Today we drove inland and visited a couple of properties using our reciprocal National Trust membership. We came to Nunnington Hall first. This was a blocky, solid family home of stone and heavy wood beam construction that had its origins in the 13th century but was extended over the ages passing through different owners until this century when it was inherited by Margaret Rutson from her uncle.
Margaret had often stayed in the village as a child and loved 'the big house', though it was quite dilapidated when she inherited. She sold another inherited property in order to acquire the funds to do up the hall, and she and her husband, Colonel Fife, and their two adopted daughters lived here whilst work was ongoing. There was a lovely quiet drawing room, a smoking room downstairs that seems still to be saturated with the smell of tobacco, gracious bedrooms and a delightful office retreat for Margaret where she wrote of their lives at the time, picnic, walks, rural retreats. They appeared to be very happy here.
When the threat of death duties reared its ugly head, as it did with so many of these National Trust estates, Margaret bequeathed the property to the National Trust ensuring, in doing so, that her remaining family could continue to live in the hall for as long as they wished. This they did until 1978 when it was given completely over to the National Trust, though a member of the family runs a gift shop in the village and another works in the exhibition rooms on the top floor of the hall. So they find comfort close to their old family home.
Just a short drive away was Rievaulx Terrace which we then visited. Rievaulx Terrace was built above the glorious ruins of Rievaulx Abbey which we have visited a couple of time previously without knowing this terrace walk actually existed. After Henry V111's Dissolution of the monasteries all the land here was bought by the Earl of Rutland, and this hs passed down through the ages to the Duncombe family of Duncombe Park, another estate just over these rolling hills.
The walk was constructed in 1758 by one of the family, Thomas Duncombe, who like Margaret at Nunnington, inherited this land, along with Duncombe Park, from his father. Inspired by the times and travels, Thomas determined to build a terrace with two temples one at either end of the grassy walk, overlooking sensational views across the Abbey ruins and the delightful Yorkshire countryside.
A treat for fashionable Regency house guests, who could take a picnic lunch if they so wished and spend a day on the terrace wandering between the two temples. The plain domed Tuscan temple is thought to be a variation on a mausoleum at Castle Howard, also just down the road. Its floor is stone filched from the Abbey, as happened at the time. The second construction is an Ionic temple used as a banqueting room. When we visited it was laid out for formal dining, the food being prepared in the stone kitchen space a floor beneath.
It is all very genteel and bucolic, and amazing to us how well some of these aristocrats of days long ago actually lived.
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| Margaret's bedroom |
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| Her writing desk |
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| Colonel Fife's bedroom with its decorative wallpaper |
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| Downstairs abode of cook, maids and butler |
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| Downstairs servant's bells identifying upstairs needs |
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| Looking down on Rieveaux Abbey from the Terrace |
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| Domed temple |
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| Stone floor filched from the Abbey |
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| Terrace banqueting room |
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| Dressed for dinner |
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