Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Middleton – By – Youlegreave
As is the case with so many other of Derbyshire’s lost houses, the present Middleton Hall, at Middleton-by-Youlgreave, is a replacement, on another site in this case, of an earlier house. Indeed, there had been a manor house in Middleton from a relatively early date, for there had been a domestic chapel there before the mid-twelfth century, remains of which were discovered by Thomas William Bateman in the grounds of the present hall (of which he was then owner) in 1870. How this chapel came into being is cloaked in uncertainty. In 1066 man of Norse descent called Dunning appears to have held Middleton, along with Pilsley, one of the eight manors of Barton Blount, and one of the two manors of Holme, Wadshelf and Brampton. By 1086, when Domesday Book was compiled, he had lost the lot but had been compensated by being installed as King’s thegn in the manor of Calow, by Chesterfield, and thus became ancestor of the Calow family. In 1086, Youlgreave was part of the extensive holdings of Henry de Ferrers, who installed as sub-tenant a man called Col or Colle, another person of Norse ancestry, and his family held it from the King, along with Middleton, Stanton, and Harthill. Robert son of Colle seems to have resided at Harthill, where he built a fine manor house with a chapel (which still stands, despite conversion, long ago, to agricultural use), and it would appear that Middleton was sub-tenanted by a family of that name, just as Stanton was sub-tenanted by the Stanton family. Indeed, we find Miles de Middleton there in 1230 and his grandson William was involved in a land transaction there in 1291. These Middletons held under the descendants of Colle, later the de Harthills, and after them from the Cokaynes. From the latter the manorial estate went to the Howes of Langar in Nottinghamshire in the 17th century. After the Middletons died out, the Medieval house seems to have fallen into decay and been abandoned, chapel included: even Dr. Cox, author of Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire (1875-1879), seems to have missed it. Meanwhile, Robert, third son of Hugh Bateman of Hartington Hall bought a house and some land in Youlgreave which included part of Middleton in 1615 and in 1626 he built a new house, Middleton Hall, in the village, which seemingly included fragments of an earlier residence. In 1670, his son paid tax on seven hearths there, suggesting that it was a reasonably substantial place. They also held some land at Hartington. Robert’s house was clearly a simple E-plan or H-plan upland stone manor house, but as the only view we have of it was done shortly before demolition in 1812, our information is based on surmise. What the drawing actually shows is a typical late 18th century three bay two and a half storey farm house with a central entrance and an oeuil-de-boeuf attic window over the centrally positioned entrance with its Adam-influenced fan lit door, all enclosed by gritstone quoins, implying that the main building material was difficult-to-work carboniferous limestone from a local source. There are similar farmhouses, even down to the bull’s eye window, all over the White Peak, and especially on the former Bateman family’s Hartington Hall estate. What we also see on the left, however, is a surviving early 17th century cross wing of two storeys and attics, with typical mullioned casemented windows under cranked hood moulds with a group of tall stacks to one side. From this we may be fairly sure that the Batemans decided to enlarge the house c. 1770 and did it by replacing two-thirds of the original building with a brand new large farmhouse, probably put up by the local builder using a pattern book, leaving a third of the old house as a service wing. This seems to have been the work of Richard Bateman (1727-1774). Furthermore, the family estate kept on expanding, fuelled by successful lead trading and a cloth business in Manchester, mainly run by Richard’s youngest son, William. The eldest son was Thomas (1760-1747), who managed to buy from Viscount Howe, all the manorial land at Middleton which had been acquired the previous century by the Howes. In 1786, Thomas married Rebecca the daughter and co-heiress of Arthur Clegg, another Manchester cloth merchant, again increasing the family fortune. Their only son was William, who grew up to be a distinguished archaeologist and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He, however, died aged 47 in 1835, also leaving a son, Thomas, who caught the archaeology bug from his father, and became famous as the excavator (but without the methodical care expected today) of Bronze Age and later barrows all over Derbyshire, Staffordshire and southern Yorkshire, chronicled in two detailed books, now highly desirable. Young Thomas, born in 1821, was thus much influenced by his father’s example, but also by that of his grandfather in architecture, into whose care following his father’s death, when he was 14, he was placed. Meanwhile, old Thomas, buoyed up by his increasing wealth, his acquisition of the rest of the land in Middleton, and a fire which left the hall unlivable, resolved to replace the old family home rather than repair it. He therefore retired temporarily to Meadow Pleck, another house on the estate, and in 1823 – the year he served his High Shrievalty – unceremoniously demolished the old house. He was, however, already personally designing its successor, which was begun in 1824 and completed in 1826 on a new site, but quite near to the old house, off Rake Lane. It was two storey, flatted topped with a balustrade, very four square, with slim octagonal angle turrets and a projecting lancetted entrance in antis. It has a fine hall with an elegant Hoptonwood staircase with an iron balustrade. Much of the oak panelling from the old house, however, was transferred and survives within. The stables were a simpler version of the same. This, however, was
The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – The Grove, Darley Dale
The name Alsop (with multitudinous variations of spelling) is by no means uncommon in Derbyshire, if only because it derives from an unique place name, Alsop-en-le-Dale, next to Parwich, just north of Ashbourne. The Alsops had a Norman or Norse ancestor, called Gamel (probably derived from the Latin for ‘twin’- gemellus), who took his name from the place when granted the sub-tenancy of the manorial estate there by Henry de Ferrers before 1086. His descendant remained there until poverty forced a sale in the late 17th century and a tall portion of the family’s Elizabethan house remains as an ornament to the village to this day. As the place name is unique, it is likely that all Alsops today descend from Gamel, although you would need to DNA test everyone bearing the name to establish that most were actually of the same blood, so to speak. Furthermore, the preservation of the uniform spelling of names was in the hands, before the 1870 School Board Act, of semi-literate parish clerks which is why many surnames have sometimes quite extraordinary phonetic variants. With the Alsops, it rested with the duplication or otherwise of ‘l’s and ‘p’s. Hence, TV personality Hon. Kirsty Allsopp and her ancestors, back to Derby tobacco merchant Thomas, all spell with two of each. When her ancestor, Sir Samuel Allsopp, Bt., 1st Lord Hindlip, was first ennobled, he wanted to take the title Lord Alsop of Alsop, but he failed to establish his descent from the ancient family, and the Heralds in 1886 refused and whilst such a descent seemed likely, lack of proof forced him to take the name of his Worcestershire country house, Hindlip Hall (now the West Midlands Police HQ) as his title, becoming ‘Lord Hindlip of Hindlip and of Alsop-en-le-Dale’ (of which parish he had thoughtfully acquired a modest amount of land). He also had to accept changes to the historic coat-of-arms. Back in Derbyshire, lead trader John Alsop of Snitterton who wrote his will in 1798, was a similar case. His descent, possibly from Luke Alsop of Wirksworth, living in 1693, cannot be provably traced to Alsop-en-le-Dale either, although for all his family’s skyrocketing wealth, he was never offered a peerage! John Alsop had two sons, the elder Anthony, was barmaster (legal controller of lead mining) at Wirksworth and was ancestor of the Alsops of Wensley Hall, three generations of whom were barmasters at Wirksworth. The younger son, John Alsop was a lead merchant like his father and settled at Lea Wood, dying there in 1831; his memorial still graces the wall of the former chapel there to this day. He had two sons and two daughters, of whom the elder son Luke lived at Lea Hall, a delightful Baroque villa (albeit facing the chilly north winds) high up in Lea, and married Lydia the daughter of his father’s brother Anthony. The house at Lea Wood stayed in this branch. The younger son was John who was also a lead merchant and acquired some land on the east side of the main road (now the A6) through Darley Dale. Here, about 1790, he built a decent, four-square three storey and three bay wide villa with a top parapet, which he named The Grove. Some twenty-five years later he decided to increase the size of his house, adding a pediment over the whole width of the original villa, and two bay wings of two storeys on either side, but containing somewhat loftier rooms than those in the original part, with the result that the wings were nearly as tall as the main, central, block. At the same time, he provided the garden front with a cast iron trellis verandah with an iron roof. The grounds ran to over 50 acres, but who undertook the landscaping is not known. John Webb, in the 1790s active at Willersley Castle, is a possibility. Indeed, we was working in conjunction with Thomas Gardner of Uttoxeter there, formerly assistant to Joseph Pickford of Derby, and it is not impossible that Gardner might have built Alsop the original villa. The finished house was, therefore, of some size, and was inherited in 1834 by John Alsop, the son, also a lead merchant who, for reasons not wholly clear to me (one assumes financial difficulties or the lure of becoming a gold trader) emigrated to Australia in about 1850. He let the house to Revd. William Hiley Bathurst (1796-1877) the second son of Charles Bathurst MP (formerly Bragge) who had inherited the Lydney Park estate in Gloucestershire from an uncle, Poole Bathurst, in 1804. Incidentally, the ‘a’ in Bathurst is always short. W. H. Bathurst himself had married Mary Anne Rhodes, the daughter of a Leeds businessman, but in 1863, his brother died and he inherited the Lydney Park estate, moving there that year. His successor was a lowland Scot and an Indian ‘nabob’, Robert Keith Pringle (1802-1897) of an old Selkirk family, who had risen high in the Indian Civil Service at Bombay (now Mumbai) under the Honourable East India Company. In 1848 he married Mary Jane, daughter of General George Moore of the Indian Army, but the couple had moved back to England in 1862, following the changes brought about in the wake of the mutiny. At the Grove, now re-christened Darley Grove (confusingly, bearing in mind there was then a substantial house in Derby of the same name – see Country Images August 2015) the couple added a canted bay to the south front along with a conservatory, supplied by Messenger & Co. of Loughborough. Here, at Darley Grove, they reared a brood of five sons and five daughters, and it may have been lack of space that persuaded them to sell up, in 1876 to a Manchester millionaire, William J. Roberts. Within a few years, Roberts decided to replace the house with something more befitting his status, so in 1884 demolished The Grove and set about building a completely in-your-face essay in Jacobean revival, of
The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Eastwood Hall, Ashover
Ashover is a most interesting, beautiful and large parish in central Derbyshire, situated just south east of the main road from Matlock to Chesterfield (A632). The parish is home to several minor country houses – Eddlestow, Goss, Marsh Green and Stubben Edge Halls, not to mention Eastwood Grange – but also includes a lost house, Eastwood Hall, albeit that its ruins are still a prominent feature of the landscape. South of the village, there is a lane linking Hard Meadow Lane with Stubben Edge Lane called – you guessed it – Eastwood Lane. Although Google StreetView has never bothered to venture along it, it is a pleasant drive, and its main feature is a substantial agglomeration of farm buildings, rising up amongst which appears a tree seemingly of extraordinary and vast bulk. This is the remaining vestige of Eastwood Hall. When Mick Stanley and I first visited, in winter 1980/1981 whilst researching the first edition of The Derbyshire Country House, it was moderately visible, standing gaunt to a considerable height; when Carole and I revisited to make a more up-to-date photograph for my forthcoming book on lost Derbyshire houses (from Amberley, expected early next year, thanks to Covid delays) we found it utterly invisible, despite it being April 2021: it was completely swathed in greenery – a huge shapeless lump. As the ruin is a grade II listed building, this is not good news, for such a plenitude of growth will inevitably weaken an already damaged structure in ruins for 376 years: one can imagine it collapsing entirely in one of the sort of storm we enjoyed in February this year. This, of course, might not be particularly good news for the owner, as a later west wing, built out of the rescued fabric, is still inhabited and a collapse could quite easily flatten it! Fortunately, these storms tend to come from the west, so they may feel confident that any collapse will fall eastwards. So profuse is the growth, indeed, that it may be holding the poor old thing together. At the time of Domesday Book (1086) two manorial estates at Ashover, previously in the possession of a pair of Saxon thegns called Leofric and Leofnoth, had been bestowed upon one Serlo, who held it as the subtenant of the Norman grandee Ralph son of Hubert of Crich. Serlo’s great-grandson, Serlo of Pleasley, left two daughters and heiresses and, through marriages over the two following generations one daughter’s share had descended to Ralph de Willoughby and the other’s to Isidore de Reresby of Rearsby, Leicestershire and Thrybergh in Yorkshire. Presumably, Serlo had lived on the estate, if only because by 1302, the Willoughbys had built a fresh house, and called it New Hall, presumably to differentiate it from its predecessor. Part of their estate eventually was acquired by the Reresbys, too. This was the house that later became Eastwood Hall. Sir George Sitwell claimed, to Derbyshire archaeologist S. O. Addy, that the ruins in his day included ; ‘The arch over the east doorway…a very fine and interesting specimen of Norman architecture at the early part of the 12th century, and the interior of the hall or vestibule also shows traces of the same style…the early English windows and masonry in the western tower probably date from about 1220’ Addy, however, could not verify any of this on the ground and, whatever had been built in the 13th and 14th centuries seems, in reality, to have been obliterated by a mid-to-late 15th century rebuild. This rebuild took the form of a five storey tower house which, after Prior Overton’s Tower at Repton (1437) and the High Tower of Wingfield Manor (1444) must have been the earliest residential tower house in the Midlands, a region which, in the Tudor age, became famousfor them. The house is constructed of Ashover Grit or Chatsworth Grit (types of millstone grit sandstone) roughly squared and brought to course, with dressings – quoins, fenestration and so on – of the same. The initial build, which may have been intended as a hunting lodge for occasional use, was a free-standing tower of five storeys; the ‘battlements’ noted in the 18th century were probably decorative Tudor merlons put on later in the 16th century to add a bit of dash to the house’s appearance, for no licence from the Crown to crenellate the house has ever come to light. The east front had the highest part at its south end and a later, lower, three storey range was added, probably in the 16th century to form a five bay east front with miniscule two light mullioned windows below a thin string course lighting the upper floor, with some mullion and transom windows for the ground floor. This range probably included something of a great hall. The central bay was deeply recessed but later acquired a porch to infill the space. Sir Thomas Reresby married Mary Monson, who brought him a Lincolnshire estate and £2,000 which he spent turning this slightly adapted hunting lodge into a proper residence for a landed country gentleman. He added a new range to the south west and carried this round to form a west front, adding a short service wing to the north and a single storey parlour range to the east side of the high tower. The interior, it would appear, was enriched with ornamental plasterwork, but Sir Thomas eventually over-stretched himself financially, vesting the estate in trustees. In the end, he was obliged, in 1612, to mortgage it to Samuel Tryon, a London merchant who foreclosed in 1623. Tryon then split up the estate by sale, and sold the house to Revd. Immanuel Bourne (whose family came from Whirlow, near Sheffield) the vicar of Ashover, who adapted it as a very grand and eccentric vicarage. When the Civil War broke out, Bourne attempted to temporize and in so doing got the worst of both worlds. At first the Royalists held much of the County, and in 1643 he
The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Pilsley Old Hall
The last lost house about which I wrote was Coney Green Hall, bought in 1774 for £4,000 by Thomas Wilson, who also acquired Pilsley Old Hall, just over two miles away and still in North Wingfield parish, so it seemed logical to move right on to chronicle what we know about the latter. The Old Hall at Pilsley was a superb example of a minor Derbyshire manor house: seventeenth century in date, compact, gabled and sturdily built. It was deservedly listed II*, and was by no means too large to make a viable home for a modern family and by the time of its demise in 1965, it was in tatty shape but in reasonable overall repair. Its loss, therefore, prior to the 1968 Act came into force on 1st January 1969, which would have afforded it better protection, seems from today’s viewpoint well-nigh indefensible. The house was built of roughly coursed coal-measures sandstone and with a stone slate roof, topped by four stone chimneys, latterly with brick tops, neatly emphasising the hearth tax assessment of four hearths chargeable in 1670, although no doubt hearths were added to the bedrooms later. It consisted of two parallel ranges, running north to south, giving a twin gabled façade, each gable surmounting two bays on the principal floors and a central attic light, all originally being mullioned, probably the larger ones with single transoms. The windows had moulded surrounds and there was an unpretentious central entrance. The west side sported a ladder staircase window, lighting a fine quality Regency timber staircase (a replacement no doubt, for a more substantial original oak one) with a stick balustrade, triglyph carved tread ends over a Vitruvian scroll and a curled mahogany rail. Indeed, the tread ends are sufficiently old fashioned for one to suspect the staircase was perhaps at least a couple of generations earlier and was perhaps merely fitted up with a new balustrade by the Wilsons, possibly because the original one had become damaged. The east front was blind for two thirds of its length, ending with another staircase light, presumably for the secondary stair, and surviving superimposed two light mullioned windows beyond. Inside, the house was spacious and clearly intended for a gentleman rather than to act as a farmhouse, with a number of distinctive chimneypieces, most of which managed to survive into the twentieth century, that in the parlour even being flanked by a pair of arched niches complete with fielded panelled doors. Others boasted bolection mouldings, and some were of Hoptonwood polished limestone as, inevitably, were the cantilevered staircase and the floors in the hall and kitchen. Apart from modest cornices and dados, little superfluous ornament was applied and if there was panelling (highly likely), it had all gone by the time the Royal Commission of Historic Monuments for England photographed the house. At the time of Domesday, Pilsley was held in chief by Walter d’Eyncourt whose seat, Ayncourt, lay nearby (latterly a moated site, lost to coal mining in the later 19th century) and remained in the senior line of that family until 1442 when Robert, 7th Lord d’Eyncourt of Pilsley died without leaving any children. His barony fell into abeyance between the descendants of two aunts, and the estates passed to the then all-powerful Lord Treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, whose seat was Wingfield Manor. In 1456, he too, died without leaving issue when Pilsley passed to William 7th Lord Lovell of Tichmarsh. The son, Lord Lovell, Holland & Grey (of Rotherfield), was later attainted for high treason in 1484, when the estate reverted to the Crown. The estate at Pilsley then came to the Leakes of Sutton Scarsdale, although for whom it was built, probably c. 1630, is unclear: either a younger son, or for the estate’s bailiff or agent. Certainly, one junior branch lived at nearby Williamthorpe Hall and another might easily have been ensconced at Pilsley. Nicholas, 4th Earl of Scarsdale, spent a colossal sum rebuilding his main house at Sutton Scarsdale with one of England’s Baroque masterpieces (see May’s County Images), gambled heavily, dying without issue and essentially bankrupt in 1736, when it was sold to Richard Calton of Chesterfield a lawyer, who completed in 1743. He it was who probably converted the main fenestration to sashes in plain surrounds; the glazing bars were fairly thick, which invariably betokens an earlier eighteenth century date. His descendants lived there until the late 18th century when it was sold, along with Coney Green Hall, to Thomas Wilson, from a Nottinghamshire family snobbishly described in Throsby’s edition of Thoroton’s History of Nottinghamshire as ‘rich graziers.’ The fine regency staircase and other improvements were probably the work of the Wilsons, who, readers may recall, also set about making alterations to Coney Green as well. In 1850, William Henry Wilson, a land surveyor, was living there, and it was then that his family sold it to John Sampson a local brick and tile manufacturer. Later the Sampsons, in the person of the son, Luke, sold it again in 1880 but with only 23 acres, the remainder remaining in the hands of the Sampsons until the mid-1930s when, on the death of Thomas, Luke Sampson’s son, it was all sold up. The purchaser of the house, however, was E. A. Storer and in the Edwardian period, it was let to Granville Chambers, and later sold around 1930 to Mathew Eyre Wilde, JP who let it to Solomon Cutts. Post war, the last owner was F. Gardener of Littleover, but the house had fallen empty by the early 1960s, and architects Bestwick, Bowler and Hagg successfully applied for consent to demolish, and it came down on 13th August 1968, to be replaced – you guessed it! – by a new housing development. Why the developer could not have divided this venerable old hall into a pair of very pleasant period residences and built new houses, preferably out of local stone to a good design, beyond the immediate surroundings is a mystery; the
The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Fenny Bentley Old Hall
When travelling to Buxton from Derby, as we did in May to visit the annual Buxton Antiques Fair, we usually go via Ashbourne and the A515 rather than the A6, which is slower, if more direct. This takes us through Fenny Bentley and one of the delights of passing that village is to be able to refresh oneself at the Coach and Horses (usually on the way back) and the other is to catch sight of the Old Hall, situated on a corner of the road just beyond the pub, as one sweeps up the hill towards the railway bridge. What one sees is the arresting sight of a gnarled old square three storey stone tower with a couple of superimposed doorways facing the road, shielded on the west by a remnant of cyclopean walling. Attached, behind, is a 17th century house of two storeys with a wide attic gable. The ensemble is delightful and arresting, and the tower marks the surviving vestiges of another lost Derbyshire country house, described by Samuel and Daniel Lysons as ‘once a large castellated mansion’ At Domesday, Bentley was held as an outlier of the King’s manor of Ashbourne, but by the 1180s it appears to have become constituted as a separate manorial estate, and was held by Richard de Bentley. Presumably his family built a capital mansion there, probably moated (the present site is said to contain remnants of a moat), but the passage of the estate and family are confusing in the extreme, and after John son of William de Bentley, who was also of Broadlow Ash nearby, we hear no more of them at Fenny Bentley, and the manor appears to have been divided, probably between two coheiresses, one marrying a Beresford of Beresford, a spectacular site overlooking the Dove, slightly to the west (possibly with an intervening generation of Bassets), the other, it would seem, a Bradbourne of Bradbourne. By the fifteenth century, we find a capital mansion being held at Fenny Bentley by John Beresford, who was also of Newton Grange, a couple of miles to the north, and also now a farmhouse. His son Thomas died in 1473, leaving Fenny Bentley to his son Aden and Newton Grange to his other son, Thomas. By this time the manor house, of which the surviving tower was once part, had been built. As the Beresfords were an important family, the likelihood is that the house was built around two courtyards, like Haddon and now Norbury, which was discovered to have been on this scale by archaeological excavation in 2009. The surviving fragment has been canvassed as a gatehouse, but if so, how to explain the remaining stub of wall running westward from it, and the fact that until the 18th century there was a second, similar tower to its east? Furthermore, both towers were crenellated, as the Lysons (writing in 1817) attest. The supposition must be that the towers marked the outer courtyard of a stoutly defended house, and Dr. Anthony Emery has pointed out a similarity to the surviving tower of Smisby Manor. The superimposed internal doors on the west side, along with the wall stub suggest a two storey north range of the outer courtyard having once stood here with the tower at the angle. The house passed down through the generations of Beresfords until Olivia Beresford married John Stanhope of Elvaston and their daughter brought it in marriage to Charles Cotton, whose son, another Charles, was the likeable poet and intimate of Izaak Walton, who fished in Cotton’s section of the Dove. He fell hopelessly into debt (partly through backing the King in the Civil War) resulting in its ultimate sale to the Jacksons of Stanshope, Staffordshire. Whilst Charles Cotton lived at Beresford Hall, the old manor house was something of a burden, and he seems to have reduced it and let it, ironically to Mrs. Beresford, mother of the then Beresford of Newton Grange and Compton (Ashbourne), who was assessed for tax on only eight hearths there in 1670, which suggests that probably an entire courtyard had been de-commissioned. Nor did the Jacksons have any use for the old house once Mrs. Beresford had died, so they sold it to the Recorder of Derby, Sir Simon Degge (1612-1703), of Abbot’s Hill House in Derby a year or two before 1680. He also had a small ancestral estate at Stramshall in Staffordshire, and one wonders if he had any intention of using the house himself. Nevertheless, he spent some money on it. It would appear that he demolished all the medieval house except the two towers and built the present rather high quality farmhouse between them. The portion to the west behind the tower may have been fashioned in the 18th century from a fragment of the old house, too. Degge’s work bore his initials and the date of 1680 (no longer visible) and the symmetry of the design: taller ceilings on the first floor with rooms lit by one four and two six-light mullioned and transomed windows with a four light window in matching style lighting the attic above. The retention of the surviving tower was originally to provide a newel staircase which leads into the principal chamber which has chamfered door jambs surviving from the original house, and a south facing room was fashioned on the tower’s first floor lit by a full width mullioned and transomed window. Despite the present simplicity of the central entrance, one did not, in the third quarter of the 17th century, build a suite of grand rooms on the first floor with rather meaner service accommodation below for a farmer to enjoy. Clearly this was no farmhouse, and it seems likely that Degge intended to use it perhaps, as a summer residence. Sir Simon’s grandson, Dr. Simon Degge FRS, FSA was an antiquary, who excavated at Repton amongst other places, but on his death in 1724, the house and estate were sold, being bought by the descendants
The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Stretton House
Stretton, along with Measham and Appleby Parva (for the lost houses at which see Country Images December 2019 and October 2020), lay within a large ‘island’ of Derbyshire, separated since Saxon times from the bulk of the county, itself created in the mid-10th century. This ‘island’ also included Oakthorpe, Donisthorpe, Chilcote and Willesley (see Country Images for March 2018 for the lost hall there) and in another, even further south, lay Ravenstone, all since 1888 safely transferred to Leicestershire, except Chilcote which went to Staffordshire Not only that, but Stretton is about the most sequestered place you could possibly find in the local area, despite lying north of Appleby and west of Measham flanked by the A42 and the A444, the river Mease forming the third side of a sort of topographical triangle. With a population barely in double figures there is a fine church, St. Michael, long redundant and with an uncared-for look and a strange brooding atmosphere – or so it appeared to me and Mick Stanley when we visited, in the process of writing volume two of The Derbyshire Country House in 1981. The site of the hall was covered by what appears to be a tangled growth of impenetrable bocage. Even when Nichols was writing his history of Leicestershire over two centuries ago (in which these Derbyshire islands were included) the village was essentially a seriously shrunk one, having but the hall, a mill, the church and a few cottages. The Domesday tenant under Robert de Ferrers was almost certainly the ancestor of the de Stretton family, which managed to hang on to the estate, despite some intervening hiatuses until at the beginning of the fifteenth century it was split between three cousins, being later united by the Findernes of Swarkestone and then sold to the Blounts of Barton Blount, Lords Mountjoy. In around 1540 they sold the estate to John Browne of Horton Kirby, Kent, a London merchant and Henry VIII’s mint master. His father and grandfather had both been Lords Mayor of London, so there was no shortage of cash with which to invest in land. John’s son built a new hall at Stretton towards the end of that century. It continued with the Brownes until the death of William Browne in 1744, whereupon it descended to his grandson John Cave, also of Ravenstone nearby and of Eydon, Northamptonshire. In that same year he added the surname and arms of Browne to his own. In 1757 he married, which in due course necessitated him enlarging the hall, according to Nicholas, ‘by a large stone edifice on the north side’ probably in the 1760s. It is this house of which that author provides an engraving, revealing the late Tudor house as having had two storeys with attics in four gables of which the central pair broke forward. There were string courses above the mullion and transom cross windows, tall slim chimney stacks and a low wing to the north east. In 1670 there were 12 hearths taxable, indicating a reasonably substantial house but it was at that time divided as two distinct households between John Browne and the widower of his half-sister, Christian, Henry Adams. John Cave’s addition, as the engraving makes clear, did the north side of the house no favours aesthetically, being three full storeys high and essentially a canted bay added centrally, uniting the two central projecting gables, like a Palladian penetrating pediment. Here, there was a double string course and sash windows, pedimented on the ground floor with the windows either side of the addition turned into, on the left, a segmentally headed niche and on the right by a matching doorcase and all crowned by a pyramidal roof, the whole arrangement looking thoroughly awkward, although the fault may well lie with Nichols’ artist who made the sketch for the engraving. The architect may have been Joseph Pickford’s contemporary William Henderson of Loughborough (c. 1739-1797) whom we encountered when talking of Measham Hall, trying to make the best of a bad job. Yet the arrangement, bearing in mind that all this new accommodation faced north, cannot have been wholly satisfactory. What precisely he did to the garden front, however, seems to emerge later, when we look at the next stage in the alterations. John’s son, William, in 1810 inherited the baronetcy of the Caves, succeeding a distant cousin as 9th baronet, subsequently adding Cave to his already double-barrelled name by Royal Licence in 1839 thus ending up as Sir William Cave-Brown-Cave. Sir William’s son, Sir John decided in 1845 to do something about the house, Bagshaw remarking that in that year it was ‘undergoing considerable repair’, which is something of an understatement, for the appearance of the surviving mansion demonstrates that he essentially pulled down much of the previous house – probably piecemeal, so that the family could continue living there – and largely rebuilt it. The south (garden) front had clearly been similar to that on the north, but the 1757 rebuilding seems to have led to the deletion of the central two gables, and the insertion of a two storey, five bay recessed centre with Georgian sashed windows, a feature also applied to the windows of the gables. In 1845, a further bay was added at each end of the façade and the gables embellished with ornamental bargeboards, the architect being clearly influenced by the contemporary enthusiasm for the cottage orné style, as championed by John Claudius Loudon, creator of the Derby Arboretum. Judging from the low pyramidal roof just visible over the roof in the Keene photograph of the south front the awkward canted bay of 1757 was allowed to remain. Unfortunately, no photograph of that side of the house has ever emerged to tell us how it was primped up. Despite this, the house was let in the 1850s, first to Charles Colville of nearby Lullington Hall (whilst his house was being rebuilt) then to Capt. Lewis Conran, a military friend of the family
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Stretton-in-Shirland
It is entirely through the thorough researches undertaken by Gladwyn Turbutt that we have a good, comprehensive history of this lost house and its occupants. Derbyshire historian Stephen Glover wrote in around 1832 that the house overlooked ‘one of the finest valleys in the county’ and if you were to go to our excellent Museum at Derby you will see Joseph Wright’s painting The Rainbow, which is understood to have been painted by the river Amber just below the house which, in its heyday, was set in a small park of unusual beauty. And indeed, Joseph Wright had strong connections with the house (as he had with lost Yoxall Lodge in Staffordshire through his long friendship with Derby’s slavery abolitionist Thomas Gisborne). When I wrote about Derwent Hall, we encountered a house that was lost to the building of a reservoir, and Errwood Hall was also a secondary casualty in Derbyshire of a house lost to the desire of local authorities to flood valleys of incomparable beauty to quench the thirst of the citizens of adjoining towns. Regrettably, Ford House and its predecessor, Ford Old Hall (or House), were also casualties of this ecologically unfriendly aspect of having to deal with a burgeoning population. Some time in the Tudor era, a family called Curtis held a modest estate at Ford, but they enjoyed the status of yeoman farmer rather than of gentlemen. In the seventh century John Curtis married a daughter of their near neighbours, the Revels of Ogston Hall, subsequently became a Quaker and in 1680, with the encouragement of a Revell kinsman, migrated to America where his progeny still flourish. The Curtis family must have built the old hall, a single range of which survived into the twentieth century, and which was the subject of a postcard issued by a local firm at Alfreton. What one sees is a lowish two storey range of coal measures sandstone with two light mullioned windows set with cast iron casements and topped with a stone slate roof. To the right was a later range, and the whole functioned as a farmhouse until it met its nemesis. Swathwick, in Wingerworth, who initially added the range to the right of the Old Hall around 1700, allegedly as a malthouse, although the formality of its architecture rather suggests increased accommodation for Holland who had married three years before. Yet he was a maltster, and a successful one, but one feels that the epicentre of his trade would more likely have been in Alfreton, three miles away. In 1713 George was succeeded by his son Thomas, whose accounts partially survive, entries from which suggest that he spent £100 building stables in 1721 and a few years later spent £336 for ‘building the house at fford’ which is usually taken to be the Ford House that survived to be photographed. Yet there are reasons to doubt this. The three photographs I have been able to dig our (three of them locally printed postcards) show the house as a three storey stone building, of coal measures sandstone, ashlared to the main (east) front and of random rubble brought to course at the sides. It had a hipped roof, a cornice supporting a dwarf parapet and three bays of paired sashes to the main façade, a most unusual arrangement for the date. The pediment at the centre of the ground floor was clearly not intended as the main entrance, as it spanned two bays like the rest, of which only one serves as a door, almost certainly to give access to the garden. The entrance was clearly in the courtyard behind and to the left. To the left too there is a single bay of superimposed paired mullioned but sashed windows, roughly the same height as the main range and beyond that a courtyard connecting to a very pretty stable block consisting of a pediment over a triple arcade. The main house is most emphatically not in the style of George I, nor is the stable block for that matter. Looking at the two storey range to the left (the south wing) I suspect this is all that was suffered to remain after a later building campaign, of the original house, possibly a rebuild of an earlier building (Mr. Turbutt suspects that earlier stable block of the Old Hall which stood behind to the north). This remnant, latterly the kitchen wing, included an inscribed pane of glass to ‘Thomas Holland de Ford in Com. Derb. Gent. Decimo Quarto die Aprilis Anno Dni 1729’ This must surely be a commemoration of the completion of the building, for which the £336 payment was part. What was there latterly looks remarkably like a late eighteenth century house, although the paired windows are still a rare feature. Furthermore, the stables look a little earlier if anything; the arcade under a plain pediment closely resembles the summerhouse built by Joseph Pickford at Ashbourne Mansion around 1763 and in the early nineteenth century was embellished with stone balls to the gateway and wall in true Palladian tradition, these details known only from a contemporary painting. Finally, although the 1720s accounts break off, incomplete, £336 for a substantial house (unless a payment on account) is not a lot of money. Thomas Holland died in 1776 and, I suspect, at a much later date than his youthful building programme, he had the stables enlarged and embellished, probably in the 1760s, using an architect not unfamiliar with Palladian motifs, perhaps Edmund Stanley of Chesterfield, who oversaw the building of the new hall at Ogston nearby to the designs of Joseph Pickford of Derby. Thomas was succeeded by his son John, an altogether more sensitive man than his father. He married in 1777, his wife Mary being sister-in-law to his equally cultivated neighbour William Turbutt. The couple entertained at Ford an important network of enlightenment friends including painters like Wright and his friend William Tate, the abolitionist and collaborator of William Wilberforce, Revd. Thomas Gisborne and
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – New Hall, Castleton
When Mick Stanley and I were researching the first edition of The Derbyshire Country House around 1980 our attention was drawn by a colleague of Mick’s at the Derbyshire Museum Service (of blessed memory) to an item in a north Derbyshire auction. Provenanced from a vendor in Buxton, this was a fine oak 17th century dresser – really a court cupboard – which had come from New Hall, Castleton. This was identified by a friend who knows his oak furniture as probably being of west Derbyshire origin, although the flowing vine frieze and tubby pilasters were of a pattern which appears to have originated in the Wakefield area. We were unable to establish anything about this mysterious house at the time, nor to discover a picture of it, which guaranteed that we would not be able to write about it, for our book was an illustrated one, after all. However, whilst looking into what is known as Sheffield School plasterwork in the late 16th and early 17th century, especially as found in Derbyshire country houses, a colleague at Sheffield Museum sent us a copy of an article in Vol. III of the Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society in which a short account of this house appeared. He also found us a fairly scratchy photograph. The house was situated on rising ground on the north side of the road which runs west from the centre of the village, not so far north of the Methodist chapel, build within its immediate surroundings, such a position being favoured by one or two other gentry houses on the edges of the village, like Losehill Hall. In its last phase, the house was a lowish two storey structure of carboniferous limestone rubble with a single crosswing, itself higher and endowed with chunky ashlar quoins. Indeed, it much resembled a slightly scaled up version of Hazelbadge Hall as seen in a mirror, and the crosswing was probably of similar date – later 15th century. The superimposed five-light mullioned windows had a decorative treatment of their heads of a closely similar style and, after all, Hazlebadge is only just over the hill to the south, and the same mason may well have been responsible for both. When the house was originally built, the great hall would have been open to the roof with either a central fireplace venting through a hole in the timber roof, or – here more likely given that we cannot trace the house back that far – by a fireplace and stout chimney breast on the long side opposite the door. Here, right of the door would have been a passage from which the kitchen and other offices opened. Where it differed from Hazelbadge is that the great hall range (missing at Hazelbadge), at right angles to the crosswing, had clearly been demolished at some stage, probably in the very early 19th century and replaced with a simple farmhouse of the most rudimentary architecture. What survived of this part until the demise of the house was a lowish (distinctly lower than the crosswing) two storey range, also of random rubble, albeit latterly harled, with six bays, bays two and four having no fenestration but each a door, the former into the house through a very plain stone surround and the latter into the byre with a re-used stone Tudor doorcase. The windows are all sashes, paired with a mullion in between and set in simple stone surrounds. Both wings had stone slate roofs, and latterly, too, the late Medieval wing had a door crudely inserted at the gable end to the right of the windows. To the left was what was probably a further part of the original house which may, indeed, have been built round a courtyard. What appeared as a ruined barn rejoiced in a six light mullioned window with similarly decorative head, but with some mullions missing. Probably this was moved when the original great hall wing was taken down and saved, whether out of sentiment or a typically Derbyshire desire not to waste something of use and beauty. The crosswing held most of the surviving Sheffield School decorative plasterwork, although mutilated re-positioned scraps were also preserved in the ground floor of the main range, which must have been spared later alterations, probably out of sentiment or through merit. Fortunately, a painting of an unknown house appeared at Bamford’s auctions in December 2003, which we managed to identify, from the topography, provenance and detail, as New Hall, Castleton. Although anonymous, it clearly dated from the Regency period, and the great boon was that it showed the previous range intact. Several changes were discernable. The crosswing originally was steeper to the gable (which had decorative coping) and boasted attics, lit by a two-mullion window, with decorative coping to the gable itself. This was later lowered and simplified. The main range was the same length but originally had five light windows to the left of the four-centered arched entrance, those on the ground floor with a transom too. Beyond the entrance, the fall of the ground enabled there to be an attic, this section running to two bays again with transoms to the ground floor windows. This in itself probably represented a later 17th century rebuilding, where the great hall, to the left of the entrance was floored over and rooms made above it, a common change to surviving medieval houses of the period. Indeed, the portion beyond the entrance may have been added at this time. The house seems to have been built by Thomas Savage, second son of Sir Thomas Savage of Rocksavage, Cheshire, ancestor of the present Marquess of Cholmondeley. Another cadet branch of this family had previously held Tissington, and the senior line were of Stainsby, by Ault Hucknall, until a later Savage sold it to Bess of Hardwick who, needless to say, pulled down their ancient moated manor house. John Savage increased his estate through marriage to Alice, one of the co-heiresses of Humphrey
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Measham Hall
Well informed readers might be tempted to say, on seeing the subject of this article, that Measham is not in Derbyshire at all, which seems all wrong in view of the fact that we try to present histories of lost Derbyshire houses. All it not quite as it seems, however, as Measham was until 1897 very definitely part of Derbyshire, one of a number of enclaves entirely surrounded by Leicestershire, which tidy-minded legislation of 1889 set out to resolve. Furthermore, the church of Measham was originally a chapel-of-ease of Repton parish church. These enclaves were formed in the tenth and eleventh centuries by assarting (clearing of woodland for cultivation) by Derbyshire people in land that had not at that time been fully shired in the wake of the unification of re-conquered Mercia with Wessex to form the Kingdom of England. The southernmost was Ravenstone; others included Chilcote, part of Donisthorpe, Oakthorpe, Packington, Snibston, Appleby Parva and part of Magna, Stretton-en-le-Field and Willesley (the hall at which we have already dealt with). We lost Clifton Campville and part of Edingale to Staffordshire and received both Seals, Over and Nether, in return. The ancient manorial estate was from the Conquest with the de Measham family, but in 1308 it passed via an heiress to the Bereforts and thence to the Blounts of Barton Blount, Lords Mountjoy, from whom it came in the Civil War to the Sheffields, Dukes of Buckingham and Normanby, then the Wollastons, who sold much of the land, long heavily mined for its coal, to Robert Abney in 1730. The Abneys probably originated from the village of that name in the Peak, the first known representative being William son of John Abney of Hope, not so far away, living 1310. Just over a century later they inherited Willesley, where they remained until 1858. George Abney of Willesley who died in 1579 left three sons. The eldest continued at Willesley, whilst the second Edmund was a Leicester merchant, married a daughter of a mayor of the place and their son Dannatt Abney was also mayor there. A descendant, Paul, served in the navy on the frigate HMS Josiah and died in Virginia, where his posterity remained and flourished mightily as prominent landowners and attorneys. The youngest son settled on an estate at Newton Burgoland, and his great grandson was Robert, whose elder surviving son became a mill owner at Oldbury, Staffs., in the Black Country (then a lot less black, of course) whilst the younger, William (1713-1800) was given the land at Measham to develop the coal. This must have proved rewarding, for in 1767 he resolved to build a house on the land, and indeed seems to have spared little expense in so doing, being aided in this by his wife, Catherina, who he had married in 1743 and who later inherited an estate at Little Canons, Herts. from her father, Thomas Wootton. By 1767, they had four young sons and two daughters and probably needed a house of sufficient size, commensurate with their status, and to build it at Measham was probably the ideal site. The Palladian building which resulted is not fully understood as there seems to be no proper survey surviving, but it was a two and a half storey brick house, seven bays wide on the main (south) front with the central three bays breaking slightly forward under a pediment. This contained a round carved stone cartouche set unusually low down on the cornice containing the family crest (a demi-lion issuant or holding between the paws an ogress) flanked with palm fronds. The ground floor end bays had each a tripartite window set in rusticated surrounds, whilst the rest of the windows had gauged brick lintels. There was a sill band at first floor level and a plat band between the first and second floors with rusticated quoins at the angles, all topped by a rather perfunctory cornice supporting a hipped roof with central light well. The side elevations were of three bays, where the fenestration was set in stone surrounds and the windows on the first and ground floors were embellished with triangular pediments, whilst the central top-floor window was octagonal. The entrance was to the east. The interior was apparently of some pretension, with a mahogany staircase rising through the height of the house in the central well with three turned balusters per tread. Unfortunately, little detail has survived otherwise, although the portrait of Jedediah Strutt by Joseph Wright, now in Derby Museum, hung in the house from the mid nineteenth century, where it was recorded in 1907. In true Palladian style, the house was flanked by two smaller pavilions joined to the main building by short single storey links. These were on one and a half storeys three bays wide under a pyramidal roof. The ground floor windows were set in a blind arcade and a first-floor sill band extended under a panelled parapet over the links. In all, it made a very satisfying ensemble. The well-wooded park extended to thirty acres. The architect of the house is not known for certain, but in the 2001 third edition of The Derbyshire Country House I opined that it might have been William Henderson of Loughborough, a close contemporary of Joseph Pickford. Now I know more about Henderson, I do not think he was involved, but instead would suggest William Harrison (c. 1740-1794). He started in Derby, son of a joiner and was styled ‘architect and surveyor’ by the time that Measham Hall was begun. He was building the Clergy Widows’ Almshouses at Ashbourne at that same period. It is possible that working for the Abneys brought him in contact with potential clients at Leicester, for he settled there soon afterwards. His magnificent Leicester Asylum has stylistically much in common with the somewhat more elaborate Measham Hall The eldest son, Robert Abney, died without surviving issue, when the estate was inherited by his next brother, the Revd. Edward Abney from whom it
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Little Chester Manor House, Derby
Readers will be well aware that Little Chester is a characterful Derby suburb which overlies the remains of the Roman small town of Derventio. What some may not know is that within its modest compass stands Derby’s oldest domestic residence: Stone House Prebend, on Old Chester Road, itself once the via principia of the military fort which preceded the town. The house, although rebuilt in the early 17th century and again in the late 18th, contains considerable medieval fabric. It is so named because when the College of All Saints with St. Alkmund’s was re-founded soon after Derby itself in 921, the six canons of St. Alkmund and the seven canons of All Saints’, were granted land recently seized from the Viking invaders at Little Chester (itself re-fortified by the Norse), Little Eaton and Quarndon upon which were established farms, each supplying the needs of a canon. This is why all the three settlements were all, until 1867 parts of the parish of St. Alkmund, Derby, despite being outside the ancient borough boundary. Unfortunately, no document survives to tell us where exactly they all were, but there were at least six in Little Chester. Unfortunately, again, with the dissolution of the chantries by Edward VI in 1549, the College was wound up and its property sold. In 1554 Queen Mary, anxious to undo some of the damage made by her father’s exactions, made some amends by re-acquiring as much of the College’s former land as possible which she gave to the Corporation of Derby as part of a charter, granted the following year, with a view to using the rental income to endow the incumbents of the main borough churches with a stipend. Not all the land in the township returned to the Corporation, however, and at least a third remained outside their control and constituted the Manor of Little Chester – mainly on the north of Old Chester Road. The College was run on behalf of the Dean (who was also Dean of Lincoln and invariably absent) by a sub-dean, and we are pretty certain that Stone House Prebend was his farm. This is re-inforced by the substantial nature of the house, although in all conscience, the other two we know of in Little Chester were well above the average for contemporary farmhouses, although in their case, the enhancement of their status may well have occurred after the Reformation. The other surviving one is Derwent House, lying immediately north of the sub-dean’s establishment on the opposite side of Old Chester Road. This is a brick building mainly of early 17th century date, with delightful blind brick arcading, impost band and an astonishingly wide staircase for a house of its size. The cellar was much earlier and stone lined, and was thought to be of Roman origin. We cannot check, because, despite its listed status, the Corporation of Derby shot two lorryloads of cement into it around 1980 when the tenant was having trouble with damp. The third house, Little Chester Manor, has now vanished. It was also largely brick and of 17th century date, less elaborate than Derwent House, albeit occupying a larger footprint, and stood on the south side of Old Chester Road, about 100 yards east of Stone House Prebend, and adjacent to the east gate of the walled Roman town, excavated in 1972. This was more recently called Manor House Farm, having been re-named after a new house was built opposite to it in the late 19th century (also now vanished) itself optimistically styled the Manor House. The Manor House (as we shall call it) was L-shaped in plan, two storeys, in brick with a tile roof. The range facing the road had coped end gables, once with finials on the kneelers, three- light mullioned windows and, when visited by the late Roy Hughes in June 1963, had a space within it subdivided horizontally, probably in the 18th century, which was probably its great hall. This was approached by a baffle entry, all suggesting that it had a medieval core and was probably a building of some status. The rear extension was added to considerably at the south end in Regency times, but was truncated when the railway was built in the 1870s and further some time later. A fourth farm lay immediately to its West (lost to a row of later 19th century cottages erected by Sir Alfred Haslam, who built good quality workers’ housing here, close to his large Union Foundry on City Road. This too was almost certainly a prebend, and certainly the surviving deeds imply a third farm. Each of these were let, and the tenants by the 16th century tended to be men of substance; after the Reformation their status increased to minor gentry: the Thacker, Lister, Haughton, Hope and Bate families amongst them. Working out which family occupied which prebendal farm is not easy due to the fragmentary nature of the surviving sources, but Thacker had the Stone House Prebend, in 1549, and the others were let, the tenancies being generally 25-year ones, although the Listers rented two in 1554, probably both vanished ones. One suspects that the Manor House, which was still timber framed in the mid-16th century, is probably the prebend called The White House (greying oak timbers and distempered render in between) which passed to the heirs of Humphrey Sutton. The Listers probably held Derwent House along with that immediately east of Stone house, and the 1623 inventory of another tenant of a Prebend, Richard Scattergood, clearly indicates a hall house and probably related to the Manor House. In 1648 Parliamentary Captain Robert Hope took the lease of ‘a messuage (house and surrounding land) in Little Chester called the Manor House with the croft adjoining called the Castle Yard’ – the latter designation suggesting proximity to the standing wall by the east Roman Gate. The Roman walls were not taken down until 1721. He probably rebuilt or re-cased it in brick. His family had previously
