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The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Grangefields, Trusley

The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Grangefields, Trusley
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Grangefields lies in the northern part of the parish of Trusley and has a long history going back to the compilation of the Domesday Book in 1086, and maybe before, for it lies only a quarter of a mile south of Long Lane, the alignment of the Roman Road from Derventio (Little Chester) to Salinae (Middlewich, Cheshire) via the fort at Chesterton, Staffs. A Roman villa has never been identified in Derbyshire, but if one ever was, a gentle south facing, well-drained slope is the most likely place and the area of Long Lane is a promising one. Whether Grangefields was on or near one has yet to be ascertained, but it would not surprise me if one day such a villa did turn up nearby. 

Thus, in 1086, both the manorial estates at Trusley had been bestowed on a great lord, Henry de Ferrers, who made a man called Hugh his hereditary tenant of both there. Later charters establish that Hugh’s full name was Hugh le Arbalaster. The name derives from arcuballista a Latin term for a crossbow, which rather suggests that Hugh might have acquired this name from his day-job, so to speak, as a leader of a group of crossbow-men. It would be fun to think that he was wielding one at the battle of Hastings and that Trusley was his reward!

Hugh had a son called Serlo, who adopted the surname of Beaufei (spelt in a number of confusing ways), indicating that, whatever Hugh had been up to at Hastings, he probably hailed from the small Norman settlement of Beaufai, Département de l’Orne, not far from the Mesnil, in Normandy. 

Serlo’s great grandson, Robert de Beaufei, started granting pieces of land to various monastic houses, a habit which his like-named son continued. Between them, the two Roberts made grants to the Abbeys of Croxden, and Burton in Staffordshire, the Priory of St. Mary de Pratis in Derby and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Yeaveley. These were nearly all made from the northern part of Trusley, from just one of the two manorial estates, that away from the village, manor and church, and all between the 1260s and 1290. 


Top: West Broughton Hall: a house of similar size and date to Grangefields

Indeed, this part of Trusley seems to have originally had its own name, Thurmundesley, as a pair of early charters make clear. This derives from the old Norse personal name ‘Thormund’ + leah = ‘ley’, a meadow or clearing. It would probably have mutated to ‘Thurmandsley’, ‘Thurmsley’ or even ‘Thursley’ today. This may be a clue, indeed as to which of the two men holding Trusley in 1066 had this part of the settlement, for as Ulfketel is also a Norse name, it would be tempting to think of him as Thormund’s descendant or heir, and that Thormund himself must have arrived long before, cleared the land and settled.

It was the Cistercian monks of Croxden Abbey, however, who were granted the site of Grangefields, part of a 40-acre gift made by the younger Robert de Beaufei in 1180 and topped up with further land later. Here they established or took over a farm. Sometimes, monks were sent to work such farms, which were called ‘granges’, but more usually lay families were given the tenancies. In time, therefore, the place became known, not as Thurmundesley, but Grangefields, just as a nearby holding granted to the Nuns of Kings Mead Priory in Derby, gradually came to be called ‘the meadow of the nuns of Trusely’, eventually Nunsfield. Certainly, the name Grangefields was recorded (as Graungefeld) in the documents relating the dissolution of Croxden Abbey in 1538.

The land and farm at Grangefield was assessed in value by King Henry VIII’s bean-counters at £4 – 6s – 3d (£4.33) – worth £1,817.10 in today’s values, or three cows, or 143 days’ wages in 1538. Thus, Grangefields was acquired speculatively by Dr. Thomas Leigh and William Cavendish (later to become the second husband of Bess of Hardwick) on 17th September 1538 to be assessed, the price fixed and offered for sale. 


Robert Newton, painted by Thomas Hudson when High Sheriff of Derbyshire                                                                                                                        [Private collection]

The tenant at the time was William Glossop, of a Wirksworth family and when the estate was sold on in 1545 to Robert Fitch, he appears to have been left in place. Indeed, the sparse surviving records suggest that the Glossops continued as tenants before buying the freehold some time between 1571 and 1598. He did not keep it long though, for he sold it on again first to Edward Kynnersley of Brailsford and then to Francis Curzon a younger son of Francis, of Kedleston.

However, at some stage, Francis Curzon seems to have decided to sell it on yet again and it would appear that Robert Glossop, or his father, had become wealthy enough to buy the farm, for Robert was in possession in 1600 when, on 26th October, he mortgaged it to raise money. Unfortunately, whatever Robert needed the money for, the mortgage appears to have been foreclosed with the result that it passed by 1608 to John Gregson ‘yeoman’ of Sutton-on-the-Hill who immediately sold it on to Robert Hope.

Unfortunately, not much is known of the family, but Robert was born to Charles Hope at Etwall, not only did Robert Hope buy the estate, but he also appears to have built a fine new house, or more probably, rebuilt the late medieval house which he acquired, adding a crosswing and generally modifying the building, producing an irregular but delightful timber façade. It was described by William Woolley in 1713 as ‘,,, a pretty private seat formerly a grange belonging to Croxden Abbey’, whilst Stephen Bagshaw added, ‘it is a long, half-timbered building having many gables.’ The only comparable house locally are perhaps the earlier West Broughton Old Hall or the slightly later and more symmetrical Wakelyn Old Hall at Hilton.

The house fortunately lasted into the age of photography (by a whisker) being the subject of the Calotype photograph which may have been taken by photographic pioneer W. H. Fox-Talbot, who was married to Constance Mundy of Markeaton Hall and, on visits to her family, was inclined to go on photographic tours locally, accompanied also by a keen élève, the Revd. Edward Abney. This image survived in the Stretton family which then owned the house and shows that it was some six bays wide, four of them gabled, with mullioned windows filled with leaded glass panes. In 1664, after Charles II’s parliament had imposed an unpopular tax on hearths, the house was assessed for payment on seven. By comparison this is just over half the size of the old manor house at Trusley taxed on 13. 

Robert Hope had two sons, Charles who succeeded to Grangefields, and Mark, long the rector of Kedleston, but whose son was a Derby doctor and ancestor of the celebrated Edwardian archaeologist Sir W H St. John Hope.

The only daughter and heiress of the Hopes of Grangefield married Robert Doxey (sometimes spelt Docksey). The Doxeys had lived in Snelston as yeomen farmers since Tudor times, but Doxey’s father, another Robert, who died in 1704, had gone to London as a young man, being at first apprenticed to a sugar baker but later, by some unexplained process, managed to set himself up as a goldsmith: much more rewarding! By 1582, he had made enough money to buy the Snelston Hall estate, on which his grandfather and an uncle had been tenants.

In the 1730s the Doxeys moved to Derby and sold the house and land to a man from Hilton, Thomas Rose, who may have been acting more as an agent (or property speculator) for he sold it on very quickly, in 1760.

The new owner Robert Newton (1713-1790) was, as the Mickleover parish register tells us ‘immensely rich and an old bachelor’, and the possessor of a number of houses, including Mickleover Manor, Norton House and Bearwardcote Hall (see Country Images August 2014). He had served as High Sheriff of the county in 1746 (when he was painted by Thomas Hudson). His aim in acquiring Grangefields was undoubtedly to extend his Mickleover estate, for he was a keen agricultural improver and clustering one’s landholding held certain advantages of scale and potential efficiencies. Consequently, the house was undoubtedly tenanted from 1760.

Newton died in 1790 and left the property to a cousin, William Cunliffe Shawe of Singleton Lodge, Lancashire (1744-1821), grandson of a Liverpool merchant who sold Grangefields between 1808 and 1817 and by the 1820s the Stretton family were farming there with 150 acres.  They were there until at least 1891.

Needless to say it was the Strettons who replaced the venerable old house between 1853 and 1862, the date at which the present farmhouse was built, although of the original stone foundations of the twelfth century granary, fragments still remain and are visible in just a handful of places, as is some of the ancient stone paving from the same approximate era, re-used in places in the courtyard.

In 1950  the freehold of Grangefields was sold to the Coke-Steel family of the adjacent Trusley estate, from which it had been separated 660 years before. Recently it has been tactfully restored and converted into one of the most delightful and sequestered wedding venues in the region, giving the site a whole new lease of life.

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