Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Morley Old Hall
For somewhere so close to Derby, and somewhere which was once on the very edge of a coal-mining area, Morley is today a remarkably sequestered spot. The village is discrete, as the archaeologists say – not nucleated, but scattered around its parish – but with a magnificent parish church, a very grand Georgian rectory and two country houses – both Victorian: the present Morley Hall from the beginning of the old queen’s reign, and Morley Manor from her last years.
One would, therefore, assume that there was very little room for an old hall as well, but in that one would be wrong, for both the Victorian buildings are, essentially, replacements for what had gone before. Indeed, Morley Manor, a fine Arts-and-Crafts mansion in red Warrington sandstone by G. F. Bodley, was built for the Bateman family – the very same family which had destroyed the great late medieval manor house their ancestors had inherited in the 18th century from the Sacheverells.
If one seeks any vestige of this house, it is necessary to go to the church and seek out a separate building in the western extremity of the church yard, the Bateman Mausoleum – also by G. F. Bodley – and built in 1897 out of the same red sandstone as the Manor. Standing against this structure’s decorative entrance – with its geometrical wrought iron and Bateman armorial above – is a rather ragged fragment of wall and greyer, being of millstone grit sandstone (from Coxbench quarry in all probability). The relic is called the Loaf Gate, and once saw the distribution of alms (in the form of bread) to the needy of the parish and is part of the original hall at Morley and as such it was probably a subsidiary entrance to the manor house itself.
Nor is this the only fragment of a once great house for, slightly east of north from the Grade II* listed Mausoleum, stands the former tithe barn, also listed II*. It appears largely of 17th century date, but its basic structure may be earlier – it is the stone mouldings on the three light mullioned windows that suggest the date. That such domestic looking windows were added rather suggests that the structure was always part of the original main house, but had been adapted as additional accommodation in the early 17th century, possibly as a service wing.
The earliest family at Morley took their name from the place – the de Morleys – and they seem to have lived in a house within a moat, the latter feature still to some extent surviving south west of Morley House Farm. Their line eventually became extinct and the heiress married a Cheshire Massey and the heiress of that marriage married a Statham of Lymm, also in Cheshire.
Henry Statham, like his Massey predecessors, had a considerable estate in Cheshire and neither family seem to have lived at Morley and we may assume that the old moated (and probably timber framed) house eventually mouldered into ruin. However, there is evidence that this Henry or his father did build a new house, probably on the approximate site of its successor, early in the fifteenth century, for the family obtained an episcopal licence to have a domestic chapel in 1405.
All this changed however, when Henry died, for his only child, Joan, had married a Derbyshire gentleman called John Sacheverell. He was very much in the ascendant, for while his earliest ancestor, John de Salta Caprio, had around 1130 inherited in the right of his wife a small estate at Hopwell, a descendant had acquired the remainder through marriage with Roger Hopwell of Hopwell and Wilsthorpe, whose coat-of-arms amusingly bore three conies playing on the bagpipes – ‘hopping well to their own music’ – a typical Medieval heraldic pun!
John Sacheverell also held the manorial estate of Boulton and part of that of Snitterton – all accomplished through marrying heiresses. However, he clearly felt that none of these seems to have wholly suited his aspirations, for as soon as Henry Statham had died, he had sold up in Cheshire and in 1480 concentrated on building a ‘very large old building, adjoining the church…of considerable magnitude’, which we presume was an enlargement of the Stathams’ house, and was built of good quality ashlared stone, to judge from the Loaf Gate, although the tithe barn is of slightly coarser work.
It is not easy to envisage the extent of the building, upon which hearth tax was paid for 16 hearths in 1670 but, if one assumes that the Loaf Gate was at the SE end of the main front (which faced SSW), and that the tithe barn was attached to the NE angle, then what lay between must have been fairly extensive, probably including a substantial courtyard, and that its western extremity lay in the field to the west of the church yard. Indeed, when the weather is dry, the footprint of the building is relatively easy to see – especially on satellite view.
Not that life there was dull, not for one moment. John Sacheverell himself was killed in action at Bosworth Field in support of his king (Richard III) only five years after building his new house. His descendants thereafter kept out of politics (thus accumulating neither honours nor titles) but were drawn back into events through having remained Roman Catholic after Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1536. Consequently, in the next generation, when Queen Elizabeth I was threatened by the Spanish, a certain amount of paranoia manifested itself.
With Mary, Queen of Scots in custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Catholic recusants found themselves being harried by the crown’s agents, in Derbyshire heralded by Shrewsbury’s fixers. Hence it was that Morley Hall was raided in August 1581 and Henry Sacheverell briefly arrested before buying his freedom (called paying a fine!) At the time, he had as a guest a Mr. Green, ‘…said to have made all the secret places in Derbyshire’ in which Catholic priests and others could be hidden during just such an eventuality. Henry’s brother-in-law, Robert Keyes (of the Hopwell Hall family) fared much less well though: he was executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Henry’s son, Jacynth Sacheverell, died in 1642 leaving no surviving descendants and in his will left Morley Hall and its estate to his second cousin, Henry Sacheverell of Barton-in-Fabis, Nottinghamshire and also Stanton-by-Bridge. He, though, was far from being a Catholic: he was a supporter of Parliament, but his allegiance probably saved the estate from sequestration.
This Henry died in 1662 (doubtless chastened at the prospect of the restoration of the monarchy) and was succeeded by his son William Sacheverell (1638-1691) MP for Derby and no enthusiast for Charles II. Indeed, during his distinguished parliamentary career (he was renowned for his oratory), he co-founded a formal party of opposition to the court faction which were colloquially known as the Whigs.
Robert Thoroton reported that ‘William Sacheverell…hath exceedingly enlarged and new builded his seat [at Morley]’ Large scale work at that date, though, must have produced a house of pretty impressive classical appearance and it is a tragedy that no picture of it has ever surfaced, although when the family property was split between William’s sister’s husband, John Osborne of Derby, and his grand-daughter, Elizabeth Pole of Radburne Hall such a view might have survived amongst the Chandos-Pole or Bateman archives. If so, it has yet to be found.
The house and estate at Morley passed on the death of William Sacheverell to John Osborne, his brother-in-law, whose son, William left no issue when he died in 1752, when all his property passed to Hugh Bateman of Derby and Hartington Hall, his sister’s husband.
Of course, having already a country seat at Hartington (of more convenient size than the leviathan which William Sacheverell seems to have created at Morley), Hugh Bateman decided against living there. It was also probably too rambling to be worth letting, too. Hence, in the Derby Mercury for the week 13th to 20th May 1757, there appeared an advertisement announcing the demolition of the house and the availability of the materials for purchase forthwith.
In the end the ‘tithe’ barn was spared for its utility, and the Loaf Gate – for a century and a half just a ruin in the west end of the church yard with a door in it – remained, forlorn, even the dole being distributed elsewhere. Yet they are all that remains above the ground, along with that enigmatic crop mark in the field to the west. Doubtless much of the joinery, chimney pieces and other architectural salvage has survived, though, built into the houses of others and still extant, unrecognised and unsung. Indeed, if any reader knows of a piece, I’d love to hear of it!
Meanwhile the Batemans eventually came back and built Morley Manor (which left their family again and for the final time in the 1930s), whilst their kinsmen, the Wilmot Sitwells built the present, early Victorian, Morley Hall, rather nearer the site of the original.
