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A catalogue of the Architectural Drawings at Carlton Towers, Yorkshire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
Although Carlton Towers is among the more spectacular Victorian country houses, its flamboyant Gothic exterior conceals a longer history. The site has been occupied by the Stapletons since the fourteenth century and the core of the present structure is the compact three-storeyed house built in 1614 by Elizabeth, widow of Richard Stapleton and granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick. The Stapletons were practising Catholics and their house remained of necessity largely unaltered for nearly one hundred and fifty years after completion. It was only in the more tolerant days of the mid-eighteenth century that the first major changes occurred. The owner at that time was Thomas Stapleton (inherited 1750, died 1821). Excluded by his religion from politics or the army, he occupied himself, like many of his Catholic neighbours, the Gascoignes of Parlington, the Constables of Burton Constable and the Lawsons of Brough, in improving his house and estate.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1979
References
Notes
1 For a more detailed description of the Elizabeth Carlton Hall see Mark Girouard, ‘Carlton Towers, Yorkshire’, Country Life, 26 January 1967.
There are sketches of the old house by John Warburton 1718/19 in the British Library: Lansdowne MS 9,914/40d & 45d. Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol. xx (1933), ‘Journal of John Warburton’.
2 Sir Miles Stapleton, Bart, of Carlton was tried at York for suspected involvement in Titus Oates’ Popish Plot in 1680 but was acquitted by a jury of his Yorkshire neighbours. His chaplain, the Ven. Thomas Thwing, however, was condemned and executed. The Ancestor, 11 (July 1902), 20-31.
3 See Colvin, H. M., biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1978), pp. 807-08Google Scholar.
4 The clock, re-used in the Victorian clocktower, is dated 1777.
5 Theodore de Bruyn (1730-1804) was a Flemish artist who came to England and was extensively employed by the 9th Duke of Norfolk at Worksop Manor. He did much work in Catholic houses specializing in trompe l’oeil altarpieces to look like sculpture and also decorated Athenian Stuart’s chapel at the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich. Croft-Murray, E., Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, II (1970), 177-78Google Scholar.
6 The date of the 8th Lord Beaumont’s building work is given by an account book for general works on the estate which includes references to ‘Lord Beaumont’s new building’. Its character can be reconstructed from an inventory of the contents of the house on his death in 1854. Both sources are in the Carlton Library.
7 The Building News, 20 February 1874.
8 J. F. Bentley to Charles Hadfield, 17 August 1874. I am grateful to Mr Peter Howell who is cataloguing Hadfield’s papers for drawing this to my attention.
9 de l’Hôpital, W., Westminster Cathedral and its Architect (2 vols, 1919), 1, 485-89, 537, 569Google Scholar. Girouard, Mark, The Victorian Country House (Oxford 1971), pp. 150-54Google Scholar.