Today, the county is still well endowed with these houses, although many of them are now popular visitor attractions instead of private homes, but there are also many houses which have disappeared over the years.
Some have been demolished as they were no longer to be sustained due to the changes in social habits, surrounding development or because of the cost of repairs or death duties; others have been lost through fire, requisitioning, decay and rot.
In his new book Maxwell Craven examines the lost country houses of Derbyshire.
Some of these houses are now covered with new housing, others may stand as ruins or have a few scanty remains in the landscape, but in this book the once vibrant life of these houses and their significance in this part of the country is evoked once again.
In Derbyshire in the years since 1969, when listed building consent was first required prior to demolition of the listed building, only eight Derbyshire houses have been lost. From 1945 to 1968 no fewer than 27 were
destroyed. Before that, the destruction was even worse.
Derbyshire’s worst year was actually 1938 when eight houses fell to the contractor’s ball and chain.
The most common reason for the destruction of an important house before 1919 was unusually the desire of the owner to improve the standard of his accommodation, or to expand it. In the nineteenth century, an agricultural boom, which lasted throughout the middle years until around 1873, coupled with a superfluity of labour, caused households to expand, and more and better standards of service accommodation was required.
Some owners met these needs by enlarging, as with Chatsworth in the late seventeenth century, or Renishaw in the late eighteenth, others by demolition and replacement, as with Kedleston.
Houses mentioned in the book include Codnor Castle, Eastwood Hall, Wingfield Manor, Thornbridge Hall, Hasland House, Sutton Scarsdale, Brimington Hall, and Wingerworth Hall.
Lost Country Houses of Derbyshire is out later this month. For more go to: https://www.amberley-books.com/lost-country-houses-of-derbyshire.html
1. Derwent Hall
Derwent Hall in 1876 was a very modest stone gabled house dating from 1672, built for Henry Balguy, a lead trader, and lightly modernised by his son in 1692.The family sold up in 1767 to the Bennets, who were followed by the Reads and in 1846 by the Newdigates of West Hallam (qv) and Arbury. In 1876 it was bought by the Duke of Norfolk to bestow on his younger son Lord Edmund FitzAlanHoward, who appointed J. A. Hanson to enlarge the house considerably, in matching style, and add a chapel. Lord Edmund was appointed the last Viceroy of Ireland in 1921 and was in consequence created 1st Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent. Not long afterwards it was sold force majeur to the water authority for the building of a reservoir; the family left in 1932 and, after a decade as a youth hostel, it was finally vacated, stripped, dismantled and drowned in 1943 by the Derwent Reservoir. Elements rescued from it survive in the mayors’ parlours of Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield, co-sponsors of the destruction. Photo: M. Craven
2. Coney Green Hall
The south front of Coney Green Hall, in North Wingfield taken in 1883 with the Clay Cross bailiff, wife and two servants standing in front. Note the unkempt garden. Francis Brailsford, a member of an ancient knightly family long settled in North Wingfield, built a new house in around 1762. The architect was probably Edmund Stanley of Chesterfield, who clearly liked to bend the rules of Palladian architecture. In 1873, George Banks Wilson sold it and the small park to the ClayCross Company, who installed their bailiff and tipped iron slag onto the parkland.Undermined by subsidence, it was demolished in advance of further coal mining in 1890. Photo: Cliff Williams
3. Tupton Hall
A unique and fascinating miniature Hardwick attributable to John Smythson, son of Robert, its builder, who erected Tupton Hall in 1611 for Henry Gladwin, who incorporated his initials into the parapet. An intriguing mixture of levels inside were simplified in a rebuilding of c. 1771 by William Allwood Lord, to whom it had descended. Sold in the 1790s to the Packman family, they let it, latterly selling to the county council for a school in 1929. This opened in 1936 but in July 1938 the old house burned down and the remains were cleared. Photo: M. Craven
4. Wheston Hall
In 1727 a late sixteenth-century house of the Alleynes was rebuilt and refronted in impressive style for Thomas Freeman, who laid out a park and an avenue. It later passed to the Chatsworth estate and became a farmhouse, but structural neglect resulted in the unexpected collapse of much of the north front in a gale in 1952. The remains, in Tideswell, were adapted as a new, much smaller, house in 1960. Pictured is the grand north front of c. 1727, photographed in 1858 by Richard Keene, showing the splendid (lost) gate piers and timber screen. Photo: M. Craven