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Home , Monk Bretton, West Bretton, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Landscape History

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Historic Landscape Management Plan The Landscape Agency 29 3.1. Introduction

The research for this history has covered all the known secondary sources and all the primary sources in London. It has focused on the BEA collection in the Archaeological Society (YAS) but has also briefly reviewed the material available elsewhere in Yorkshire (see Sources for more details). The collection at the YAS is incomplete, because some documents have become separated and others have been lost or destroyed. The complete history will probably therefore never be known but more may remain to be discovered in the BEA collection. The items in the collection are only briefly described in the catalogue, which is in the form of a typescript (in two large folders). The collection cannot therefore be searched online or at YAS except by looking through the typed catalogue. In addition to this, the cataloguing does not follow the usual system and is difficult to follow in places, and makes it difficult to search for specific items.

The research at YAS focused on the plans, drawings, surveys and valuations in the BEA collection. Although there are numerous drawings for the work on the Hall and for buildings in the garden and park, there is a general lack of estate plans. For High (an adjacent village) there are plans dating from 1792, c1834, and 1843, in addition to an estate plan for 1810, but for there is only the estate plan for 1810 and a sketch plan of the roads in the 1760s. Although the Ordnance Survey series and county maps provide some extra detail, the precise development sequence in the early C19 is difficult to understand, in particular the complex development of the gardens between the 1800s and 1840s.

What is shown on two further plans remains a mystery. One (BEA/C2/MPD17/18) shows a river, with orchards and nurseries along the bank. A series of roads and regular enclosures are shown, as well as various buildings including a corn mill and flax mill, and what appears to be a house or garden temple with a garden. There is also a curious square arrangement either of buildings or small canals, with trees along the edge and in the corners, and approached by roads on all four sides. The plan is unsigned and undated but if the river is the Dearne, then the plan may represent part of the estate landscape in the early C18. The second plan is also undated and unsigned but marked Garden Plan (BEA/C2/MPD/21/16). This shows a very complex layout of a botanical display garden, and may be part of the design that was implemented in the 1820s, around the time of Robert Marnock.

For further information on the early history see York Archaeological Trust Bretton Park, Bretton Hall, – Archaeological Desk-top Study (1999), and for more details on the architectural development of Bretton Hall, see S J Wright ‘A History of the Architecture of Bretton Hall near ’ in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Vol. 72 (2000), pp153-174. For a full history documenting the family members as well as the development of the estate, see S J Wright Bretton, the Beaumonts and a Bureaucracy (2001). For the agricultural development of the estate see John F Wilkinson Farmstead of the Britons (1989).

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3.2 Landscape History

3.2.1 Early History

Much of the land in and around Bretton had been reduced to waste by the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, probably due to the devastation caused by the Norman soldiers (Farmsteads of the Britons 1989). Bretton (West) was listed 1 carucate, which was waste, with woodland pasture one league long and half a league wide (: Yorkshire 1986). Part of West Bretton, along with most of the Dearne valley, had been granted by to his allies. A small part was retained in royal ownership as part of the Manor of Wakefield.

The land was still in divided ownership in the C12 but by the C13 much of it was owned by the ‘De Bretton’ family. There were probably settlements at both Bretton and West Bretton from the C12 until the late C14, of approximately equal size.

From the late C13 most of the land that had been held by the de Brettons was in the ownership of the Dronsfield family. As Lords of the Manor of Bretton, the Dronsfields began to build up their holdings of property in Bretton from 1261 to the early C14 (YAT, 1996). The prior of was lord of West Bretton in the late C13 and early C14 but the Dronsfields also acquired property in that settlement. The Dronsfields do not appear to have lived in Bretton and probably rented the land. In the early C14 there was a reference to a grant of free warren. From the C13, some areas of waste were gradually enclosed around more open fields, and these fields, usually irregular in shape, often bear the name ‘Royd’ (woodland clearing) (Farmsteads of the Britons 1989).

By the end of the C14 the Dronsfields were styled ‘of West Bretton’. They had by 1398 acquired land in thirteen townships, in the southern part of the former . William de Donsfield was knighted in 1401 and may have made ‘changes to the estate relevant to his new status’ (YAT, 1996). West Bretton had three open fields (North Field, West Field, and South Field), with strips for cultivation, and meadows, pastures, common land, woodland, and closes. Oats were the main cereal crop, and sheep were the main source of meat and milk (Farmsteads of the Britons 1989).

Sir William de Dronesfield [sic] died in 1406 without an heir. His widow continued to live at Bretton but the property passed to his sisters as co-heirs. Isabel’s half passed to her sister, keeping the estate whole (YAT, 1996). Agnes Dronesfield married John de Wentworth of North Elmsall, and she settled the estate on Richard, her third son. The estate at West Bretton therefore passed to the Wentworth family, in whose possession it remained for nearly 400 years. The Wentworths of Elmsall were a cadet branch of the Wentworths of Wentworth Woodhouse. They continued to add land to their estate, and quarries and mines made them

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Historic Landscape Management Plan The Landscape Agency 31 exceedingly rich. Although the family had the means to build large houses, it has never been ascertained where and when these may have been built.

3.2.2 Sixteenth Century

The first documented house on the site was a timber house, probably built was for Sir Thomas Wentworth, Knight Marshall to King Henry VIII. Christopher Saxton’s atlas of 1579 showed Bretton Hall but no park. Speed’s map of 1610 and Blau’s of 1675 also show no park but mark the hall. There was also no licence granted to empark at Bretton, which was required up until 1500, so it can be assumed that there was no hunting park at Bretton until at least 1675.

3.2.3 Seventeenth Century

Thomas Wentworth was a Cavalier who fought on the side of Charles I. At the Restoration in 1660 he was knighted, and then created a Baronet in 1664. An inventory made on his death in 1675 (YAS DD70 Bundle 85) referred to a timber-framed house with fifteen rooms for the family, eight servant’s rooms, and goods valued at £7,657 (a very large sum at that date). The inventory also referred to ‘sheep, horses, swine, oxen, churns, cheese presses, salting vats, wains, ploughs, lime and manure’ (Farmsteads of the Britons 1989). Sir Thomas Wentworth’s wife, Grace (d1698), had a life tenancy of Bretton Hall. A well adjacent to a quarry at the south-east end of the Lower Lake has an inscription, dated 1685, put up by Grace, who later married the Earl of Eglinton. Between the C17 and C19 there was extensive stone quarrying in the estate, where the millstone grit outcrops.

Joseph Hunter noted that the old hall was located nearly half a mile to the west of the C18 hall, near to the chapel of ease (: History and Topography of the Deanery of 1828). A monument marked on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey (published 1854) is said to give the position of the old hall, on the northern edge of Bridge-Royd Wood above Upper Lake (Wright, 1996). The old hall is shown in a drawing by Samuel Buck (Yorkshire Sketch Book, BL Landsdowne Ms 914), as a rambling timber-framed house. To the south-east was a walled garden, laid out with a parterre. Steps led down from the garden, probably to the chapel of ease on the bank of the (later flooded to make the Upper Lake). Although there may have been some kind of park associated with this house, it was not significant enough to feature on C16 and C17 county maps.

An inventory made on the death of George Wentworth in 1683 referred to 6 acres of wheat at Bretton, 68 acres of oats, 2 acres of barley, with corn in the garners, hay in the barn, two loads of peas, five horses, a milkhouse, buttery, bolting house (for sifting bran from flour), and a brewhouse (Farmsteads of the Britons 1989).

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3.2.4 Eighteenth Century

Sir William Wentworth (1687-1763), fourth baronet, inherited the West Bretton estate in 1706. He went on the Grand Tour between 1709 and 1712, during which he corresponded with his cousin, Lord Raby (later Earl of Strafford of Stainborough Hall (Wentworth Castle)). John Boulter’s county map of 1712 shows a park, surrounded by pales, and John Warburton’s ‘New and correct map of the county of York’, 1720, also shows a park. Given that no park was shown at Bretton on county plans up to 1675, it may be inferred that the park was laid out at some point between 1675 and 1712, and may have been one of William Wentworth’s first tasks. Boulter shows the old hall at the south end of the park, which extends to the north. Warburton shows the position of the new hall, started that year, with the park to the west, stretching north from the river Dearne.

Samuel Buck (1696-1779) included a sketch of old Bretton Hall in his Yorkshire Sketchbook (1719-1723). The sketch shows the south-east front of the hall, which was damaged by a fire in 1720: this event, and his marriage to Diana Blackett in the same year, may have prompted William Wentworth to design a new house. The extant house was started in that year, to a design by Sir William Wentworth and his friend, Colonel Moyser of Beverley. Wentworth’s mansion was completed in the 1730s, at which point the old hall was dismantled. Sir William and his wife Diana continued to use their house in Coney Street in York as their main residence, and until the new chapel was built in 1744, all the family baptisms and burials were in St Martin’s Church in the same street. This may explain why there appears to have been little work in extending the park around the new hall. The old road immediately to the east of the hall would also have restricted expansion in that direction. Gardens and pleasure grounds were probably laid out to the south and west of the new hall but a lack of good cartographic sources until the C19 means that we know very little about the C18 gardens.

Sir William Wentworth designed two other buildings in the 1740s: St Bartholomew’s Chapel (to the north- east of the Hall, listed grade II*, with walls and gates separately listed grade II) was dedicated in 1744 and replaced the old chapel of ease, which Joseph Hunter (1828) described as located ‘…a little to the south of the hall [by the river Dearne]. It was taken down by the last Sir Thomas Wentworth; his father Sir William Wentworth having built and fitted up at his own expense another Chapel near the hall built of fine ashlar’ (South Yorkshire: History and Topography of the Deanery of Doncaster 1828); and the Pheasantry built in 1749 (listed grade II, and now a dwelling).

Despite these new buildings to the east of the hall, the park was not expanded into this area at this date. Although the Turnpike road between Grange Moor (to the north-west) and (to the south-east) was constructed in 1759 (Farmsteads of the Britons 1989), a road still continued to run approximately north- south, immediately to the east of the hall. Sir William Wentworth died in 1763 and his son, Sir Thomas

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