Haddon Hall

Haddon Hall
Derbyshire
Haddon Hall
Location
Location:	53°11’38"N, 1°38’59"W
Town:	Bakewell
History
	country house
Information
Owned by:	The Duke of Rutland

Haddon Hall is a country house on the River Wye at Bakewell in Derbyshire. It is one of the seats of the Duke of Rutland and is currently occupied by Lord Edward Manners, the Duke's brother, and his family.

In form a mediæval manor house, Haddon Hall has been described as "the most complete and most interesting house of [its] period". The origins of the hall date to the 11th century. The current mediæval and Tudor hall includes additions added at various stages between the 13th and the 17th centuries.

The Vernon family acquired the Manor of Nether Haddon by a 13th-century marriage. Dorothy Vernon, the daughter and heiress of Sir George Vernon, married John Manners, the second son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland, in 1563. A legend grew up in the 19th century that Dorothy and Manners eloped. The legend has been made into novels, dramatisations and other works of fiction. She nevertheless inherited the Hall, and their grandson, also John Manners, inherited the Earldom in 1641 from a distant cousin. His son, another John Manners, was elevated to the title Duke of Rutland in 1703. In the 20th century, another John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland, made a life's work of restoring the hall.

History

The origins of the hall date to the 11th century. William Peverel, illegitimate son of William the Conqueror, held the manor of Nether Haddon in 1087, when the survey which resulted in the Domesday Book was undertaken. Though it was never a castle, the manor of Haddon was protected by a wall after a licence to build one was granted in 1194. Sir Richard de Vernon acquired the manor by his early 13th century marriage to the Haddon heiress. His son, Sir William Vernon, was a High Sheriff of Lancashire and Chief Justice of Cheshire. Prominent family members include Sir Richard Vernon (1390–1451), also a High Sheriff, MP and Speaker of the House of Commons. His son Sir William was Constable of England and succeeded him as Treasurer of Calais and MP for Derbyshire and Staffordshire; his grandson Sir Henry Vernon KB (1441–1515) Governor and Treasurer to Arthur, Prince of Wales, married Anne Talbot daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury and rebuilt Haddon Hall.

Sir George Vernon (c. 1503 – August 31, 1565) had two daughters, Margaret and Dorothy. Dorothy married John Manners, the second son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland in 1563. Sir George supposedly disapproved of the union, possibly because the Manners were Protestants, and the Vernons were Roman Catholics, or possibly because the second son of an earl had uncertain financial prospects. According to legend, Sir George forbade John Manners from courting the famously beautiful and amiable Dorothy and forbade his daughter from seeing Manners. Shielded by the crowd during a ball given at Haddon Hall by Sir George in 1563, Dorothy slipped away and fled through the gardens, down stone steps and over a footbridge where Manners was waiting for her, and they rode away to be married. If indeed the elopement happened, the couple were soon reconciled with Sir George, as they inherited the estate on his death two years later.

The story of the elopement was briefly mentioned in the personal journal of Absalom Watkin in 1817, after a visit to the Hall and its caretaker William Hage, but in its full-blown form, it was first published (or first documented, if one believes it to be history rather than legend) in The King of the Peak – A Derbyshire Tale, written by Allan Cunningham in 1822 and published in the monthly London Magazine. The story was romanticized further and published in many forms thereafter.</ref> Their grandson, also John Manners of Haddon, inherited the Earldom in 1641, on the death of his distant cousin, George, the 7th Earl of Rutland, whose estates included Belvoir Castle.

That John Manners' son, also John, the 9th Earl, when made 1st Duke of Rutland in 1703, moved to Belvoir Castle, and his heirs used Haddon Hall very little, so it lay almost in its unaltered 16th-century condition, as it had been when it passed in 1567 by marriage to the Manners family. In the 1920s, another John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland realised its importance and began a lifetime of meticulous restoration, with his restoration architect Harold Brakspear.

The current mediæval and Tudor Haddon includes small sections of the 11th-century structure, but mostly comprises additional chambers and ranges added by the successive generations of the Peverel, Avenel, Vernon and Manners families. Major construction was carried out at various stages between the 13th and the 17th centuries. The banqueting hall (with minstrels' gallery), kitchens and parlour date from 1370 and the St. Nicholas Chapel was completed in 1427. For generations, whitewash concealed and protected their pre-Reformation frescoes. There is a 16th-century Long Gallery.

The 9th Duke created the walled topiary garden adjoining the stable-block cottage, with clipped heraldic devices of the boar's head and the peacock, emblematic of the Vernon and Manners families. Haddon Hall remains in the Manners family to the present day and is occupied by Lord Edward Manners, brother of the 11th Duke of Rutland.

Layout

The hall stands on a sloping site, and is structured around two courtyards; the upper (north-east) courtyard contains the Peverel or Eagle Tower and the Long Gallery, the lower (south-west) courtyard houses the Chapel, while the Great Hall lies between the two. As was normal when the hall was built, many of the rooms can only be reached from outside or by passing through other rooms, making the house inconvenient by later standards.

A plan of Haddon Hall

In literature and the arts

Poster: 1906 production of Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall

The estate at Haddon Hall

The hall has figured prominently in a number of literary and stage works, including the following, all of which describe the Vernon/Manners elopement:

• A story entitled King of the Peak – A Derbyshire Tale, written by Allan Cunningham, was published in the London Magazine in 1822.
• An 1823 novel, The King of the Peak – A Romance, in three volumes, was written by William Bennett (1796–1879), writing under the pseudonym Lee Gibbons.
• "The Love Steps of Dorothy Vernon", a short story by Eliza Meteyard (1816–1879), writing under a pseudonym in 1849, was the first full-blown version of the legend. It was first published in the December 29, 1849 issue of Eliza Cook's Journal and then in The Reliquary, October 1860, p. 79.
• A light opera, called Haddon Hall, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Sydney Grundy, premiered in London in 1892.
• A novel called Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall was written in 1902 by American Charles Major and became a best seller.
• A play of the same name, based on Major's novel, was written by American playwright Paul Kester. It debuted on Broadway in 1903.
• Fred Terry and his wife Julia Neilson adapted that play for London, calling it Dorothy o' the Hall, where it played in 1906.
• Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, a film made in 1924, was adapted by American screenwriter Waldemar Young (grandson of Brigham Young) from the Major novel.
• The Hall features in Philip Hensher's 2008 novel, The Northern Clemency.

Frederick Booty, the watercolourist, painted Haddon Hall several times, including pictures of the peacocks in the gardens.

Filming location

• The Princess Bride (1986) used the interior and exterior of the home (including the Long Gallery) as Prince Humperdinck's castle.

Jane Eyre' (1996, Franco Zeffirelli) used Haddon Hall as the location

• Elizabeth (1998).
• Pride and Prejudice (2005 film)
• Jane Eyre (2006 television serial)
• Jane Eyre (2011 film)
• The Silver Chair, the BBC adaptation of the C S Lewis Narnia book (Haddon stood in for the castle of the giants at Harfang)

The hall was the setting for A Tudor Feast at Christmas, a BBC2 documentary recreation of a Tudor banquet (first broadcast Christmas 2006) by the team of academics from Tales from the Green Valley.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Haddon Hall)

• Haddon Hall
• Peak District Tourist Information - Haddon Hall
• Smith, G. Le Blanc. Haddon, the Manor, the Hall, Its Lords and Traditions (1906).
• Haddon Hall historical and literary website
• Tour UK — Haddon Hall at TourUK
• Images of England — details from listed building database (81025) Haddon Hall
• Detailed description of the hall and some of its history
• Information about the Hall
• British Tours — QuickTime VR Panorama of Haddon Hall

References

• Rayner, Samuel. The History and Antiquities of Haddon Hall (1836)
• Trutt, David, Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (2006)