The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Willesley Hall, Ashby
Until the local government reforms of 1888-1889 Derbyshire did not sit inside a single boundary; it has detached ‘islands’, mainly to its south, created in the Saxon period by assarting – clearing of woodland by men of Derbyshire in un-adopted regions. The settlements so created, once the County system had become established in the mid-10th century, tended to become detached parts of the area (county) of the people who had initially created them. Several counties had them. Derbyshire itself boasted Appleby Parva, Chilcote, Clifton Camville, Donisthorpe, Edingale, Measham, Oakthorpe, Ravenstone (the most southerly), Stretton-en-le-Field – and Willesley. Since 1889 they have been divided amongst Leicestershire and Staffordshire. Several of these ‘islands’ had substantial country houses, and indeed most of them have vanished, some almost without trace. Willesley was probably the grandest though. The place itself was one of those granted by the Mercian grandee Wulfric Spott to the Abbey of Burton in his will, but post-Conquest it was divided between the de Ferrers Earls of Derby (later the Duchy of Lancaster) and the Abbey. The manorial estate was initially tenanted under them by the de Willesley family who built a chapel, before passing it on to the Ingwardby family and then, also by inheritance, to the Abneys of Ingleby, who eventually united the estate. These families had few properties outside Willesley, so it is likely that there was an historic manor house, probably on the site of the house that was demolished in 1953. Unfortunately, nothing is known of its early appearance. The later house, which formed the core of the later one, was described by William Woolley in his History of Derbyshire (1713) as ‘a good seat’, with the Lysons’ brothers (1817) adding ‘The manor house which is in the form of a letter H, appears to have been built in or about the time of Charles I’ – that is the period 1625-1649. It was taxed on 16 hearths in 1670 suggesting that it was a substantial building. The earliest picture is an engraving of 1820, showing a substantial brick house of two stories and attics, with an eleven bay façade, the projecting cross-wings at each end of the main block being of three bays. The gables were elaborately shaped, rather similar to those of contemporary Thrumpton Hall, on the County’s Nottinghamshire border, and these may well be original to c. 1630, suggesting its builder was George Abney or his son James. However, the late Professor Andor Gomme, looking at the heavily stone-clad rusticated façade with its Ionic pilasters enclosing a swagger pedimented doorcase, was confident in attributing these later features to a fairly drastic 1720s rebuilding by Francis Smith of Warwick, architect of Sutton Scarsdale, a house which it closely resembles in these details. Smith, judging from some later accounts, also opened out the interior to create a double height hall and installed a fine timber staircase behind it, whilst at the same time endowing the gables with slim Baroque urn finials. The windows were deepened, sashed and given stone key-blocks. The rhythm of the façade has much in common with another work by Smith, Stanford Hall on the Leicestershire-Northamptonshire border, just off the M1. The rustication probably owes its inspiration to another Northamptonshire house, Lamport Hall, where a similar treatment was meted out to an earlier house by Wren’s follower, John Webb from 1655. A landscaped park of 155 acres was created, including a modest lake, and this may have been later and attributable to William Emes (1729-1803), a locally based follower of Capability Brown. The man who commissioned these works was probably not Sir Edward Abney (died 1728), a senior retired judge, who has been blind for the last twenty years of his life, but his son, Sir Thomas (1691-1750). And so matters rested until 1791 then Thomas Abney of Willesley, the last of his direct line, died, leaving an only daughter, Parnell, married to a member of an illustrious neighbouring family, Maj. Charles Hastings, a French-born natural son of Francis, 10th Earl of Huntingdon, whose chief seat was then Ashby Castle. Thomas, who had a distinguished military and diplomatic career was raised to a baronetcy in 1806, assuming the surname and arms of Abney-Hastings by Royal Licence. During the Napoleonic Wars he entertained at Willesley numerous officers of the French navy and Grand Armée with whom he felt to a degree at home, being a fluent French speaker and the son of a Parisian actress. He was also a prominent Freemason, as trait he shared with many of them. His younger son, Francis (born at Willesley in 1794) was a distinguished naval architect and commander. He was recruited by the Greek insurgents, financed by the Byzantine grandee and banker Prince Paul Rhodokanakis-Doukas, to oversee the building and to command the Karteria, the first steam powered warship ever to see action. At her helm, he effectively reduced the threat of the Ottoman navy and, despite being carried off by disease, like his friend Byron, at Missolonghi in 1828, made a considerable contribution to the liberation of Greece. His bust in bronze may still be seen there. Unfortunately Sir Thomas shot himself in 1823, and the estate passed to his elder son, the 2nd baronet. He later set about enlarging the house. The south front acquired a pair of small gables over the bays flanking the entrance and a coat-of-arms above an inscribed tablet was placed between them. The formerly plain west side was much extended, with similar gables, but largely lower and irregular, extending back to the small stone chapel, founded by Michael de Willesley before 1270, but later clad in stone and embattled some years before. But the changes did not stop there. A medium sized manor house was about to become a major seat, for the north side, where there was previously a re-entrant courtyard, was replaced by a three storey square plan diapered brick tower ending in four ogee topped pinnacles at the angles, all joined by a pierced stone balustrade,
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Oak Hurst, Alderwasley
As one travels north on the A6 one of the less uplifting sights in an area of stunning beauty is the wire works, covering the valley floor not many hundreds of yards south of the bridge by the former Derwent Inn, now a tea-room. Should you be caught in slow traffic – fairly likely at any time of the year – and should it also be this time of the year, when the leaves are coming off the trees apace, you might well catch a glimpse of a large, clearly ruinous house on the far side of the works, embowered in trees. This is Oak Hurst, a house of considerable merit, despite its relentless faux timbering, pointy-roofed corner bartizan and tricksy, late Victorian fenestration. As one travels north on the A6 one of the less uplifting sights in an area of stunning beauty is the wire works, covering the valley floor not many hundreds of yards south of the bridge by the former Derwent Inn, now a tea-room. Should you be caught in slow traffic – fairly likely at any time of the year – and should it also be this time of the year, when the leaves are coming off the trees apace, you might well catch a glimpse of a large, clearly ruinous house on the far side of the works, embowered in trees. This is Oak Hurst, a house of considerable merit, despite its relentless faux timbering, pointy-roofed corner bartizan and tricksy, late Victorian fenestration. The site was originally part of the Hurt family’s Alderwasley Hall estate – indeed, that fine house, now a special school, but erected in 1790, is perched on the hill top not very far away. In the 1760s, the family, ever enterprising, started an iron works in the valley bottom; certainly it was up and running by 1775 when Joseph Pickford ordered iron grates for some of the fireplaces at Kedleston Hall and balusters for Robert Adam’s bridge over the lake when he was clerk of works there. One thing that marked Francis out in this enterprise was that he, as a major landowner, was making a considerable investment in the iron industry at a time when most gentry families were content to lease works on their estates to professional ironmasters at a fixed rent. Hurt, on the other hand, was acting as entrepreneur and, as with his family’s lead mining enterprises, taking the profit. The original Ambergate forge did not survive beyond 1794 before being completely rebuilt, but vestiges of the original blast furnace, set up on the earlier site, were visible amidst the sprawl of Johnson’s wire works at Ambergate until they were destroyed in 1964. A substantial stone house was also built for the forge manager, Forge House, across the river in Alderwasley parish at the foot of Shining Cliff woods, but alongside the works, probably designed by George Rawlinson of Matlock Bath, a friend of Pickford’s and who seems to have worked extensively for both Sir Richard Arkwright and the Hurts. It was lived in by Francis Hurt’s manager, Matthew Bacon for some years. In 1848 the works were leased to John and Charles Mould, Forge House included and one of the brothers took up residence. The upwardly mobile Moulds re-named it Oak Hurst and lived in it until 1865, when they became bankrupt, new technology by that time having made their haphazardly up-dated first generation ironworks obsolete. For over twenty years the house reverted to being let, mainly to the Hurts, as a residence for their estate manager, and the works appear to have remained in the doldrums. In around 1880, however, the Midland Railway purchased it (or possibly did so slightly earlier) and in that year extended it, giving it a sturdy Neo-Jacobean cloak. The architect was their “in-house” man, Charles Trubshaw, a talented member of a long established Staffordshire dynasty of builders and architects. His Railway Institute in Derby has outlasted his Station façade by 20 years. It thereupon became the residence of Richard Bird, the superintendent engineer of the railway. However, on his leaving the post, it was in 1887 let (and soon afterwards sold) to John Thewlis Johnson, (1836-1896) a Mancunian who had already bought the old forge site from the Hurts and turned it into a wire works. Johnson, grandson of John Johnson of Pendleton, was the ‘nephew’ in the well-known firm of Johnson & Nephew, started by his uncle Richard Johnson (1809-1881), and of which the Ambergate works was a subsidiary. He lived at Broughton House, Manchester, dominating the Manchester Chamber of Trade for many years and serving as its president in 1892. He was also a director of Nettlefolds, the Birmingham foundry. His father Thomas Fildes Johnson of Pendleton had been a successful cotton spinner. In 1888 Johnson completely rebuilt Oak Hurst and considerably extended it so that he could dwell cheek by jowl with his latest enterprise. A new full height canted entrance boasted a tablet above with his initials and the date. It is not clear who the architect was but John Douglas of Chester has been plausibly suggested, who also built Brocksford Hall near Doveridge at about this time for a fellow industrialist. The house had a thorough Arts-and-Crafts makeover, and the interior fitted up very sumptuously with panelling and all the latest contrivances, including electric light and modern central heating. Furthermore, it was lit by electricity throughout, then something of a novelty. He also landscaped the grounds. By two wives – Aurelia and Anne Higgins, cousins to each other – he had five sons, of whom two lived in Derbyshire, the fourth, James, being at one time tenant of Foston Hall. The eldest, Herbert Alfred (1866-1923), who succeeded his father when he died aged only 59 in 1896, had a glamorous American wife who could not stomach living cheek-by-jowl with a wire works, and they moved, taking a lease of Farnah Hall from Lord Curzon and later were the last private owners of Allestree Hall.
