Derbyshire 17 -Sutton Scarsdale Hall . How the mighty can fall . The story of a house stripped of all its finery

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Suzy has been standing forlornly on the drive. It took me until last week to go up and make an effort to clean her after our last trip way back in September/October. Armed with bleach to clean the toilet with, polish to spruce up the shelving, plastic bags to collect rubbish and dusters to polish I set off with the plan to start at the back on the van and clean her ready for our next trip which will be a few days at the Caravan Club site at Castleton in the Peak District the week before Christmas. She felt cold and unused. The thermometre showed 10 degrees celsius which felt pretty damned cold as I opened up the first cupboard filled with books, puzzles and music. A layer of dust was lying on the books as I took each one out. All read they would go back to work for the book stall. They were quickly replaced with a selection of new books picked up from the same book stall I would be returning the old ones to. Next the food cupboard. Two old crusty, dusty ends of baguettes bought months ago in Germany and France. A half empty bag of cereal. Old tea bags and coffee removed and replaced with fresh supplies. The medicine cabinet emptied, checked refilled and replaced. The duvets have not been washed and it looks increasingly like those and the throws will have to wait for the Spring before they get a freshen up. Little point washing them now as the weather is poor and they would not dry. It has been cold of late with the temperatures dipping at night and leaving a frosty coating quite thick on the car windscreen. Old Jack Frost has been rather busy.

A break, quick glass of wine of course before returning to Suzy to empty out her fridge/ freezer. Oh dear, dear it looked sad in there. As always a few traces of penicillin left over on the almost empty ice cream tub. Quickly emptied, sterilised and with all the contents removed the fridge soon took on a much improved look. Next to the cupboard above. This one filled with kitchen roll, washing up liquid and everything you need to keep the kitchen and the pots clean and tidy. Removed all the crockery and glassware . Into the dishwasher before returning them clean and shining to the cupboard. Onto the oven - not my most favourite job but it had to be done. Crumbs collected, thoroughily cleaned it is ready for business again. Microwave cleaned and sterilised and final job the hoovering. It always feels good to get to that point. As the dust was sucked up from the carpet the job was finally done.

However Suzy still needs a wash outside, her grey water emptied and needs refilling again but those jobs can wait awhile.

We have not been out much of late but today decided to head over to Sutton Scarsdale Hall near to Bolsover. I have been before as the property is in the care of English Heritage and being members of CADW we get in free. Having said that there is no entry fee as the place is derelict and has been for some years. So what is the story of the decline of this once great house.

The house despite its poor state is still Grade I listed . It is impressive and we approached it from the back of the building which is made up of two wings with doorway set back between the two wings. There is plenty of parking probably because few people visit. Most visitors to stately homes want homes lived in and full of furniture and fittings. Here you have an empty roofless shell of a building with the stonework damaged in parts. It is easy to imagine castles in a state of disrepair but stately homes are not that common. Most were demolished . Wingerworth Hall disappeared , Acton Hall in Wrexham pulled down for housing. This is a strange reminder of the grandeur of Downton Abbey and the demise of rich families as money was either squandered or because workers were few and far between after the Great War. Life had to change for the rich and Sutton Scarsdale shows what happens when it all goes wrong.

The estate had been around since the Norman Conquest but this structure is believed to be the fourth or fifth built on the site. In 1724, Nicholas Leke the 4th Earl of Scarsdale commissioned the building of a design by the architect Francis Smith . A Georgian mansion in a Palladian style with pilasters and cornice which stood in its own grounds overlooking the valley below in which now runs the snake like M1 and in the distance on the neighbouring hill Bolsover Castle . This is an area rich with castles and houses - Bolsover, Hardwick and Sutton Scarsdale. All from different periods of history.

You have to use your imagination a lot on this house. It is on a grand scale and internally it featured oak panelling and stucco panels and plasterwork. Nothing remains. You have to try in your minds eye to imagine the coaches arriving at the house and entering an ornate beautifully decorated hallway. A grand staircase must have been placed in the hallway and would have risen to the first floor. Fancy fireplaces would have been in each room, glass chandeliers and Turkish carpets. Blue John mined locally would have been extensively used together with marble. Paintings on the walls . Now it is empty with no roof and the rain dripping in down the once pristine walls.

Following the death of the 4th Earl, the local MP Godfrey Bagnall Clarke purchased the hall in 1740. He died in 1774 when the Marquis of Ormonde gained ownership of the house as always through marriage. He passed away in 1824 when the house passed over to Richard Arkwright of Cromford Mill. Money was available to this point to maintain and look after the house gracing it with good furniture and fittings. Richard was descended from Richard Arkwright who invented the Spinning Jenny.

Richard Junior was a good businessman and prospered. Sutton Scarsdale was in good hands. He married and had eleven children. He moved into property and banking and became the richest commoner in England. After his death his son Robert inherited the house. Despite what the family thought was a poor marriage he made a good match with his wife becoming the charming hostess of Sutton Scarsdale Hall.

After Roberts death the house was taken over by Godfrey Harry Arkwright a cleric. Well educated , he married twice. Three children followed from his second wife and the eldest son Francis inherited the estate. After this the demise of the estate set in with the owner leaving for New Zealand and leaving Sutton to a relative to care for it. When it is not your property perhaps you don't care about it in the way you should . Francis the next owner died without any family . The house was now put up for auction. Too costly to keep it had to go.

The house was described as being well situated on high ground with fine views. Even on a dull and cold December day it certainly had fine views. A handsome classical building - certainly. From the front it is visually stunning. Perfectly symmetrical each wing is a mirror image of the other wing, the windows are all equally placed on each floor. They look like deep pools as there is no glass and they resemble lifeless eyes watching the watcher. The fine entrance hall gone, two inner halls just bare and empty walled. A dining room with strong room, a morning room . We walked through all these rooms. Sadly there were no information boards so it was hard to work out which room was the dining room and which the morning room. A smoking room and library, all the panelling removed. Lavatories and toilets. Probably these would have been on the second floor but as there are no floors in the building it is hard to imagine where they might have been. A billiard room . No self respecting house would be without its Billiard Room. There were some white traces of the pilasters left on the walls and a small amount of white plasterwork over what was once a fine fireplace. A servants hall , we guess we found that as we found the large fireplace needed to heat the room and cook the food. Housekeepers Room , Servants Sitting Room . Butlers Pantry. Bedrooms and Silver Closet, the kitchen the scullery, three larders - so they ate well . A laundry, four store rooms, drying rooms, boots rooms, gun rooms and lamp rooms. A substantial house. Oh the imagination was running wild trying to work out what was where. And wondering why no-one wanted to buy it. More up stairs, landings , two staircases, a beautiful ball room decorated in carved oak with gold and white ornamentation. Coved ceiling and columns six bedrooms of varying sizes three dressing rooms, another five bedrooms of smaller proportions, and eight even smaller ones. Four bathrooms the list went on. A grand house indeed and in need of someone to care and love it.

Many of the houses like Sutton Scarsdale had two choices in the early 20th century . Change and diversify or refuse to move with the times and perish. Many of the men who might have worked on the estate before the Great War had gone over to France and not returned. Labour was scarce and society had changed . Life was never going to be the same for the rich. They lost servants, if they continued they had to live with less trappings of their wealth, they had far fewer working on their estates. Some did change and survive to this day. Others like Sutton Scarsdale failed. After years of neglect the estate was bought in 1919 by a group of local businessmen who asset-stripped the house; this went as far as removing the roof in 1920. Once this happened the house was doomed. With no slates and no lead the interior began to deteriorate.

Some parts of the building were shipped to the United States. One rooms oak panelling was bought by William Randolf Hearst who planned to use it on his mock Hearst Castle . Sadly after years in storage in New York it was bought by a film company Pall Mall where it was to be used for sets in the 1950's. How much better it would have been if the panelling could have been saved even in a museum or reused in an English home or castle? Another set of the panels was resident in the Philadephia Museum of Art. The estate now in dreadful estate was bought again in1946 by Osbert Sitwell of Renishaw Hall fame. He intended preserving it as a shell rather than demolish it. It is atmospheric and we enjoyed wandering from empty room to empty room. How the mighty have fallen. The house in its stripped state all that is left of the wealth of a family.

Before leaving I walked across the graveyard to the next door church. Originally part of the estate it is linked by a locked gate to the hall. It is easy to imagine the Arkwrights leaving Sutton Scarsdale on a Sunday and walking the short distance to their own pew in the local church. The graveyard had a lovely collection of 17th and 18th century gravestones. Skull and crossbones smiling at me from the stones.

St Mary's Church at Sutton Scarsdale stands on the south side of the courtyard of Sutton Scarsdale hall, built by Nicholas Leke, the fourth and last Earl of Scarsdale, in 1724.

The Church dates from the 13th Century, although it was rebuilt in the late 14th and early 15th Century by the Leke family. It is one of the oldest churches in Derbyshire and has a rare tomb depicting a carver of a Norman household, one of only 3 in Britain. I didnt find this but did find some lovely stained glass windows which for once came out quite well when I took the photos.

It was lovely to get out in the fresh air and see something a little bit different . If you are passing, go to Hardwick and see Bess of Hardwicks wonderful Elizabethan home, Bolsover Castle with its fairy tale turrets but take a half hour out and go and see Sutton Scarsdale. You wont see anything like it anywhere else.

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Photos

Sutton Scarsdale Hall
A view of the rear of the house

Sutton Scarsdale
Looks like the old kitchen

Sutton Scarsdale Hall
One of the many rooms stripped of its interior by the owners

Scarsdale Hall
Once the roof was taken off it did not take long for the house to deteriorate

Sutton Scarsdale
The view across the valley

Sutton Scarsdale Hall
The front of the building , roofless and with lifeless windows

Sutton Scarsdale church
There are some pretty stained glass in the small church

St Marys
Another wonderful stained glass window

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Derbyshire
Love the architecture.

[JenGog]

sutton scarsdale
Sadly a ruin but what an impressive one especially from the front . I believe some bits are still in the states

[Sameul david]

Very Good one
Very very good blog. I always enjoy reading your blogs.

[JenGog]

sutton scarsdale
Thankyou for the comment. I enjoy making a half hearted attempt at writing them .