In a journey across our largest county, so famous for its grand
cathedrals and ruined castles and abbeys, one could not wish for
greater variety either in scenery or association. Between the Queen
of Scots' prison in Sheffield Manor and the reputed Dotheboys Hall a
few miles below the mediæval-looking town of Barnard Castle, there
is vast difference of romance; and yet what more unromantic places
than Bowes or Sheffield! Indeed, take them all round, the towns and
villages of Yorkshire have a grey and dreary look about them; and the
houses partake of the pervading character, or want of character, of
the busy manufacturing centres. But the natural scenery is quite
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another matter, and with such lovely surroundings one often sighs
that the picturesque and the utilitarian are so opposed to one another.
We do not, however, merely allude to the buildings in the southern
part of the county, for many villages in the prettiest parts have nothing
architecturally attractive about their houses. The snug creeper-clad
cottage, so familiar in the south of England, is, comparatively
speaking, a rarity, and one misses the warmth of colour amid the
everlasting grey.
The express having dropped us in nearly the southernmost corner,
our object is to get out of the busy town of Sheffield as quickly as possible; but, as before stated, romance lingers around the remains
of the ancient seat of the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, who lies buried in
the parish church, for under his charge the Scots' queen remained
here a prisoner for many years; and Wolsey, too, was brought here
on his way to Leicester.
Upon the road to Barnsley there is little to delay us until we come to a
turning to the right a couple of miles or so to the south of the town.
After the continual chimney-shafts the little village of Worsborough is
refreshing. The church has many points of interest. The entrance
porch has a fine oak ceiling with carved bosses, and the original oak
door i
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s decorated with carved oak tracery. The most interesting thing within
is the monument to Sir Roger Rockley, a sixteenth-century knight
whose effigy in armour lies beneath a canopy supported by columns
very much resembling a four-poster of the time of Henry VII. The
similarity is heightened by the fact that the tomb is entirely of carved
oak, painted and gilded. The bed, however, has two divisions, and
beneath the recumbent wooden effigy of Sir Roger with staring white
eyes, is the gruesome figure of a skeleton in a shroud, also made
more startling by its colouring. How the juvenile Worsboroughites
must dread this spectre, for its position in the church is conspicuous!
There is a brass to Thomas Edmunds, secretary to William, Earl of
Strafford, who lived in the manor-house close by, a plain stone
gabled house with two wings and a small central projection. It is a
gloomy looking place, and once possessed some gloomy relics of the
martyr king, including the stool upon which he knelt on Whitehall
scaffold. These relics belonged to Sir Thomas Herbert, the close
attendant upon Charles during the later days of his imprisonment,
and descended to the Edmunds family by the marriage of his widow
with Henry Edmunds of Worsborough.[31] The park presumably has become public property, and the road running th
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rough it is much patronised by the black-faced gentlemen of the
neighbouring collieries. Nor are the ladies of the mining districts
picturesque, although they seem to affect the costume of the dames
of old Peru by showing scarcely more than an eye beneath their
shawls.
Some three miles to the west of Worsborough is Wentworth Castle (a
successor to the older castle, the remains of which stood on the high
ground above), called by some Stainborough Hall to distinguish it
from Wentworth Woodhouse. The historic house stands high,
commanding fine views, but marred by mining chimney-shafts on the
adjacent hills. The exterior of the mansion is classic and formal, and
exteriorly there is little older than the time of George I.; the interior, however, takes us back another century or more, and the panelled
porters' hall and carved black oak staircase were old when powdered
wigs were introduced. In Queen Anne's State rooms and in the cosy
ante-chambers there are rich tapestries, wonderful old cabinets, and
costly china, reminding one of the treasures of Holland House. But
the finest room is the picture gallery, one hundred and eighty feet in
length and twenty-four feet in breadth, and very lofty. The ceiling
represents the sky with large gold stars, and has a curious effect of making it appear much higher than it really is. It belongs to the time of
the second Earl of Strafford, who built all
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this part of the house. The unfortunate first earl looks down from the
wall with dark melancholy eyes: a face full of character and
determination, and different vastly from the dreamy weakness
revealed in the profile of the sovereign who cut his head off. The
despotic ruler of Ireland is said to walk the chambers of the castle
with his head under his arm, which, strangely enough, seems to be
the fashion with decapitated ghosts; and Strafford is a busy ghost, for
he has to divide his haunting among two other mansions, Wentworth
Woodhouse and Temple Newsam. Here is Oliver, too, who made as
great a mistake as Charles did by resorting to the axe. The young
Earl of Pembroke looks handsome in his long fair ringlets; and so
does the youthful Henrietta, Baroness Wentworth (a pretty childish
figure fondling a dog), whose end was every way as tragic as her
kinsman's.
Many of the bedrooms are named after birds and flowers, a pretty
idea that we have not met elsewhere. The colour blue predominates
in those we call to mind, namely, the "Blue-tit room," the "Kingfisher room," the "Peacock room," the "Cornflower room," and the "Forget-me-not room." Just outside the park, near a house that was formerly
kept as a menagerie, is a comfortable old-fashioned inn, the
"Strafford Arms," the landlord of which was butler to two generations
of the Vernon-Wentworths, and in c
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onsequence he is quite an authority on genealogical matters; and
where his memory does not serve, has Debrett handy at his elbow.
Being a Somersetshire man he has brought the hospitality of the
western counties with him to the northern heights. He points with
pride to the cricket-ground behind the inn, the finest "pitch" in Yorkshire.
TOMB, DARFIELD CHURCH.
Let us avoid the town of Barnsley and turn eastwards towards
Darfield, whose interest is centred in its church. The ceilings of the aisles, presumably like the picture gallery at Wentworth Castle, are
supposed to represent the heavens, but the colour is inclined to be
sea-green, and the clouds and stars are feathery. A fine
Perpendicular font is surmounted by an elaborate Jacobean cover;
opposite, at the east end of the church, is a fine but rather dilapidated
tomb of a fourteenth-century knight and his dame, and the effigy of
the latter gives a good idea of the costume of Richard II.'s time. Upon
a wooden stand close by there is a chained Bible, and the support
looks so light that one would think the whole could be carried off
bodily, until one tries its prodigious weight.
Another tomb, of the Willoughbys of Parham, bears upon it some
strange devices, including an owl with a crown
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upon its head. The seventeenth-century oak pews and some earlier
ones with carved bench-ends, add considerably to the interest of the
interior. The ancient coffer in the vestry, as well as a carved oak
chest and chairs, must not pass unnoticed.
Barnborough to the east, and Great Houghton to the north-east, are
both famous in their way; the former for a traditional fight between a
man and a wild cat, which for ferocity knocked points off the Kilkenny
record. The Hall was once the property of Sir Thomas More (another
of those beheaded martyrs who are doomed to walk the earth with
their heads under their arms), and contains a "priest's hole," which, had it existed in the Chancellor's day, might have tempted him to try
and save his life. Great Houghton Hall, the ancient seat of the Roders
(a brass to whom may be seen in Darfield church), is now an inn,
indeed has been an inn for over half a century. Once having been a
stately mansion, it has an air of mystery and romance; and there are
rumours that before it lost caste, in the transition stage between
private and public life, one of its chambers remained draped in black,
in mourning for the Earl of Strafford's beheading on Tower Hill in
1641. It is a huge b
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uilding of many mullioned windows and pinnacled gables; but within
the last two years the upper part of the big bays of the front have been destroyed, and a verandah introduced which spoils this side,
and whoever planned this alteration can have had but little reverence
for ancient buildings. The rooms on the ground floor are mostly bare;
but ascending a wide circular stone staircase, with carved oak arches
overhead, there are pleasant surprises in store. You step into the
spacious "Picture gallery," devoid of ancestral portraits truly, but with panelled walls and Tudor doorways. The mansion was stripped of its
furniture over a century and a half ago, but there are chairs of the Chippendale period to compensate, and a great wardrobe of the
Stuart period too big presumably to get outside. Two bedrooms are
panelled from floor to ceiling and have fine overmantels, one of which
has painted panels depicting "Life" and "Death." But a great portion of the house is dilapidated, and to see its ornamental plaster ceilings
one would have to risk disappearing through the floors below, like the
demon in the pantomime. Mine host of the "Old Hall Inn" is genuinely
sympathetic, and is quite of the opinion that the oak fittings that have
been removed would look best in their original position; and this is
only natural, for he has lived there all
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his life, and his mother was born in the house; and he proudly points
at the Jacobean pew in the adjacent church where as a child he sat
awestruck, holding his grandfather's hand while the good old
gentleman took his forty winks. The little church in its cabbage-grown
enclosure is quite an untouched gem, with formal array of
seventeenth-century pews with knobby ends, a fine carved oak pulpit
and sounding-board. Its exterior is non-ecclesiastical in appearance,
with rounded stone balustrade ornamentation. While photographing
the building an interested party observed that he had lived at
Houghton all his life, but had never observed there was a door on that
side,—a proof that residents in a place rarely see the most familiar
objects. Nevertheless, he discovered the door of the "Old Hall," and entered.
Pontefract Castle, so rich in historical associations, is disappointing,
because there is so little of it left. It is difficult in these fragmentary but
ponderous walls to imagine the fortress as it appeared in the days of
Elizabeth. From an ancient print of that time it looks like a fortified city, with curious pinnacles and turrets upon its many towers. The
great round towers of the keep had upon the summit quite a
collection, like intermediate pawns and castles from a chessboard.
The curtain walls connected seven round towers,
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and there were a multitude of square towers within. There is
something very suggestive of the Duncan-Macbeth stronghold in the
narrow stairway between those giant rounded towers. It is like a
tomb, and one shudders at the thought of the "narrow damp
chambers" in the thickness of the wall of the Red Tower, where
tradition says King Richard II. was done to death. By the irony of fate
it was the lot of many proud barons during some part of their career
to occupy the least desirable apartment of their castles; and thus it
was with Edward II.'s cousin, Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster,
who from his own dungeon was brought forth to be beheaded. In a
garden near the highwayman's resort, Ferrybridge, above Pontefract,
may be seen a stone coffin which was dug up in a field on the
outskirts of the castle, and supposed to be that of the unfortunate
earl. At Pontefract, too, Lord Rivers, Sir Thomas Vaughan, Sir
Richard Grey, and others were hurried into another world by the
Protector Richard; so altogether the castle holds a good record for
deeds of darkness, and the creepy feeling one has in that narrow
stairway between those massive walls is fully justified by past events.
The old castle held out stoutly for the king in the Civil Wars. For many
months, in 1645, it stood a desperate siege by Fairfax and General
Poyntz before the garrison capitulated. Three years later it was
captured again for the Royalists by Colonel Morrice, and held with
great ga
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llantry against General Lambert even after the execution of Charles I.
In the March following, the stronghold surrendered, saving Morrice
and five others who had not shown mercy to Colonel Rainsborough
when he fell into their hands. These six had the option of escaping if
they could within a week. "The garrison," says Lord Clarendon,
"made several sallies to effect the desired escape, in one of which Morrice and another escaped; in another, two more got away; and
when the six days were expired and the other two remained in the
castle, their friends concealed them so effectually, with a stock of
provisions for a month, that rendering the castle and assuring
Lambert that the six were all gone, and he was unable to find them
after the most diligent search, and had dismantled the castle, they at
length got off also." There are still some small chambers hewn out of
the solid rock on which the castle is built, reached by a subterranean
passage on the north side; and perhaps here was the successful
lurking-place. Colonel Morrice and his companion, Cornet Blackburn,
were afterwards captured in disguise at Lancaster.
In the pleasure gardens of to-day, with various inscription boards
specifying the position of the Clifford Tower, Gascoyne's Tower, the
King's Tower, and so forth, we get but a hazy idea of this once
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practically impregnable fortress, covering an area of seven acres.
Concerning Richard II.'s death, it is doubtful whether the truth will
ever be arrived at. The story that he escaped, and died nineteen
years afterwards in Scotland, is less likely than the supposition that
he died from the horrors of starvation; on the other hand, the story of
the attack by Sir Piers Exton's assassins is almost strengthened by
the evidence of a seventeenth-century tourist, who, prior to its
destruction in the Civil War, records: "The highest of the seven
towers is the Round Tower, in which that unfortunate prince was
enforced to flee round a poste till his barbarous butchers inhumanly
deprived him of life. Upon that poste the cruell hackings and fierce blowes doe still remaine. " Mr. Andrew Lang perhaps can solve this historic mystery; or perhaps he has already done so? New Hall, close
at hand, must have been a grand old house; but it is now roofless,
and crumbling to decay. It is a picturesque late-Tudor mansion, with a
profusion of mullioned windows and a central bay. The little glass that
remains only adds to its forlorn appearance.
Ferrybridge and Brotherton both have an old-world look. The latter
place is famous for the battle fought there between Yorkists and
Lancastrians; and as the birthplace of Thomas de Brotherton, the fifth
son of King Edward
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I. The old inns of Ferrybridge recall the prosperous coaching days;
but the revival of business on the road which has been brought about
by cycle and motor, will have but little effect on this village with a past. The hostelry by the fine stone bridge that gives the place its
name, has a past connected with notorious gentlemen of the road,
and an entry in an old account-book runs as follows: "A traveller in a
gold-laced coat ordered and drank two bottles of wine—doubtless
mischief to-night, for the traveller, methinks, is that villain Dick
Turpyn." How vividly this recalls that excellent picture by Seymour Lucas, R.A., where a landlord of the Joe Willet type is eyeing,
between the whiffs from his long churchwarden, a suspicious guest,
who having tasted mine host's vintage has dropped asleep,
regardless of the fact that his brace of flintlocks are conspicuously
visible.
Between here and Leeds are two fine mansions, Ledston Hall and
Kippax Park. The former is a very uncommon type of Elizabethan
architecture, almost un-English in character. It is a stone-built house
of the time of James I., with Dutch-like gables and narrow square
towers. In the reign of Charles I. it belonged to Thomas, Earl of
Strafford; but his son, the second earl, sold the estate. Kippax in its way is original in construction, but savours somewhat of Strawberry
Hill Gothic. The ancient family of Bland have been seated her
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e since the time of Elizabeth, the direct male line, however, dying out
in the middle of the eighteenth century. Sir Thomas Bland was one of
the gallant Royalists who defended Pontefract Castle during the Civil
War.
A few miles to the north-west is the grand old mansion, Temple
Newsam. Like Hatfield House, which in many respects it resembles, it
is built of red-brick with stone coigns, and the time-toned warm colour
is acceptable in this county of grey stone. It was built like many so-called Elizabethan houses in the reign of James I., and, like Castle
Ashby, has around the three sides of the quadrangle a parapet of
letters in open stone work which runs as follows: "All glory and praise
be given to God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost on high, peace
on earth, goodwill towards men, honour and true allegiance to our
gracious king, loving affections amongst his subjects, health and
plenty within this house." The loyal sentiments are not those of Mary
Queen of Scots' husband, Lord Darnley, who was born in the earlier
house, but of the builder, Sir Anthony Ingram, who bought the estate
from the Duke of Lennox. Of all the spacious rooms, the picture
gallery is the finest. It is over a hundred feet in length and contains a
fine collection of old masters and some remarkable china. Albert
Durer's hard and microsco
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pic art is well represented, as well as the opposite extreme in
Rembrandt's breadth of style. But the gem of all is a head by
Reynolds (of, we think, a Lady Gordon), a picture that connoisseurs
would rave about. A small picture of Thomas Ingram is almost
identical with that of the Earl of Pembroke we have mentioned at
Wentworth Castle. In one of the bedrooms (famous for their tapestry
hangings and ancient beds) are full-length portraits of Mary Queen of
Scots, Queen Elizabeth, and James I., the first like the well-known
portraits at Hardwick and Welbeck. On one of the staircases is an
interesting picture of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, in a turban, with
the favourite spaniel who appears in many of her portraits. She holds
in her hand the picture of her lord and master, the duke who was so
jealous of her. A new grand staircase with elaborately carved newels,
after the style of that at Hatfield, has been added to the mansion
recently, and harmonises admirably with its more ancient
surroundings.
The park is fine and extensive, but beyond, the signs of the proximity
of busy Leeds obtrude and spoil the scenery. We went from here to
the undesirable locality of Hunslet in search of a place called
Knowsthorpe Hall, but had some considerable difficulty in finding it,
for nobody seemed to know i
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t by that name. "You warnts the Island," observed a mining
gentleman, a light dawning upon him. So we got nearer by inquiring
for "the Island," but then the clue was lost. Thousands of factory hands were pouring out of a very unlikely looking locality, but nobody
knew such a place. In desperation we plunged into a primitive coffee-
stall, around which black bogies were sitting at their mid-day meal.
One of them with more intelligence than the rest knew the place, but
couldn't describe how to get to it. "Go up yon road," he said, "and ask for 'Whitakers.'" We followed the advice, and at the turning asked for
'Whitakers.' "Is it the dressmakers ye mean?" was the reply of a small
boy to whom we put the question. "Yes," we said, in entire ignorance
whether it was the dressmakers or the almanac people. But having
got so far there were landmarks that did the rest, and presently a big
entrance gate was seen with painted on its side-pillars, "Knowsthorpe
Olde Hall."
GATEWAY, KNOWSTHORPE HALL.
But there was no Island, not even a moat. The smoke of Leeds has
given the stone walls a coat of black, but otherwise it is not
unpicturesque, and would be more so if this original gateway
remained. Within the last two years this has been removed as well as
the steps leading down from the terrace. The gateway was called the
"Stone Chairs," because of the niches or seats on either side of it. It is
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now, we understand, at Hoare Cross, near Burton-on-Trent. There is
much oak within the house, and one panelled room has a very fine
carved mantelpiece. The oak staircase, too, is graceful as well as
uncommon in design. Close against one side of the house is a stone
archway with sculptured figures of the time of James I. on either side
of it, and the old lady in charge related the history of this happy pair,
how the gentleman had wooed the damsel (a Maynard), but as he
had not been to the wars she would have nothing to say to him.
Consequently he buckled on his sword and engaged in the nearest
battle; and to prove his valour, brought back with him as a love-token
the arm which he had lost,—a statement sounding somewhat
contradictory. Naturally after that she fell into his—other arm, and
accepted him on the spot. This daughter of Mars, of course, now
"revisits the glimpses of the moon" with her lover's arm, not around her waist in the ordinary fashion, but in her hand; and those who
doubt