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Willersley: an Adam Castle in Derbyshire’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol Max Craven, ‘Willersley: an Adam castle in Derbyshire’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XXII, 2014, pp. 109–122 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2014 WILLERSLEY: AN ADAM CASTLE IN DERBYSHIRE MAXWELL CRAVEN ichard Arkwright, the cotton pioneer, first came Another aspect was architectural. At first, Rto Derbyshire in , when he set up a cotton Arkwright had been obliged to reside in Wirksworth, spinning mill at Cromford, on a somewhat restricted four miles away and, apart from the leased land on site, over which his operations expanded for a which his mills stood, he did not at first own any decade. His investment repaid the risk handsomely, land at Cromford, although he later built up a and from the s he began to relish his success and landholding piecemeal over the ensuing years. started to adapt to his upwardly mobile situation. Indeed, the manor and much of the land had One aspect of this was dynastic, which saw his only originally been owned by a lead merchant, Adam daughter Susannah marry Charles Hurt of Soresby, from whose childless son it had come to his Wirksworth Hall, a member of an old gentry family two sons-in-law, of whom one was William Milnes of and a partner, with his elder brother Francis, in a Aldercar Hall. He, in turn, bought out the other son- major ironworks nearby at Alderwasley. in-law, a parson, in . It would seem that by Fig. : William Day ( ‒ ) ‘ A View of the mills at Cromford’ , (Derby Museums Trust ) THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXII WILLERSLEY : AN ADAM CASTLE IN DERBYSHIRE Milnes had been living in a house on The Rock, a bluff overlooking the Derwent at Cromford, which had previously been the Soresbys’. In an agreement was signed between Milnes and Arkwright that the latter should acquire the manor and estate of Cromford by April for a consideration of £ , . The transaction included a house of no great age called Rock House, which still stands on the bluff and which, due to its elevation, is largely invisible from the mills complex below. Arkwright spent most of the remainder of his life turning Rock House into a gentleman’s residence, probably using the services of the Derby architect George Rawlinson ( – ), later of Matlock Bath. I have argued elsewhere that he was Arkwright’s builder of choice from quite early on in his time in Derbyshire, and that well known Fig. : Willersley Castle, photographed by Arkwright buildings such as the facade of Masson Richard Keene c. (Author ) Mill ( ) and The Greyhound Hotel, Cromford ( ), both architectonic and idiosyncratically out with the demanding entrepreneur and been given Palladian, are attributable to him. But despite all the his marching orders, as had happened to others, work Arkwright put in to make Rock House a including his original partners. Just as likely is the comfortable and suitable home for an upwardly possibility that Arkwright knew what he wanted and mobile businessman, things took on a new gloss had come to realise that Rawlinson was not the man once he had purchased the manorial estate of to provide it. The person Sir Richard engaged Willersley, on the opposite side of the Derwent from instead to design this new house was William Cromford, from Thomas Hallett Hodges in . In Thomas ( – ), who in many ways might seem , with a knighthood in prospect, he began work an odd choice. Born at Stackpole, Pembrokeshire, in to create a spectacular semi-public Elysium, using , he would have been qualified as an architect in the Derwent as centrepiece and Wild Cat Tor to the or , but he only comes to notice working in north as backdrop for a new, much more imposing London in , when he exhibited designs at the house, more suited to a knight and a high sheriff, Royal Academy. Four years later he exhibited a large honours to which Arkwright took with some relish. folio book of Neoclassical designs, Original Designs Here a major seat was about to be created, to sit in a in Architecture . The buildings depicted here were landscape traversed by a major river, two roads and very much in the manner of Robert Adam, who containing a working community, maintained by its indeed was one of those listed as subscribers to the creator’s mills, themselves offering a startling publication. There are a substantial number of counterpoint on the opposite side of the valley. designs known to have been made by Thomas for In this there was no work for Rawlinson. This schemes that were never carried out, and only five was either because he was still fully occupied, either substantial executed commissions are known. He at Rock House or quite possibly at Mellor Mill, died in London in . completed in . Alternatively, he might have fallen Bearing in mind that the house Thomas THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXII WILLERSLEY : AN ADAM CASTLE IN DERBYSHIRE Fig. : Print after William Thomas’s perspective view of Willersley published in (James Richardson ) designed for Arkwright was as close to resembling a owner wanted was indeed what was required, for he Robert Adam original as could be, it is possible that made a perspective view of the proposed building in Sir Richard had approached Adam in , but that its setting. Thomas later had his effort engraved in the architect had turned out to be either too busy or (by which time he was no longer responsible for too expensive, bearing in mind that Arkwright the work at Cromford), probably in an effort to himself was notably parsimonious. If Arkwright’s revive his career (Fig. ). He had clearly never previous architectural dealings had indeed been with actually been to Cromford when he made the George Rawlinson, as suggested, then the sort of original drawing, for the spectacular hill behind the money being asked by a London man like Adam house, Wild Cat Tor, is nowhere visible, and the must have been something of a shock to the mill- remainder of the setting bears little resemblance to owner. Furthermore, in that year Adam had several the actuality of the site. Quite why he never commissions running, although by this time his remedied this before he had the engraving made is popularity in England had begun to be eclipsed to unclear, for a realistic account of the true setting some extent by that of James Wyatt, and his could only have enhanced the impact of the view. commissions were by then increasingly confined to The house Thomas designed was built of finely his native Scotland. Thus Sir Richard, perhaps ashlared Chatsworth Grit – a type of millstone grit faced by an impossibly high quotation from Adam sandstone from Oakes Quarry, Tansley – and firmly for coming back south again, was probably in Adam’s ‘Castle’ style, by which is meant a recommended to Thomas instead as able to design Classical house tricked out with battlements, in the same style and as almost certainly likely to be machicolations, towers and other accoutrements of considerably less expensive. the medieval stronghold (Fig. ). Yet underneath, as It may be too that Thomas had to convince with an Adam ‘castle’, it is a Neoclassical house of Arkwright that his interpretation of what the mill two and a half storeys and seven bays. The THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXII WILLERSLEY : AN ADAM CASTLE IN DERBYSHIRE top-lit; had it survived it would have been without doubt the finest staircase in Derbyshire. Willersley was probably Thomas’s most prestigious commission, and he was clearly very pleased with it for in his portrait by the American artist Mather Brown he is shown holding a copy of the plans. This portrait is of significance to the project, for his client, too, was painted by Brown, and it may be that they were done more or less simultaneously, which itself implies a fairly close and friendly working relationship, at least initially, between client and architect. Whether anyone Fig. : Dalquharran from the SE, c. . Its façade was later extended by the addition of full height extensions warned Thomas that Sir Richard was a particularly in matching style ( Private collection ) demanding client, a hard taskmaster and exceedingly careful with his money, is not known, but the honeymoon was not to endure. The drawings that fenestration is of strictly conventional sashes and the Thomas made – more than thirty sheets – survived façade perfectly symmetrical. The romantic and are now in the Bodleian along with the pen and elements – for the style was clearly chosen to accord wash architect’s perspective and the engraving with the breathtakingly romantic setting – consist of mentioned above. a raised centrepiece, wherein the middle bay is There is no precedent for the design of enhanced, set within a blind arch and flanked by slim Willersley amongst the surviving drawings and other turrets, lit by slit windows, with a further raised works of William Thomas, and most commentators drum-like embattled projection lighting the stairwell like to dismiss the overall design of the façade as behind, along with further wide and low deriving from Robert Adam’s Culzean Castle, crenellations along the parapet. The lower wings Ayrshire, designed for the tenth Earl of Cassilis in also sport round tower-like end bays – but not, and still being finished when Thomas was strictly speaking, bartizans as they have often been designing the Cromford house. Whilst this described – and the façade is further enlivened by sill spectacular cliff-girt house was indeed a possible bands and plat bands paired on each storey. The inspiration, the façade of Willersley in fact owes its sides are of four bays, unlike Thomas’s engraving, inspiration to the same architect’s Dalquharran which shows a complex return of seven bays, that Castle, further up the coast of Ayrshire, built for nearest the façade in each case being wider, lit by Thomas Kennedy of Dunure at almost exactly the tripartite windows and projecting slightly.
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