Lost Houses – Stainsby House
Any reader who thinks I might have run out of substantial lost country houses to describe by now will be, I am afraid, mistaken. I may have been seduced into writing about some modest ones, but more substantial casualties are still unrecorded in this series. One of them is Stainsby House, Smalley, seat of the Wilmot-Sitwell family. In The Derbyshire Country House (3rd edition 2001), I described this house as ‘remarkably large and incorrigibly unlovely’ and I feel that I can stand by that assessment without demur. One always expects Classical country houses to be symmetrical, but Stainsby was anything but. Stone built of finely ashlared Rough Rock from Horsley Castle quarry, the entrance front, which faced approximately North, had a recessed, wide, three bay three storey centre flanked on the left by a two bay wing which was built slightly forward of the centre and which extended by a further three bays to the west but of only two lower storeys. To the right was a much longer four bay wing, also breaking forward, and the two projections were joined by a ground floor loggia centered by a pedimented Ionic portico. There were quoins at the angles, a top parapet and grooved cornice. As if that wasn’t enough, the south (garden) front had a regular three bay pedimented centre, flanked by two bays either side set slightly back, although the attic storey to the right had three lights, whilst that to the left only two. The east portion ended with a full height canted bay, but this feature was absent from the west end of the façade, which stopped abruptly with the lower three bay two storey part seemingly tacked on and set back a little further. At the west end, too, was a sort of pavilion wing with five bays facing west, beyond which was the coach house and stable court with a high arcaded lantern, probably the handsomest part of the entire building. The origin of the house and estate are equally complex. A part of Smalley came into the hands of the Morleys of Morley but, by c1250 it had come to William de Steynesby, a member of the family of Steynesby from the village near Hardwick we now spell Stainsby, and it is thanks to him that the estate acquired that name. His grandson, Sir William de Steynesby died c1300 and from him it somehow became the property of the Sacheverells of Hopwell about 1601. Because the estate was rich in coal, it was extremely valuable and was sold on again to George, second son of George Mower of Barlow Woodseats, whose name in the context of Stainsby is more often spelled More. In 1629, aged 21 he married Mary daughter of Robert Wilmot of Chaddesden. With his son also George (died c1705), he exploited the coal. The second George More died without surviving issue when the estate was again sold to a Heanor mining entrepreneur John Fletcher (died 1734), whose newly granted (1731) coat-of-arms was a riot of mining implements. He probably built the core of the later house, being the wide three bay three storey centre portion. Indeed, the Mores’ house must have been a much more modest affair, taxed on only three hearths in 1670. Fletcher’s son married the eventual heiress of the Smalley Hall estate (which went on his death to the eldest grandson). The youngest grandson , John Fletcher, inherited Stainsby. With his death without issue, it came to his sister, married to Francis Barber of Greasley, Notts, who like all the other families involved, were coal owners. The estate then passed to Francis’s son John (1734-1801), who lived amongst the family’s Warwickshire coal mines at Weddington and allowed his mother to remain in the house until her death. He is notable as a friend of John Whitehurst and was the inventor of the gas turbine. When old Mrs Barber died the estate was sold, through a middle man called Samuel Buxton, to Edward Sacheverell Wilmot, a grandson of Robert Wilmot of Chaddesden Hall, Derby who had married Joyce, the heiress of the famous Whig politician, William Sacheverell, whose extensive estate included that of Morley. His aim in acquiring the estate was to unite the two portions of the original Morley family holding, half of which he had already inherited from the Sacheverells. Another Sacheverell heiress had conveyed a third portion of the estate to the Sitwells of Renishaw and George Sitwell’s heiress Elizabeth, had left it to him in her will, obliging him to assume the surname and arms of Sitwell in addition to Wilmot. He seems immediately to have set about enlarging the house by adding the projecting wings, presumably in view of their irregularity in separate building campaigns, although the four bay one may originally have been narrower. Whatever additions had previously been made to the Fletchers’ house is beyond our ken, but it may have dictated the disparity in size of the projecting bays and the strange placing of the attic windows on the garden front. Whether he had an architect – Thomas Gardner of Uttoxeter built in this plain monumental style in the 1790s locally – or used a local builder we do not know. The new owner died in 1836 whereupon his son, Edward Degge Wilmot-Sitwell decided on a rebuild which Charles Kerry claims was done in 1839, including having the house ‘refaced and restored’. This seems to have included the west extension, the entrance front arcaded loggia and the canted bay on the right of the garden front. It may also have included the Main Road boundary wall with its strange conically roofed bastions and Gothick gateway, along with the expansion of the right hand bay of the entrance front as well. As it would seem likely that any scheme of rebuilding would have surely included a matching bay to the left of the garden front, one is of the opinion that the alterations were actually set in train by Wilmot-Sitwell senior
Lost Houses – Spondon Old Hall
Researching the grander houses of Spondon has never been easy, simply because there have been more than a few: Spondon Hall, The Grange, The Cottage, Field and Spondon Houses, The Homestead, West and Prospect Houses. Of these only the last three survive, and not all had estates attached. Most were what is called by estate agents ‘village houses’ and their profusion reflects the prosperity of this part of Derbyshire over many centuries. S pondon Old Hall may well have lain on the site of the earliest manor house. It faces south east overlooking the valley of the lower Derwent, a fact rather lost on today’s visitor, for the view is obscured by 20th century building, including a large council estate. In any case, were there a house still in situ from which to enjoy the view, the main thing that would strike the eye is the now derelict Courtaulds/ British Celanese site. From 1298 until 1522, the Hall was in the hands of the Twyfords of Kirk Langley, who inherited it from the first and last Lord Pipard, a descendant of the FitzRalphs, a younger line of the Staffords and thus kin to the Longfords and Gresleys. In 1309 a surviving charter tells us that John Pipard inherited a capital mansion at Spondon from his father, Ralph. In 1522 the Twyford heiress brought a considerable holding to Henry, second son of Peter Pole of Heage, enabling him to found the cadet branch of the Poles of Langley. Spondon, being separate seems to have been sold on and partly split up, a portion being bought by the emergent Wilmots of Chaddesden. It was this portion that contained the original manor house. A younger Wilmot son, Edward, settled in the house in 1718 marrying his cousin Catherine Cassandra, daughter and co-heiress of William Coke of Trusley. Their son married yet another Wilmot cousin and the grandson Francis, rector of both Trusley and Pinxton, died unmarried in 1818 leaving all to his sister Susannah. In 1806 she had conveniently married her kinsman, John Coke of Debdale Hall, Nottinghamshire. The complicating factor here was that he died without issue in 1841 leaving everything to a nephew, Col. Edward Thomas Coke (1807-1888) who thereby restored Trusley to the family after a 123-year break. Thus we have charter evidence for a mansion in 1309 and clear evidence for one in 1718. There is further evidence concerning the actual building a century later in the form of an 1810 document amongst the Coke-Steel muniments at Trusley which reads, “The Mansion House….the buildings consist of a large old rough cast House, brick and tile, – detach’d brewhouse half timbered and tiled, – coalhouse & pigstyes with dovecote over, brick & tile all in tolerable repair, – an old barn half timbered & thatched in very moderate repair…” From this, for which and much other information I am most grateful to David Coke-Steel, one gets only the sketchiest idea of the house except that it was of stone probably no more than roughly shaped and brought to course – from the description “roughcast” – reinforced with brick and with a tile roof. There were also two timber framed outbuildings the brew-house and barn plus the dovecote/pigsty, so the entire ensemble was visually in all probability extremely attractive. From the death of William Coke it is likely that the house was either let as a farm or tenanted and when the inventory was drawn up it was lived in by the Misses Pickering who were paying £105 – 12s – 7d a year for the mansion, three crofts, a close and two cottages, one a saddle house for the other. These ladies were the two unmarried sisters of Revd William Pickering (1740—1802), who had succeeded his father as rector of Mackworth in 1790. The family were anciently stewards to the Mundys of Markeaton Hall and their father was an intellectual, mathematician, astronomer and tutor of Revd Thomas Gisborne. More to the point the mother was sister of the Miss Wilmot who had married Edward Wilmot’s son, which explains a lot! After their death the house was let briefly to Bryan Balguy, the Recorder of Derby who quickly moved to Borrowash Manor and then to Field House at Spondon. He was succeeded by Alderman John Drewry proprietor of the Derby Mercury, who later in 1839 sold his former house and printing works on the corner of Iron Gate and Sadler Gate to William Bemrose and then Roger Cox (1777-1843). The latter, who took over in 1837 was a member of a notable lead-smelting family originally from Brailsford. In 1846, Bagshaw’s Directory says of the house, “…large mansion west of the village…inhabited by Mrs Fanny Cox”. It was in fact not in the west at all, but more to the east in Moor Street, later Sitwell Street and Fanny was Roger’s widow, the daughter and heiress of the Derby banker George Richardson. The renaming of the street seems to have been thanks to the long residence at the Old Hall, after Fanny’s death a few years later, of Miss Selina Sitwell a member of the Stainsby House (Smalley) family and again a kinswoman of the Wilmots and the Cokes. By this time however, John Coke had died (1841) the house passing to E T Coke who died in 1888. Also by this time the picturesque old hall had been rebuilt or replaced, allegedly in 1851. Unfortunately we only have the 20th century remnant left to help us understand what this replacement house was like but it was clearly built quite close to 1846 in the late Regency fashion, and was Classical, three storeys high and about twice as large as the building people remember. It was presumably of brick – as from c1850 there was the railway to bring in building materials – with busy quoins at the angles, simple Georgian 12 pane sash windows with entablatures over and a rather fussy portico (possibly a later addition) with rather too many
Lost Houses – Wheston Hall
I realise that knowledgeable readers will read this heading and exclaim that Wheston Hall is not a lost house at all and still stands. Yet the rather mauled remnant which survived the collapse of much of the fabric in a gale in 1952 is largely a new house which made ingenious use of some surviving parts of the original. In truth, the house was never a modest affair and although we have no idea what it originally looked like before the 18th century, the house that emerged from a thorough rebuilding in 1726-1727 does provide us with some clues. The earliest person of some standing to have been recorded as living at Wheston was Thomas Browne in 1362. We do not have much information about him, although it would be safe to assume he held some royally-appointed regulatory post relating to lead extraction. After that there is a lacuna of over a century before we encounter Thomas Alleyne there, whose wife Elizabeth may well have brought him the estate at Wheston, in which case she may have been the Browne heiress. Thomas himself was the third son of John Alleyne of Stanton-in-Peak, descended in all probability from Robert Alyn of Winster living in 1277. The elder branch of the family continued at Stanton Woodseats and elsewhere in Stanton for many generations. Thomas’s son Thurstan was Bailiff and Receiver of the High Peak and by his wife, a Garlick of Glossop, was progenitor of the Alleynes of Wheston along with junior branches at Derby and Loughborough. The family grew rich in the unpredictable business of lead extraction and trading.Sometime in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but before 1592 when they were fined for Catholic recusancy, they appear to have built a new house. A substantial fragment of this house remained embedded in the building that fell in 1952. It was a rectangular tower house of carboniferous limestone rubble brought to course with millstone grit long-and-short quoins, similar dressings to the mullioned windows with cranked hood moulds and for the string courses. It was at least three storeys and may have had a gabled top, like that surviving at Cutthorpe Old Hall, or parapeted like a larger version of North Lees in Hope, not so far away. A similar tower house is thought to form the core of the hall at Great Longstone too. In photographs of the main façade of the house it can easily be identified as the left hand projection, with its much more irregular quoins, asymmetrical window spacings and greater dimensions than its right hand counterpart. Behind it latterly, was a jumble of near-irreconcilable fragments, extraordinarily difficult to interpret. The Alleynes were Catholics and adherents of the Dukes of Norfolk, at that time major landowners in the Dark Peak and also major investors in the lead trade. The house may have been again rebuilt, in order to enlarge it, in the years preceding the Civil War, for the very striking baroque façade put on in the 1720s strongly suggests that a second tower was probably built with an intervening perhaps gabled range, with two stair towers inwards from the end-towers which probably featured crenelated tops like those at Wingerworth Old Hall and Barlborough Old Hall, both seemingly designed by John Smythson (of Bolsover Castle fame) or someone closely associated with him. Soon after this, the family divided into two lines and it is possible that the house was also divided with both families living under one roof, a common compromise at the time. With two staircases, the house was certainly suitable for division. Yet early in the 18th century, both branches failed virtually simultaneously and half the property, along with its lead-rich estate, passed to a kinsman, Thomas Alleyne of Loughborough (a scion of the Derby branch of the family) and half to the two daughters and co-heiresses of the other Alleyne branch. Of these, one was married to a Fleetwood and the other to a wily Sheffield attorney, Thomas Freeman. He set about uniting the estate in his own person, elbowing Thomas Alleyne aside on the grounds of his Catholic faith and likewise neutralising Fleetwood, whose mother was a Catholic Eyre of Hassop. Freeman thereafter set about modernising his new seat at Wheston, unifying the building with a new Georgian façade which receded in two stages from the corner pavilions to incorporate the old stair towers and culminating in a centrepiece of two bays flanking a rather inconsequential and marginally off-centre entrance; the visual strength of the remainder, marked only by an oeil-de-boeuf on the parapeted upper storey. A pair of Baroque gate piers marked the entrance from the road, topped by pineapples (long a symbol of welcome) flanked by an ornamental timber fence on a dwarf wall. The anonymous person who designed this clearly had flair, but probably lacked formal architectural training, as he would have made much more of the centrepiece. Probably it was an experienced builder recruited from Sheffield. If so, his hand can be seen elsewhere in the Peak, at Winster Hall (c1715), Shallcross Hall (1723-35) and certainly at Norton House, Norton (1733) as all share characteristics of Wheston. Unfortunately we have no record of the interior, but no doubt it had some pretension, as witness accounts of the saloon at Winster. Freeman also laid out an avenue from the front door into a small park that he formed from his own land, ending in a further pair of gate piers, although today the avenue has mainly long gone and few trees survive from the avenue itself which is now is a narrow wall-flanked lane. When Thomas’s son Robert died unmarried in 1763, the property passed through heiresses of the Charltons and then the Maxwells of Meir, Staffordshire, who let it, as did the Dukes of Norfolk to whom the house and estate were eventually bequeathed about two centuries ago. The Duke made it the home of the agent for his White Peak estates, John Allen but in 1827 sold it all to the 6th
