Handed on

For William Orde-Powlett, the 4th Baron Bolton, what had been a rather routine day attending to various civic and yeomanry duties in Northallerton and York took a distinct turn for the worse as he alighted his return train that October evening in 1902. It fell to the station master at Leyburn to break the news that his Lordship’s Yorkshire family seat, Bolton Hall, some two miles west, was presently ablaze.

Hastening to the scene Lord Bolton found the upper half of the Hall’s late-17th century four-storey central block engulfed in flames, promptly relieving his butler Mr. Wilson who had been supervising the salvage of significant contents. ‘At about 9:30 a great portion of the roof fell in.’ The estate’s fire engine and another from Leyburn directed their efforts towards the east and west wings of the house, which were ‘for the most part saved’.¹

The cool light of early morning found the formal lawns front and back of the gutted pile strewn with family heirlooms. Elsewhere, ‘the unfortunate servants’ – whose bedrooms had been at the top of the house where the fire had started – ‘were plodding about in water in the servants’ quarters, some of the girls fitted out with men’s boots and coats’. And the cold reality dawning upon their employer Lord Bolton was that he now had not one but two Yorkshire ruins on his hands.¹

Looming elsewhere on the (then) 15,000-acre estate, Bolton Castle (r) still ‘stands today as the most complete and best-preserved palace-fortress of medieval England’.² The 14th century edifice was the stronghold of the Scropes until their male line expired, passing into the Powlett (or Paulet) family just after it had been slighted by Parliamentary forces in the Civil War. Among several curious coincidences in this story, the Powletts’ own mighty residence…

… Basing House in Hampshire – ‘the largest private house in Tudor England’ – had endured a similar fate in the same year. Finding himself the owner of two wrecked residences, Charles Powlett, 6th Marquess of Winchester (subsequently 1st Duke of Bolton) began a late-17th century building spree, creating Bolton Hall in North Yorkshire and another fine mansion, Hackwood Park, in Hampshire. It was to the latter, in November 1902, that Lord and Lady Bolton would repair, ‘probably for a couple of years, during the rebuilding of Bolton Hall’.³

And the family’s commitment to their Yorkshire estate would be ultimately confirmed in 1935 when Hackwood (left) was sold (the house being most recently on the market in 2023 with an asking price of £65 million). But over the years certain contents had made their way from Hampshire to Yorkshire, joining portraits – transferred from Bolton Castle – of the Scrope family…

… the founders of an estate which has survived siege, suicide and no little scandal for the best part of eight centuries.

Loyal and able allies of the crown on and off the battlefield, through the 14th century the Scropes would accumulate more land, and laurels. But Sir Richard le Scrope (created 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton in 1371) proved far too assiduous and constraining in his role as treasurer of the royal household, being dismissed by Richard II in 1382 and indignantly departing to his Yorkshire realms where his builder John Lewyn was creating a medieval ‘masterpiece’.²

Of four severe, uneven sides with square towers at each corner 96 feet high, Bolton Castle – ‘a climax of English military architecture’ – remains an imposing presence high on the north slopes of Wensleydale.⁴ Equally notable, however, is the structure’s sophisticated interior: ‘For domestic planning on the grand scale, there are few mansions [of the age] to rival Bolton Castle, a defensible design yet possessing extensive facilities of internal comfort and luxury.’²

However, for all it’s uncompromising, battle-ready robustness, Bolton Castle’s comparatively well-preserved state is indicative not only of its superior build quality but also the happy lack – though they had their moments – of truly ruinous medieval drama hereabouts subsequently. And later history records  the ‘hosting’ of beleaguered Mary, Queen of Scots at the Castle by Henry Scrope in the last six months of 1568 as much the most noteworthy event as Bolton continued to pass straightforwardly in the male for some ten generations until the onset of the English Civil War.

There were no surviving children from the marriage of Emanuel Scrope (d.1630) and his wife, Elizabeth, but he had some illegitimate back-up in the form of a son and three daughters by a servant, Martha Jeanes. The entire property passed initially to John, who endured the sacking of Bolton Castle by Parliamentary forces in 1645 before succumbing to the plague the following year. His was the first in a sequence of deaths which, ten years on…

… would see Bolton yolked with another large estate some 270 miles due south.

In 1649 John’s eldest sister, Mary, to whom he had bequeathed Bolton, became widowed. She would remarry in 1655, to Charles Powlett, son and heir of the 5th Marquess of Winchester and who had suffered the loss of his wife (and their first-born infant) in childbirth three years before. Charles and his new spouse could also compare notes about the recent fate of their respective birthrights.

Significant Hampshire landowners since the 15th century, the palatial seat of the Paulet family, Basing House (r) – ‘one of the great semi-defensive houses of its day’⁵ – had found itself an altogether more serious target of triumphalist Roundheads, being effectively destroyed in the same year Bolton Castle was ransacked. When the steam ran out of the republican project, in 1660 Charles Powlett was elected a dubiously effective Hampshire MP.

‘A very knowing and crafty politic man, he was much hated, yet he carried matters before him with such authority and success, that he was in all respects the great riddle of the age.’⁶

Powlett was out of favour with the court of Charles II by the time he succeeded as the 6th Marquess of Winchester in 1675 and – while he sympathised – would tactically avoid personal involvement in the hostilities towards James II by the unusual expedient of behaving strangely. Marathon twelve-hour dining sessions and regular nocturnal hunting expeditions by torchlight were among his various affected eccentricities. Quite whether the near-simultaneous building of not one, not two but three sizeable country houses could also be counted as such is perhaps a matter for debate.

‘Situated in one of the most picturesque and romantic valleys in England, with enchanting prospects,’ the marquess would select a virgin site within his wife’s inheritance, near the village of Wensley, to begin his building binge.⁷ Rainwater heads dated 1678 survive from this original iteration of Bolton Hall, which was described by an early-18th century visitor as ‘a very firm piece of architecture, almost buried in trees cut into beautiful avenues [towards] terraces, fish-ponds, fountains, etc’.⁸

 

Rather like Bolton Castle, the new Hall (↓) was an imposing blocky edifice, quite plain save for a balustrade and glazed cupola at roof level. Of three storeys over a basement, wings either side of the the five-bay centre projected south towards the river Ure. (‘The dramatic landscape changes which gathered pace in the 18th century largely passed the formal, geometric gardens and designed landscape of the Bolton estate by, probably due to the family not living there for any length of time during much of that century.’⁹)

And barely had this Yorkshire scheme reached completion before the attention of the marquess turned elsewhere. ‘A keen huntsman, [he] now commenced ‘the large, noble house at Abbotstone [near Alresford] as a convenient hawking seat, built after the Italian manner [and] enriched by a great deal of most excellent carving by Grinling Gibbons. But it was never fully completed,’ unlike a second 1680s Hampshire project, the classical reimagining of Hackwood (↓), formerly an Elizabethan hunting lodge… 

… not far from the site of ruined Basing House. ‘This elegant, capacious mansion situated in a fine extensive park, about 8 miles in circumference,’¹⁰ would soon become the preferred seat of subsequent generations of Powletts, whose status would be further elevated thanks to the family’s very active promotion of the Glorious Revolution.

With the full support of the marquess, it was his namesake son and heir who ‘proposed in parliament the motion that William and Mary assume the crown, and was the bearer of the orb at their coronation’ in 1689, his father having been created 1st Duke of Bolton two days earlier.¹¹ The second duke succeeded in February 1699, dying himself in 1722 before his 36-year-old heir, Charles (3), though married for almost a decade, had shown any real signs of settling down.

A fast, wilful figure from his youth, Charles Powlett, the future 3rd duke, had married a naive and soon to be haplessly humiliated heiress, Anne, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Carbery, in 1713. ‘The newly-wed Marchioness of Winchester was informed by her husband that he never had been nor ever would be faithful to her. He was as good as his word, entertaining a string of lovers, and Anne accepted the situation with sadness.’¹²

It was a trip to the theatre in 1728 to see the hottest ticket in town, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, that would at last see the now 3rd duke’s life gain a (still somewhat irregular) semblance of domestic stability. For Powlett would become quickly enamoured of the young actress getting her big break in the role of Polly Peachum, his undisguised pursuit of Lavinia Fenton – remember the name –

.. night after night from his stage side box seat, captured (far right) in artist William Hogarth’s depiction of the landmark production. Though twenty-three years his junior, Miss Fenton soon succumbed to the duke’s ardent blandishments, accepting his offer to give up the stage in exchange for financial security, a smart townhouse in Mayfair and an unabashed life as his official mistress. The couple remained together for over 25 years, the duke at least having the decency not to wed Lavinia until after his first wife Anne’s death in 1751, some three years before his own demise.

Much of their time had been spent at Hackwood Park but surviving from this era on the Bolton Hall estate is a stone folly, Polly Peachum’s Tower (restored in recent times and repurposed as a hospitality room for shoot days on the Yorkshire estate). None of the duke’s three sons born to Lavinia Fenton were eligible to inherit either property, the dukedom and entailed estates being enjoyed by Charles’s brother, Harry, for just five years until his death in 1759. And the fourth duke’s tragic successor lasted only a year longer than his father as squire of the Bolton estates, but would make his mark and alter their destiny.

*

‘The Duke of Bolton the other morning – nobody knows why or wherefore – sat himself down upon the floor in his dressing-room, and shot himself through the head.’ Thus did Horace Walpole record the suicide of the 47-year-old 5th duke of Bolton at his Grosvenor Square townhouse in July 1765. This catastrophic cloud of melancholia was the polar opposite of the expression of optimism represented by Charles’ further improvements to the house at Hackwood Park.

Soon after he had succeeded, the 5th duke ‘made alterations to the central block of [the Hampshire mansion], bedecking the new-modelled saloon with the Grinling Gibbons carvings and other spoils of Abbotstone’, which was demolished.⁵ Plans by architect John Vardy survive for a pair of classical gate lodges and various other new structures: ‘There is no trace of these buildings, but very likely Powlett was still contemplating…

… their erection when death overtook him. He was a bachelor, but had a daughter whose future he took pains to assure.’⁵ Jean Mary was the product of Charles’s enduring relationship with ‘his housekeeper’, Mrs. Mary Banks Brown, with whom he had lived openly. But, with his only brother Harry also being the father of daughters, and the dukedom thus facing extinction, Powlett willed that the family estates should revert to Jean Mary after the lifetime tenancy of the 6th duke.

A court-martial for questionable decision making as captain of the Harfleur was a low point of Harry Powlett’s chequered naval career (which had been ‘kept aloft by family connections’).¹³ But the commitment demonstrated through this period by his ship’s surgeon Thomas Maude saw the latter now installed at Bolton Hall as resident steward of the 6th duke’s Yorkshire estate. And the family’s favouring of their Hampshire property through much of the 18th century was all too evident towards its end, one visitor finding the Hall (and also its occupant) to be in a state of decline.

‘Bolton hall is a gloomy, deserted seat of the Duke of Bolton, all in wild neglect and disorder. I was joined by a formal old gentleman, who offer’d his services of attendance and information: neither of which he was capable of giving, having lately suffer’d a paralytic attack. I had to lead him about. There is now not a bed in the best rooms that could be slept in.’¹⁴

And the situation didn’t change greatly upon the death of the last duke in 1794 when the Powlett estates reverted to Jean, the 5th duke’s illegitimate daughter who had since become Mrs. Thomas Orde. Of Northumberland gentry, Thomas Orde had done the Grand Tour as a young man, having his likeness captured by Batoni (left) as would so many when in Rome. Back in England, Thomas married Jean Mary in 1774 and was elected to Westminster four years later. A diligent parliamentarian, Orde rose to become useful to Prime Minister William Pitt as Chief Secretary for Ireland until nervous exhaustion decided him to quit.

Away from politics Orde was proficient sketcher, and a patron of the artist George Romney from whom, in addition to family portraits, he would commission several large-scale works, including ‘Mirth’ (r) and ‘Melancholy‘ (both latterly berthed at Bolton until being sold in 1969).¹⁵ Having come into the substantial Powlett estates in the right of his wife, Orde would add her family name by royal licence in 1795. But despite being created first Baron Bolton of Bolton Castle three years later, Orde-Powlett again lived mainly in Hampshire, buried at Old Basing in 1807. His heir, William, shared this preference, engaging Samuel Wyatt to make further alterations at Hackwood. But this era would at last also see improvements at neglected Bolton Hall, which now became home to the second baron’s younger brother, Thomas.

Architect Lewis Wyatt, having picked up the baton from his late uncle Samuel at Hackwood Park, would also be enlisted by Thomas Orde-Powlett to provide low three-bay extensions, with substantial terminating pavilions, east and west of the original main block of Bolton Hall (↓). A viewing tower was also created to the east. And the revitalised house now benefitted from the export from Hampshire of some surplus furnishings…

 

… notably an ‘important George III architectural bookcase (r), attributed to the Vardy brothers’, which was shipped by canal thence up the east coast to Yorkshire in 1816. Lord Bolton was also busy offloading Hampshire acres at this time, the principal beneficiary being banker Alexander Baring who purchased the Abbotstone estate for £64,200 in 1818, and a further 2,200 acres two years later. ‘He nevertheless remained a great landed magnate in both Hampshire and the North Riding after these sales,’ still with a combined holding of almost 30,000 acres.¹⁶

Something the second baron (‘a shy, if not an eccentric, man’) lacked, however, was offspring, being succeeded in 1850 by his nephew, William, the eldest surviving son of Thomas Orde-Powlett of Bolton Hall. The family focus was now firmly back in Yorkshire, the third Lord Bolton and his countess Letitia occupying the big house while his mother took up residence at Wensley Hall (↓), a handsome estate property at the opposite end of the kilometre-long east drive. And Wensley Hall also provided immediate refuge for the fourth baron (who succeeded 1895)…

… in those first days following the catastrophic 1902 inferno at Bolton Hall, which Orde-Powlett quickly resolved to faithfully resurrect.

‘A prolific English ecclesiastical architect who specialised in building and restoring churches,’ Durham-based Charles Hodgson Fowler was perhaps an unlikely choice for the job (possibly recommended by the then local MP for Richmondshire, fellow Conservative John Hutton, whose Soberge Hall numbered among Fowler’s few country house projects). Bolton Hall’s robustly plain exterior soon rose again.

Within, a late-17th century style staircase, decorative moulded ceilings (below), and Grinling Gibbons-style panelling brought from Hackwood Park, continued the retrospective emphasis.

‘The interiors [remain] impressive and on the piano nobile at least suitably grand. Surprisingly, the house was furthered enlarged during the rebuild with the addition of a substantial new wing to the west, to principally house a vast Billiard Room [above, far left].’¹⁷

Further internal reordering followed the succession of William, 5th Baron Bolton, in 1922; he later reinforced the Orde-Powletts’ commitment to Yorkshire with the sale of Hackwood Park to newspaper magnate Lord Camrose in 1935. Having lost his 21-year-old namesake heir in the Great War, it was Williams’s younger son Nigel who succeeded in 1944.

As national Chief Acquisitions Officer tasked with sourcing timber for the Second World War effort, the 6th baron ‘was especially severe in the inroads he made into his own woods’ on his Yorkshire estate.¹⁹ Lord Bolton died in 1963. Earlier in his life Nigel Orde-Powlett had published some (now very hard to find) works of popular fiction. But even he would likely have rejected as ridiculously far-fetched what would become the improbable final chapter in the romantic life of his eldest son and heir.

As attentive readers will recall, in the early Georgian era the 3rd Duke of Bolton effectively abandoned his wife for the young star of The Beggar’s Opera, Lavinia Fenton. Centuries on, in an extraordinary twist, his sporting, now twice-divorced descendant Richard Orde-Powlett, 7th Baron Bolton, placed the following notice in the personal columns of The Times newspaper published July 26, 1991:

“We first met when I sold him a horse about three years ago, I am not the cause of the break-up [of his last marriage]” insisted the coincidentally named ex-wife of ‘a prosperous Reading building contractor’. (“If that is what she is saying, let her say it. I have no comment to make,” remarked her predecessor.)²⁰

And things were no less lively on the other side of the estate where Lord Bolton’s eldest son, Harry (from his first marriage to Christine Weld-Forester, daughter of the 7th Baron Forester of Willey Park, Shropshire) had been handed, from the age of 20, responsibility for crumbling Bolton Castle.

“Tonnes of stonework were supported by next to nothing,”²¹ the future 8th baron recalled in 1995 at the culmination of a 20-year restoration project, which had cost ‘some £600,000 of his own money’ and tested not only his accountant’s forbearance but also that of various heritage bodies along the way.²²

“We were astounded at the arrogance. He has flouted the planning laws and should be locked up in his own dungeons,” boomed the chairman of the Yorkshire Dales National Park committee, aghast at the DIY reconstitution of the medieval gardens of the Castle.²³ Orde-Powlett had been moved to take this part of the project forward by himself after disputing with English Heritage (more specifically their contractors) over the costings of Phase I.

But his and wife Phillipa‘s approach and commitment to authenticity at the now thriving attraction found admirers: ‘Bolton Castle is everything English Heritage castles are not allowed to be – damp, smelly, rambling, romantic.’²⁴ (Many of those adjectives could also apply to the precarious circumstances surrounding another contemporaneous endeavour, Harry Orde-Powlett’s positively Boys Own initiative helming freelance aid convoys to the wretched populations of war zones in Bosnia, Croatia and central Africa.) Meanwhile, back at Bolton Hall…

… the heritage lobby proved more persuasive in respect of his father’s plan to demolish the west wing (citing dry rot, its counterpart having gone decades before), a scheme which would be abandoned in spring 1992. “English Heritage thought that part of the Hall was too important. They say it is and that’s that,” the baron’s agent conceded.²⁵

In contrast, the present-day occupants of Bolton Hall have encountered little impediment to their intentions to both reorder the interior of the house and to revive elements of its original parkland setting.

The 8th Lord Bolton died in 2023 having made way at the Hall for son Thomas, his wife Katie and their young family several years earlier. ‘They are passionate about the house and want it to continue to thrive as a family home rather than feel more like a museum where only a handful of rooms are used.’ Inheriting a superfluity of staircases, one of the four was identified for removal (in a scheme which received planning permission in 2022), replaced by a screen of Ionic columns, ‘allowing more natural light and easier circulation in that part of the house’.¹⁷

More visibly, walkers in this stretch of Wensleydale will witness the reinstatement of ‘the axial [Hall] approach of the 17th and 18th centuries. The original avenue is clearly recorded on historic plans with a remarkable sightline that ran north-south from one ridge of the valley to the other through the centre of the house and the Lord’s Bridge (↓). Few Baroque landscapes on this scale survive.’²⁶

 

The new avenue of limes and oaks enclosed by hawthorn hedging “will connect two SSSI wildflower meadows, which are about 2km apart,” the 9th Lord Bolton explained earlier this year (r). ‘At the head of the avenue it is proposed to curve a carriage sweep up to either side of the Edwardian balustrade. The design [will] allow a clear view down the historic avenue to the bridge, [from where] the public can look back to see the hall framed at its end.’²⁶ After 800 years there is indeed plenty here to look back upon…

[360° south front panorama 2024][Archives][Bolton Castle]

1. Darlington & Stockton Times, 18 Oct 1902.
2. Emery, A. Greater medieval houses of England & Wales 1300-1500, Vol.1: Northern England, 1996.
3. Craven Herald, 28 Nov 1902.
4. Greville, J., Pevsner, N. Buildings of England: Yorkshire North Riding, 2023.
5. Avary Tipping, H. Hackwood Park, Hampshire I/II, Country Life 17/24 May, 1913.
6. Burnet,Bishop. Bishop Burnet’s history of his own time, Vol.4, 1833.
7. Whellan, T. History and topography of the City of York & the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1857.
8. Hatcher, J. Richmondshire architecture, 1990.
9. Hepworth, V. The gardens and designed landscape of Bolton Hall, Wensleydale, 2023.
10. Sandby, P. A collection of 150 select views of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1781.
11. Kilburn, M. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.
12. Major, J., Murden, S. A history of the Dukes of Bolton 1600-1815: Love loyalty, 2020.
13. Crimmin, P.K. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.
14. Byng, Hon. J. The Torrington diaries, 1954.
15. Kidson, A. George Romney : a complete catalogue of his paintings, 2015.
16. Thompson, F.M.L. English landed society in the 19th century, 1963.
17. Pentreath, B. Bolton Hall design and access statement (planning submission), 2021.
18. [MS]  Bolton Hall archives, Ref. ZBO, North Yorkshire Record Office.
19. The Times 17 June 1963.
20. Yorkshire Post 13 October 1990.
21. Northern Echo 25 March 1995.
22. Daily Telegraph 23 March 1995.
23. Daily Telegraph 1 February 1995.
24. Jenkins, S. Discover Britain’s best houses: Yorkshire, 2016.
25. Northern Echo 3 April 1992.
26. Wilkie K. Rejuvenation of parkland, Bolton Hall, Wensleydale (planning submission), 2022.

Read Full Post »