Aston Hall, South Yorkshire

There’s a setting for a novel around Aston Hall, in the south-east corner of South Yorkshire – a sort of Alan Hollinghurst meets Jane Austen, with more than a dash of Anthony Trollope.

The key character, probably the narrator like Mr Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, is the poet Rev William Mason (1724–1797), the Rector of Aston, whose Musaeus (1747), a monody on the death of Alexander Pope, and his historical tragedies Elfrida (1752) and Caractacus (1759) have hardly stood the test of time.

He’s better known as the editor of the poems of his friend Thomas Gray, whose ‘Elegy written in a country churchyard’ is one of the best-loved eighteenth-century poems in English.

Mason and Gray shared friendship with Horace Walpole, whose catty observations are so vivid you can almost hear his voice.  Walpole’s residence, Strawberry Hill was a gathering ground for some of the brightest and most sophisticated wits of the day.  Mason’s rectory was similarly a centre for creativity, conversation and cyncism.

He was rector of Aston from 1754 to 1797, and though he didn’t live there continually, he must have watched from the rectory the rebuilding of Aston Hall on the opposite side of the church after a fire in the 1760s. 

The owner, the fourth Earl of Holderness, had it rebuilt in the Palladian style by the ubiquitous, versatile and highly respected architect John Carr of York.

Once it was finished in 1772, Lord Holderness declined to move in:  Walpole declared this was “because it is too near the ducal seat at Kiveton”;  in other words, the earl didn’t want to be overshadowed by the Duke of Leeds at Kiveton Park.

After all, Robert Darcy, 4th Earl had been ambassador to Venice and The Hague, Secretary of State (then one of the great offices of state) and later became tutor to two of George III’s sons, in which capacity Walpole described him as “a solemn phantom”.

Lord Holderness let the house to Harry Verelst (1734-1785), whom Walpole described as “the Nabob” – the term for an opportunist who had made money in India.  He was Governor of Bengal from 1767 to 1769.

Verelst purchased Aston Hall in 1774-5 and employed the local architect John Platt to install a finer staircase and the west wing.  His descendants lived there until 1928.

Mason was distantly related to both Lord Holderness and Harry Verelst.  One may imagine the twitching of curtains at the rectory, and the comments of Rev Mason and his wife about the nabob’s taste. 

Sitting in the bar and lounge of the Aston Hall Hotel [http://www.tomahawkhotels.co.uk/home.aspx?h=1], it’s possible to see Lord Holderness’ viewpoint.   Even though Carr’s rooms have been much carved about by institutional use it’s clear that they would hardly have been grand enough for an earl to entertain.

It’s more than comfortable for modern visitors, set in a quiet village literally within two minutes of Junction 31 of the M1.  It’s an interesting alternative to a comfort stop at Woodhall Services.

The 56-page, A4 handbook for the 2014 tour Country Houses of South Yorkshire, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  It includes chapters on Aston Hall, Brodsworth Hall, Cannon Hall, Cusworth Hall, Hickleton Hall, Renishaw Hall, Wentworth Castle, Wentworth Woodhouse and Wortley Hall.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Cusworth Hall, South Yorkshire: south front

Mrs Pearse, the last private owner of Cusworth Hall, didn’t make her land agent’s life at all easy.

After selling the contents of the house in 1952 to help pay her late brother’s death duties, she insisted that the sale of the Hall must not interfere with the use of the Chapel which, as Mother Mary Francis of the Order of St Hubert, she opened for worship in 1953.

She belonged to the Liberal Catholic Church (not to be confused with the Liberal Catholic Church International, the Liberal Catholic Church Grail Community, the Liberal Catholic Church Theosophia Synod, the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church or the Reformed Liberal Catholic Church [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Catholic_Church]).

At one point there was a practical threat that Cusworth Hall would be purchased, compulsorily or otherwise, for use as a female Borstal.  Two separate occupiers moved in without legal contracts, and were removed with difficulty.  Doncaster Corporation considered turning the place into a zoo.

Eventually Doncaster Rural District Council – at the time the most prosperous rural-district authority in the country because of the wealth of coal-mining in its area – purchased it for £7,500 in 1961, first proposing to convert the Hall into a hospital.

In 1967 it opened to the public as an industrial museum and after transfer to the newly-formed Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council in 1974 it became the Museum of South Yorkshire Life.

As such it presented a rich clutter of displays about every conceivable aspect of local life and culture – far more than could comfortably fit into the elegant ground-floor rooms and the bedrooms above.

In 2004-7, the council emptied the building and invested £7½ million in a superb restoration of the house and park.  And then they put all the stuff back inside.

The result is that the Georgian rooms, with the exception of James Paine’s superb chapel, are dominated by beautifully designed modern display cases which would fit well into a disused textile mill, a warehouse or a spacious church.  At Cusworth, you can’t see the room, and for that matter you can’t see the display case, though you can see the contents quite well.

It matters not, because the thorough restoration will last longer than any museum-display fashion.

Doncaster’s proud history needs much more space to celebrate the market-town, the agriculture and the mining industry, as well as the Great North Road, the Great Northern Railway and the racecourse, home of the St Leger.

The Borough of Wakefield has found means to move its art gallery out of a cramped Georgian terrace into Hepworth Wakefield [http://www.hepworthwakefield.org], a superlative new building by David Chipperfield.

Doncaster’s history deserves no less.  And Cusworth Hall would make a fine art gallery, like Tabley House in Cheshire [http://www.tableyhouse.co.uk] or a beautiful hotel-restaurant, like Colwick Hall in Nottingham [http://www.colwickhallhotel.com].

The 56-page, A4 handbook for the 2014 tour Country Houses of South Yorkshire, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  It includes chapters on Aston Hall, Brodsworth Hall, Cannon Hall, Cusworth Hall, Hickleton Hall, Renishaw Hall, Wentworth Castle, Wentworth Woodhouse and Wortley Hall.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Cusworth Hall, South Yorkshire: north front

Cusworth Hall, on the outskirts of Doncaster, is one of those country houses where the life-stories of the owners rival in interest the magnificent architecture.

Ownership passed directly from the original builder of the present house, William Wrightson (1676-1760) for over two hundred years.

When William Henry Battie-Wrightson died suddenly in 1903 his widow, Lady Isabella, took on the responsibility of running the estates in Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland and residences in London and St Leonard’s-on-Sea while bringing up her son and daughter, then aged fifteen and thirteen respectively.

She was a formidable character, eldest daughter of the third Marquis of Exeter of Burghley House near Stamford.  She fought off a rival claim to the estates from her brother-in-law, and improved the house by building the dining-room north of Paine’s chapel-wing and installing hot-water central heating and electric lighting.  She regularly gave fancy-dress parties for the estate workers, and mounted a magnificent celebration when her son came of age in 1909.

Her son, Robert Cecil Battie-Wrightson (1888-1952), must have been a disappointment.  In 1914 he married a widow, Mrs Louie Evelyn Lupton, daughter of the landlord of the Elephant Hotel in Doncaster.  After serving throughout the First World War he settled down to a life of ease, preferring the company of public-houses and maintaining cordial relationships with his own staff.

When his marriage with Louie Evelyn broke down they separated but did not divorce:  he had formed a relationship with Mrs Christabel Florence Bentley, whose divorced husband also ran a pub in Doncaster.  He did not mix with other local gentry families.

When he died of a stroke in 1952 the estate passed by entail to his sister Barbara, though he left his personal estate, valued at £64,000, to Mrs Bentley.

Barbara Battie-Wrightson (1890-1989) was perhaps even more independent-minded than her brother.  She had considerable musical talent, played violin and cello, and appeared on the music-hall stage without her mother’s knowledge in a song-and-dance routine as Hazel Barnard.  She held socialist opinions and trained as a nurse, working with poor and homeless people in London.  She changed her forenames to Maureen Leslie.

Her Cecil relatives effectively disowned her and her mother’s will threatened to cut off her income if – as seemed likely – she became a Roman Catholic.  Her first marriage, in 1917, to Major Oswald Maslen Parker was not a success, but only ended with his death.  Her second, to a dentist, Dr Walter Leslie Pearse, gave her much greater happiness, though her husband and her brother famously failed to get on.

Death duties of £280,000 on Robert Cecil Battie-Wrightson’s estate forced the sale of almost the entire contents in 1952.  Among the items dispersed were numerous pieces of Chippendale furniture, a gold presentation cup won at York races in 1725 and the Titian ‘Holy Family with Elizabeth and St John’, which fetched 130 guineas.  The total proceeds of the nine-day sale were £36,000.

The Hall itself was eventually sold to Doncaster Rural District Council for £7,500.

Mrs Pearse never occupied the house.

The 56-page, A4 handbook for the 2014 tour Country Houses of South Yorkshire, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  It includes chapters on Aston Hall, Brodsworth Hall, Cannon Hall, Cusworth Hall, Hickleton Hall, Renishaw Hall, Wentworth Castle, Wentworth Woodhouse and Wortley Hall.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.