with John Robertson – once draughtsman to John Claudius Loudon and who worked with him on Derby Arboretum – as his assistant, as with the building of the new Edensor itself. Using the same local millstone grit sandstone as Chatsworth, he built a robustly detailed ashlar villa, centered on a four-stage Italianate tower, which owed a little to Nash, a little to Thomas Cubitt and thus, perhaps to Prince Albert’s then celebrated Isle of Wight mini-palace, Osborne, building at the same time, a little to Loudon and something, too, to Thomas Hope’s Deepdene near Dorking. The tower, with its pyramidal roof, stood in the centre of the south front, with a three stage tower-like feature attached to its north side, its roof marrying rather unhappily with its taller twin, a visible consequence of Paxton’s architectural inexperience. The stages were marked by banding, with rusticated pilasters (lesnes) running up the angles to the third stage, which boasted two narrow round-headed lights, the fourth stage having triple windows of this type between plain pilasters. To the right of the tower ran a three bay two storey range to the east with a garden entrance set asymmetrically in a loggia. Behind, at right angles, ran a longer but basically similar range, the single storey entrance being extended from the angle between the two. To the left of the tower was the end bay of a third two storey range, itself embellished with a canted bay, with yet another two bay wing beyond. The gable ends were turned into broken pediments by the returns of the eaves bracket cornices on the longer sides of each range; there were quoins and the fenestration was embellished with entablatures with the odd ground floor pediment thrown in. The roofs were slated and were set off by tall paired stacks with a narrow tall arch separating them, round headed above an impost band. The interiors relied on the fine proportion of the rooms for their grandeur rather than elaborate stucco decoration which was kept to a minimum. In its overall detailing, the house echoed the style of his slightly later and much more conveniently sized Dunsa House nearby which, happily, survives. The house was finished in 1847, but in 1851, Paxton, no doubt influenced by his success with the Crystal Palace and flushed with his knighthood, built on another wing, leaving it really a quite substantial house, the grounds artfully landscaped as only Paxton knew how. By this time too, he was also the Duke’s assistant auditor, as well as his confidant, trusted advisor and friend and Hart rewarded him, not with the freehold of the land upon which it stood, but the right to bestow his open lease upon whomsoever he wished. Nevertheless, the Paxtons rarely thereafter lived in Barbrook (named after the adjacent stream), parliamentary and Crystal Palace related business keeping Joseph in London, but we know that Lady Paxton sorely missed it, and returned there on his death. When she died in 1871 she was interred beside him and two of their numerous children in Edensor churchyard, whereupon the house reverted to the 7th Duke. It was rather too large for most purposes, and was consequently divided into
