Ringing The Changes
At Seaton Delaval Hall

MARTIN GREEN looks forward to a change of ownership at one of the county’s great stately homes, while looking back at its eventful history.

AS many readers may have heard, Seaton Delaval Hall is in the process of changing ownership. Negotiations are taking place between the 23rd Baron Hastings and theNational Trust and, if all goes well, the Trust will take over ownership - hopefully by the end of the year.

One reason negotiations are taking so long is that the Inland Revenue is involved. Lord Hastings has a large inheritance tax bill to pay and if the Trust takes over the hall’s ownership this will be offset against the tax. The Trust is also negotiating to acquire several hundred acres of land and most of the historic objects still in the hall. The land is required to form a bufferzone around the house and to provide additional facilities such as a car park and an area for guided walks.

Among the objects the Trust hopes to acquire are the family portraits hanging in the private apartments— paintings unseen by the general public in recent years. The portraits include several by William Bell showing Sir John Delaval, his wife Lady Susanna and their children. There is also a portrait of Admiral SirRalph Delaval by Sir Godfrey Knellor.

In the late Lord Hastings’ private rooms are paintings, furniture and pottery associated with the Delaval and Astley families which the Trust hopes to acquire and put on display. Some of these items date back to the 16th century and there are, in addition, many letters and documents charting the history of the hall and its occupants.

Seaton Delaval Hall is considered to be one of the finest achievements of Sir John Vanbrugh, who designed both Castle Howard and Blenheim. It is undoubtedly a very fine piece of architecture and it follows Vanbrugh’s established formula of a principal block and two arcaded and pedimented wings which form a three-sided court. Towers crowned by balustrades and pinnacles give the house what he called his “castle air”.

The main state and living rooms are in the 75-feet square,two-storey centre block. To the centre of the east and west sides of the main building, oblong stair towers link to a corridor running across the rear of the hall to the wings where stables and the kitchens were located.The north front has a massive-ness and severity that is reminiscent of a fortress and a cathedral, while the south or garden front is much quieter with an elegant portico between Ionic columns, topped with a pedimented frieze surmounted by a balustrade and adorned with statuary.

The Delavals took possession of the site around 1095. On it was a small Saxon church which Hubert de la Val rebuilt and dedicated in 1102as the Church of Our Lady: it is still in use today. For their own protection, they built a small castle which over the years evolved into a Tudor, then a Jacobean mansion.

By 1700 Sir John Delaval was struggling to maintain the house which was in a state of decay,and fighting off the Blacketts who were trying to take over the Delaval estates. At this pointAdmiral George Delaval of the Dissington branch of the family came to the rescue. He paid off the Blacketts and bought out SirJohn Delaval, who went to live at Seaton Lodge.

Admiral George had made his fortune in the navy and when he acquired the old house in 1717 he invited Sir John Vanbrugh to advise him on its condition. Vanbrugh decided that the old house was beyond repair and he offered to build a new house —an offer Admiral George could not refuse. Work started in 1718 and Delaval Hall was completed in 1728, two years after Vanbrugh’s death.

Admiral George had died in 1723 so it was his nephew Captain Francis Blake Delaval who was the first occupant of the hall. Over the next 20 years the captain and his wife had 11 children, and it is around this family that the story of the fun-loving Delavals grew. The family became interested in the theatre and soon gained a reputation for over-the-top productions and generally outrageous behaviour.

Most notorious of the Delavals was the captain’s eldest son, Sir Francis Blake Delaval, who in his youth became known for playing practical jokes on visitors to the hall. Guests complained of beds being lowered into baths of cold water in the middle of the night, and bed-room walls disappearing to reveal guests in varying states of undress.

As the building had a reputation for being cold and draughty, a night in Delaval Hall could be a traumatic experience.

Francis spent many years in London mixing with actors and members of the aristocracy includingPrince Edward, Duke of York. He was permanently in debt but showed no interest in managing the Delaval estates. He married an elderly widow purely to get his hands on her money, then deserted her and lived with various mistresses.He fathered at least four illegitimate children, was elected as anMP on three occasions and,because he was bored, even embarked on a brief army career and joined an expeditionary force of Grenadiers ordered to attack the Brittany coast. As the fleet prepared to make a beach landing,Francis leapt overboard and invaded France alone. Although his landing was unopposed, he became the hero of the hour and gained a knighthood.

His brother John led a much more respectable life, but even he found time for an affair with a teenage girl when his wife died.John’s daughter, Sarah, was per- haps the most scandalous of all the Delavals. After marriage to her father’s friend, George Carpenter, Earl Tyrconnel, she was for three years the mistress of Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, and then spent the last 10 years of her life living with John, the 10thEarl Strathmore at Gibside, where she died in 1800.

But not all the Delavals achieved notoriety. Thomas was a respected engineer who supervised the building of the cut at Seaton Sluice and brought the glass industry to the port. Brother Edward was distinguished chemist, scholar, experimental philosopher and a member of the Royal Society.

It is intriguing to note how the hall’s present guide book deals with these people. No mention is made of mistresses or illegitimate children in the notes on Sir Francis. Sir John’s young mistress is not mentioned and Sarah Tyrconnel only gets a brief mention in relation to Ford Castle.

I will be interested to see how theTrust interprets the Delaval history. Will it go for the scandalous populist story, or will it follow the line that the late Lord Hastings took and emphasise the part played by the Delavals in developing Seaton Sluice as an industrial port?

The last of the Delaval dynasty, Edward, died in 1814 and with his death the Delaval line died out and the Astley family inherited the estates. The Astleys lived at Melton Constable in Norfolk and had no interest in living at Delaval Hall.

They put a caretaker in charge of the hall and used it as a sort of holiday home until 1822, when the centre block caught fire and most of the interior was destroyed.

In 1860 the fire-damaged building was re-roofed; an initial phase of restoration was completed in 1950, and between 1959 and 1962 the late Lord Hastings over-saw a major restoration project with the help of grants from the Historic Buildings Council.

The National Trust has consulted widely with the local community, more than 99 per cent of those asked stating that they would prefer the Trust to own the hall and estate rather than a private buyer. Asked whether they would like the fire-damaged centre block to be restored to a traditional stately home, the majority said they wanted it left as it is.

One of many ideas suggested by the public is that exhibits and information displayed in the hall should also focus on the lives of ordinary people, servants and industrial workers, and not just the family who owned the estate. As a consequence of the interest shown, the National Trust has set up a research group of volunteers to look at all aspects of the history of the hall: it has already produced a list of all the servants whoever worked there.

The late Lord and Lady Hastings, who began living in the west wing in the early 1980s, undertook a major restoration of Seaton Delaval’s extensive grounds and ornamental gardens, including the magnificent parterre garden lying to the west of the hall. I look forward to seeing how the National Trust will turn Seaton Delaval Hall and its grounds into a major tourist attraction and, particularly, how they interpret the Delaval story.