The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Nevill Old Hall, Ashford in the Water

By Maxwell Craven

The history of Ashford-in-the-Water is both in places obscure and also generally complex; there are unhelpful gaps in our knowledge, too. It is also one of the few places in Derbyshire once lived in by a reigning sovereign prince, Melbourne Castle excepted.

In reality, we are looking at two successive manor houses here, and the unlikely manifestation of the very grand Norman house of Nevill in this corner of England certainly demands explanation. Domesday Book accords Ashford considerable importance as, like Hope, it came with lots of berewicks (outliers) attached to it (no less than twelve in all), making it a prosperous entity. Whilst the church then fails to appear on the record (not always a guarantee that a church did not exist, just that it had no value to the crown), there was a mill and a lead mine – presumably a fore-runner of the Magpie Mine – and the whole lot was part of the King’s extensive holdings in Derbyshire.

The crown retained control of the manorial estate until 1199, when it was granted by King John to no less a person than Gwenwynwyn, ruling prince of Powis, in Wales. From here in, however, it all gets a trifle complicated, for Gwenwynwyn was not, however, Prince of all Powis (central Wales), but of Powis Wenwynwyn, for the principality had been divided between him and his cousin Madoc (ruling Powis Fadog) by 1187. 

This had all come about because of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, the first of his dynasty to rule Powis,  which had once been reckoned as a kingdom and whose rulers claimed (on the testimony of the 8th century Pillar of Eliseg at Llangollen) descent from Vortigern via a daughter of the emperor Magnus Maximus. Bleddyn had fought alongside King Harold against William the Conqueror, with the result that the victorious conqueror, in revenge, let his land-hungry knights loose upon the Powis borders, breaking it up. Fortunately, Bleddyn’s sons spent the next three decades fighting back and, by 1096 had recovered most of it.

Inevitably, however, internecine strife amongst the ruling princes of Wales eventually drove Gwenwynwyn to exile England in 1199, hence the grant of the manor of Ashford to him by King John.

Whilst it seems quite possible that Gwenwynwyn did actually live in Ashford before his death in 1216, his son, Gruffydd (who came of age in 1232), certainly did. One or other of them built a moated manor house just north of the church. The moat was still visible in the mid-19^th century but was barely by the early 20^th century and only a crop mark in dry weather today. Moated manor houses began to become fashionable in the 12^th century, elite nobles preferring them to the Normans’ motte-and-bailey castles and hence I rather think that Gruffydd was the builder here. Needless to say, in the early 19^th century the site was called Ashford Castle.

Gruffydd was only about five when his father died, but he continued in exile at Ashford until 1240, by which time he had married Hawise, the daughter of a marcher lord, John le Strange of Knockyn (Welsh Cnwcyn) in Shropshire, by whom he had an eldest son, Owain. He was granted the right of free warren at Ashford by the king in 1250. Having returned to Powis, he ruled successfully until 1274 when he fell out with Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, King of Gwynedd and was obliged to return to exile once again, but this time only for a few years, for his son Owain led the forces of Powis with Edward I against Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, ending Welsh independence. 

The following year Owain surrendered the principality of Powis to Edward I in 1283, received it back as an English barony, becoming Owain de la Pole – ‘Pool’ being the English name of the princely capital (now Welshpool). Ashford was surrendered to the Crown as part of the deal, for Gwenwynwyn had finally left there in 1282 and died in his native land about four years later.

Ashford’s manorial estate was retained by the Crown and was leased to William de Birchall. In 1319, however, it was settled by Edward II on his younger brother Edmund, Earl of Kent when he came of age. It passed from his son, John, 3^rd Earl, to Joan ‘the Fair Maid of Kent’ whom married Hon. Sir Thomas Holand, created Earl of Kent in 1360, at which date and for some time before, Ashford manor had been occupied by Otho de Holand a close kinsman. Later it was tenanted by a branch of the Dales of Chelmorton under the Earls of Kent until the death of Henry Holand, 4^th Earl of Kent in 1408.

The heiress was his fourth sister, Elizabeth, married to John Lord Nevill, son and heir of the 1^st Earl of Westmorland, and it descended from them to Henry Nevill, 5^th Earl, who died in 1563. At some time before this, however, the old 12^th century house in the moat must have been abandoned as decayed, and probably because there was no room to expand it, as the moated area was by no means large. The family built a new mansion in the village called Nevill Hall (later Old Hall).

The house they built, where Fennell street meets Church Street, is known only from a couple of old photographs and from a drawing by George Marsden, all done in the early 20^th century. Built of stone, it was of three storeys in height, the surviving range gabled end-on to the road, with two and four-light mullioned windows, and a two-storey service range parallel to the street. It is reasonable to suppose that originally the house boasted two such wings, parallel, enclosing a courtyard (which would have included the small green which now graces the front of the site) with a main range between them containing the great hall. 

The probable size of the house rather suggests that at times it was inhabited by one or other of the sons and heirs of these grandees, being intended to provide them with the style of residence that befitted their status as members of one of England’s grandest families, but the Dales were still associated with the manorial estate in 1404 and are recorded there again in 1477. 

Eventually, Henry Nevill, 5^th Earl of Westmorland – an inveterate gambler and spendthrift, who only came good in middle age through an advantageous marriage – was obliged to sell the estate which he did in 1549, the willing buyer being none other than Sir William Cavendish, then in the process of buying the Chatsworth estate with his third wife, the financially astute and upwardly mobile Bess of Hardwick.

From then on, the old hall of the Nevills, as successor to the Earl of Kent and the Princes of Powis Wenwynwyn, was inhabited by the Chatsworth estate’s bailiffs. Consequently, a substantial three bay tithe barn was built on a converging alignment immediately to its east and contiguous at their northern ends. By 1670, when bailiff Richard Johnson paid tax on five hearths there, it would appear to have been two-thirds demolished by the Cavendish family, with the remainder rebuilt in the Jacobean style, as evinced by the mullioned windows and coped gable visible in the images. The occupant in 1670 was bailiff Richard Johnson.

This situation continued until about 1772 when the Chatsworth estate’s agent was re-located to Edensor, and a ‘considerable parcel’ of the manor of Ashover was purchased by the agent to the Duke of Rutland, John Barker, a Bakewell man of independent means, for whom Joseph Pickford of Derby (then working at Chatsworth) built a neat new house, now Ashford Hall, set just outside the village to the east, overlooking a stunning landscaped park, probably by William Emes, making artful use of the Wye as it winds towards Bakewell.

It would appear that, from this point, the old house in the village was divided into three tenements (we would say apartments, today, of course) and only the most assiduous study of the rent-rolls for Ashford in the archive at Chatsworth would disentangle the details. According to one contemporary chronicler of the village, the last occupants – in the 1930s – were two married couples and a maiden lady: John and Edith Bond, Richard and Muriel Needham and Miss Frith.

Eventually, repairs to the old house were decided to be too onerous a financial burden on (or too much trouble for) the estate and, after the tenants left, the building was demolished in 1937, leaving only the former tithe barn adjacent. That the site has not been built upon is something of a bonus, leaving the view from Sheepwash bridge unsullied by any modern intervention.