Country House Gate Lodges / Gate Houses

(Swan Lodge, Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire) 

Have you ever driven through the country and seen a set of large posh gates with a drive snaking away from it? Very often there is a small, bungalow looking house at the side of the gates. You’d be forgiven for thinking ‘is that it? I expected something larger’ and getting confused as to why such an ornate gateway seems to lead to such a small property.

The reality is that in most cases the small house is a ‘gate lodge’ which is placed at the entrance to a large country estate. It’s rare to have gate lodges at the entrance to modern country estates however historically they were a key part of a country estate.

So, what was the purpose of having lodge buildings at the end of your drive? Well, as you might imagine, they were used for security. Any visitors would be stopped by the residents of the gate house (usually a member of the estate staff such as a gardener or game keeper) to ascertain the intentions of the visitor before allowing them through the gates and to the house.

The second purpose to having a lodge at the end of your drive was to use it as a visible status symbol. Lodges were often designed with architectural aspects that are similar to the main house itself so that as people passed, or if they were visiting the house for the very first time, they would be given a glimpse of the status of the person who lived there and the architecture of the house.

In 1850 Lady Emily and Sir Charles Isham of Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire built a lodge house at the end of their driveway (see image at top). This may have been for security reasons, but primarily it was a status symbol and part of a dramatic entrance to their home, Lamport Hall. Visitors would enter the estate via an ornate gateway, past the lodge house, and up a sweeping drive which gave the visitor a panoramic view of the Hall and grounds.

Other great examples of lodge houses include:

Deene Park, Northamptonshire:

Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire:

(all photographs in this blog are credited to: www.gateandlodgehouses.co.uk no copyright intended. All rights to website owner).

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.

Country House's I have worked at: Temple Newsam House

Temple Newsam House, Leeds, West Yorkshire

(photo credit: By Tim Green (Flickr: Temple Newsam) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

I began working at Temple Newsam House in August 2012 after I left Renishaw Hall and Gardens in Sheffield. I joined Leeds City Council who own and run the House as the Site Development Officer. It was a bit of a strange title and I described myself as Visitor Services Manager to friends and family as it explained better what I did. 

Basically it was my job to manage 30 members of staff, the house stewards, who worked in the shop, in the entrance hall selling tickets and generally stewarded around the House welcoming visitors and giving information. I ensured that the House was clean, safe and ready for visitors each day as well as helping to organise and run seasonal events, weddings, filming shoots and anything else that happened on a day to day business. 

(photo credit: RichTea [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Now Temple Newsam is the largest country house that I have worked in which isn't still in private family hands. This meant that I could explore the House in it's entirety (not having to worry about stumbling upon a family or anything like that) and I loved being able to explore and wander it's corridors and rooms. 

The earliest parts of the House date back to 1500-1520 when Sir Philip Darcy first built a house by this name on the site. The site itself had existed for centuries before that as a templar settlement and anglo-saxon inhabitants also owned the land. But the house we see today is Tudor-Jacobean in style and period. The House originally was a four-sided courtyard house but the fourth wall was removed by a later owner so that the long drive which you can still walk up in the parkland could provide a more splendid approach to the House. 

The House has had a rocky history, being seized by the crown twice - once during the pilgrimage of grace in 1537 when Lord Darcy was arrested and executed and secondly in 1565 when Lord Darnley who was born at Temple Newsam married Mary Queen of Scots. After a rocky 16th century existence it passed into the hands of the Ingram family in 1622 and there followed 300 years of family history until in 1922 when the last surviving family member Edward Wood sold it to the Leeds Corporation, contents included for a nominal sum asking only that the House be preserved for future generations.

(photo credit: https://countryhousereader.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/temple-newsam-house-leeds/)

Since then the House has been an archive, museum and wartime hospital until it settled into its current role as a museum displaying the collection and engaging children and adults alike. 

The House has a reputation for being haunted and that is certainly something I can attest to - each new person who comes to work at Temple Newsam has what I call an 'initiation' to the House. Mine occurred one day not long after I started and I was walking down a corridor from the public area to my office. It is quite long and as I was walking I heard someone run up to me from behind - I turned expecting to see either a child running toward me from the public end of the corridor or a member of staff coming to get my attention, but as I turned I noticed the corridor was totally empty. It made my physically jump because I knew I had heard someone run to me. Not only that I had felt that feeling of when someone stands really close to you from behind. I checked the only room off the corridor which was totally empty and so I thought 'right, well at least that's answered that question!'

In my 9 months working there I had a few more paranormal experiences, none of which were very scary and whilst I do think it is definitely haunted, I don't think it is as haunted as some people like to say. 

In the end I left Temple Newsam because I wanted a new challenge, something where I could expand my skills and try something new, but I think back on the House itself very fondly and I feel very privileged that I had the opportunity to work there and to explore the House itself.