Country Houses I've Worked at: Renishaw Hall & Gardens

(all photographs in this post copyright of Renishaw Hall unless otherwise stated)

Renishaw Hall is a privately owned country house just outside the City of Sheffield in South Yorkshire. It is the seat of the Sitwell Family who have lived there for almost 400 years. The house was built in 1625 and has passed exclusively through family hands ever since.

If you’re familiar with Downton Abbey (and if you’re not, where have you been?) you’ll know the main story which dominated the first season was the ‘matter of the entail’ where Lady Mary fought for her right to be declared the heiress of Downton. Sadly in Downton Abbey she is unsuccessful, but at Renishaw Hall the entail was successfully broken in 2009 when Sir Reresby Sitwell, 6th Baronet broke the entail so his daughter Alexandra could inherit. The Baronetcy passed on to a male heir in the family, thus separating estate and title for the first time in the family’s history.

The House itself is beautiful and is in my opinion so different from any other country house in the Yorkshire area. It was built of ashlar and sandstone with beautiful crenellated parapets and pinnacles. It has pitched slate roofs where we lit a beacon for the Queens Jubilee in 2012 – yes a beacon on the roof of a highly flammable country house . . . my heart was in my throat from the moment it was lit until it was extinguished!

The interior of the house is lovely too with some very unassuming and cosy rooms such as the entrance hall which features a roaring fire with comfy chairs pulled around it, or the library with the widescreen tv in it. It also has some beautiful formal rooms and all of these can be seen during house tours which are conducted regularly.

But really it is the gardens which steal the show at Renishaw Hall. They were named at HHA and Christie’s 2015 ‘Garden of the Year’ and you can really see why. They are a mixture of formal lawns with flower beds displaying hundreds of species of flower overlooked by perfectly trimmed box hedges, and informal woodland where in early spring bluebells cover the ground – people come from miles to see the bluebells each year. If you’re up for a nice walk then the lake right at the bottom of the estate allows you to escape into a natural paradise.

(photo credit: panoramio.com)

I worked at Renishaw Hall from April 2011 until September 2012 as the Operations Manager. This role made me responsible for the opening of the Hall and estate to the public on a daily basis – not an easy task I can assure you. It was made harder by the fact it was my first proper heritage job after graduating with my Masters Degree, not including Lamport Hall. Let me tell you it was a steep learning curve and there were plenty of moments when I thought ‘I don’t think I can do this’ but over time I learned the job and (if I do say so myself) I think I was pretty good at it.

In my time there I worked alongside a wonderful team including a PR expert, administration assistants, paid visitor services staff and volunteers, not to mention working with Alexandra herself. I did just about everything you can imagine is involved in opening a country house to the public . . . I was responsible for financial reconciliations, budgets and reports, worked on marketing plans with the PR expert Jane, devised and led a full events programme, sourced merchandise for the gift shop, worked with the cafe to produce catering for events, recruited seasonal staff, helped with museum curation, wrote newsletters, managed social media, created new signage for the site, took admissions in the kiosk, cleaned toilets, took car park money on the gate, drove the mobility scooter and much much more!

I left Renishaw Hall in September once the house closed to the public as Alexandra had decided to move the visitor offer in a new direction, one which didn’t need a full time Operations Manager and so I needed to find another role which was on a par with the vast experience I had gained in just over a year. I was very sad to leave though because I had loved my time at Renishaw. It was hard at times but the highs were greatly outweighed by the lows and to be able to walk around such beautiful gardens and grounds on a daily basis made it a wonderfully uplifting place to be.

Nonsuch & Whitehall: The Lost Palaces of England

Whilst the world is familiar with Palaces in England such as Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace, there are other Palaces throughout history which have been lost. Today I thought we would look at a couple of the most beautiful Palaces of England which are sadly no longer around for us to visit . . .

Nonsuch Palace

Started in 1538 after the birth of his long-awaited heir Edward, Henry VIII personally designed the palace which became known as ‘Nonsuch’; the name created for the simple reason that there had never been another building like it before in history. It was unusual in design with tall octagonal towers at the corner, over 700 stucco plaster panels of Roman Emperors, Gods and Goddesses adorned the external walls and it was on an enormous scale.

In 2011 model maker Ben Taggart created a replica 1:75 size scale model of Nonsuch using over 50 years of research from an Oxford Professor, Martin Biddle.

(photo credit: Daily Mail article 2011) 

The Palace was systematically demolished in the 17th century in an incident which I’m sure would have caused Henry VIII to have one of his infamous fits of rage had he been around to see it. Charles II gave the Palace to one of his mistresses and allowed her to dismantle the Palace to pay off gambling debts . . . thank god they created the ‘listed building’ system eh?


Palace of Whitehall

The Palace of Whitehall officially dates from 1530 and was created such by Henry VIII who died there in 1547. The Palace sat in the centre of London along the banks of the Thames and at the height of its use it was the largest Palace in Europe with over 1500 rooms and covering about 23 acres, larger than the Palace of Versailles and the Vatican.

(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

It began life as York Place, the once home of Archbishop Cardinal Wolsey up to 1530 when Henry VIII removed the cardinal from power and seized York Place for the crown. Henry employed architects and amended the building adding and building upon it, the name changing to Whitehall due to the colour of the stone used for the buildings.

James I greatly added and amended the Palace in the 1620’s adding Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House. By this time the Palace resembled a small town rather than one single Palace due to the different architectural buildings.

The Palace had a sad ending with two fires, one in 1691 and the second larger fire in 1698 which destroyed almost all of the buildings save for the Banqueting House (still standing today) and Henry VIII’s Holbein Gate which was later destroyed in the 1700’s.

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a bit more about the lost Palaces of England, an addendum to my recent post about England’s Lost Country Houses. Let me know on my Facebook page or in the comments below if there are any particular topics you would like me to write about.

3 of My Favourite Haunted Country Houses

(photo credit: Mark Baker)

I have always been interested in the concept of life after death – I’m not sure whether I am a true believer in ghosts but I have had some interesting experiences in my time working in heritage which has made me question what happens after we die. I also enjoy watching paranormal programmes such as Most Haunted and Ghost Adventures. From watching these programmes and visiting country houses I have some which are my favourites which I thought I would share with you.


Woodchester Mansion, Gloucestershire

I’ve mentioned Woodchester before in my ‘Country houses I would really like to visit’ post but whilst I spoke about why I would like to visit it in the last post, I didn’t speak about the paranormal activity that has been reported at the mansion. Since the abandonment, the mansion has been used for events and over the years a large number of incidents have been reported – voices crying ‘I want to go home’ in the dead of night, stones being thrown, shadow figures and full body apparitions. The Most Haunted investigation at Woodchester had many of these things happen to them (I’m not going to get into whether they’re real or made up for the programme) and it is still one of my favourite episodes.


Alton Towers, Staffordshire

This is one of the really haunted country houses that I have actually visited and done a ghost hunt at and I think it is an incredible place to visit if you’re looking for ghostly activity. The first time I visited with my cousin and we heard knocking on the floor under our feet, we heard a child’s toy train in one room, there were footsteps on a staircase where no-one was standing and someone in our group took a picture of a black shadow which was interesting.

The legend goes that a former owner offended a beggar woman one night on his return to Alton Towers. She in turn cursed him saying ‘with each branch of the old oak tree that falls, someone in your family will die’. Although he thought it rubbish at the time, a death soon after, corresponding with a branch falling from the tree changed his mind and the branches of the tree were chained from then on to prevent anymore branches from falling.


Smithills Hall, Bolton

This is another manor house which I have visited and I had a few interesting experiences at. I visited in 2009 when I did a tour of country houses in Yorkshire and Lancashire as part of my research for my master’s degree. It is a grade I listed building dating from the 15th century and it was used as a family home and then an old people’s home in the Victorian period. The Tudor part of the house is the only part you can visit and I was the only member of the public present on that day.

Whilst I was there my camera broke in the Chapel meaning I couldn’t take any photographs. It was an old-style film camera with batteries and the batteries totally died. Just before that I had been taking pictures on a small digital camera that I had and I captured a black shadowed figure in the doorway of one of the rooms. Sadly I have since lost the picture but it was very strange.


I know this is a slightly different post to others I have written and I hope you have enjoyed it. The paranormal is something I am interested in and whilst I don’t know what I believe, I find the idea very exciting that country houses, places where people have lived for hundreds of years, could be haunted. If you liked this post and would like more along the same lines, please let me know either in the comments below or on my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/charlottefurnesswriter

Charles I Painting by Van Dyck

(photo credit: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)

Painted for Charles I in 1633, The Royal Collection website cites this beautiful painting as:

"With great fluency Van Dyck here portrays Charles I on horseback on an unprecedented scale, as ruler, warrior and knight, in the long tradition of antique and Renaissance equestrian monuments. The prominent display of the crowned royal arms and the triumphal arch framing the armed King reinforce his image as ruler of Great Britain, while the King's refined features, loose hair and the sash of the Order of the Garter worn over his armour convey the impression of a chivalrous knight. Van Dyck may have designed the painting for its first position at the end of the Gallery at St James's Palace, where its theatrical effect impressed visitors."

It is a beautiful painting and one of the only ones in which I believe a ruler of England is upstaged by a horse. I don't mean that disrespectfully, only that the painting and depiction of the horse is the most magnificent thing in this painting and I like the fact the horse is white, conjuring images of the fairytale knight who rides in on his trusty steed to rescue the damsel in distress - perhaps Van Dyck is stating that Charles I is the king who can rescue England from evil and corruption . . . clearly not a premonition given the sad fate of Charles I.

I have been drawn to this painting since 2009 when I was an intern at Lamport Hall - there they have a copy of this painting labelled as 'after Van Dyck' and thought to be completed by one of his pupils. The Lamport Version has a complete shield and is thought to be the only copy with a shield painted in it's entirety.

Now I have a bit of trivia for you to see how observant you are when you watch tv . . . can any of you think of a tv programme where this painting was featured? . . . I'll give you a clue, it was a drama series which aired for several seasons on ITV . . .

Downton Abbey!

Filmed at Highclere Castle in Berkshire, the dining room has a copy of the Van Dyck painting hanging on the wall adjacent to the door. You're most likely to be able to see the painting in scenes where the family are having breakfast in the dining room as Lord Grantham sits at the head of the table with his back to the painting - that camera angle combined with the daytime lighting gives you a good view of the painting.

(photo credit: meganbrookehandmadeblog)

(photo credit: lillies-flowers.blogspot.fr)

I hope you like this shorter, art focused blog. I will be combining art and the country house in more blogs of this shorter style in and around my longer, information based posts.