Country Images Magazine Derby Edition July 2017 | Page 17

D e r b y s h i re -
Lost Houses
He was also a keen improver. It was probably
he who built a quirky little octagonal domed
roofed summer house close to the house just to
the left of the entrance, rather like the top of the
Prospect tower at Croome Court, plonked down
on the lawn.
He also added a single extra matching bay
to the west end of the house, continuing in
that direction for a further four bays under
a conventional tiled roof as a service wing.
Although also of three storeys, it was slightly
lower and set back a foot or so from the main
line of the façade and screened from the park
behind trees. Not content with that, he set
about planning an even larger house, still three
storeys high, but with a fi ve bay centrepiece
fl anked by full height domed bays, apparently
with Pantheon-style oculi in the tops, a favourite
conceit of architect James Wyatt who, although
documentary proof is lacking, almost certainly
was the architect.
Th e domed bay on the south east angle turned
the corner to a four bay north front, but the
other, oddly, had a single further bay beyond
before turning, the north front containing the
service wing. It would have been oddly grand and
had much of the fl avour of James Wyatt’s nephew
Jeff ry’s 1802 proposals for a new house for the
FitzHerberts at Tissington.
1866 and was succeeded in house and living by
his nephew, the 9th Baronet’s younger son Revd.
Nigel Gresley, father of the celebrated locomotive
engineer, Sir Nigel Gresley (his fourth son),
designer of Flying Scotsman and Mallard, who
was born at the house. Unfortunately, the Blue
Plaque set up by the County Council on the
rectory wall at Netherseal, declares that he was
born at the rectory, but his father of course
lived at the hall, leaving his curate to enjoy the
new-built rectory. People (and several of his
biographers) have always assumed he was born
in the rectory because his father was the rector,
whereas in reality he was the ‘squarson’, resident
at the hall.
Sir Nigel’s father set about improving the house
yet again starting about 1870. Th is time it was a
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Gresley had already turned his attention to the
gardens in the late 1750s, but twenty years later
started on the parkland, which he extended
northwards, producing a bucolic vista ending in
a thatched rustic cottage eye-catcher, which also
acted as a shooting lodge, set against trees. It was
designed by a friend, the dilettante architect and
landscape guru William Combe (1741-1823).
Much to everyone’s surprise, this turned up,
long forgotten and semi-ruinous, sequestered
in woodland in 2004, perceptively recognised
for what it was by Philip Heath, then the local
council’s heritage offi cer. Subsequently it has
been neatly restored, although the intervening
landscape is lost
Th e Revd. Th omas Gresley died in 1785 leaving
a son, William (1760-1829) who was not
only his father’s successor as rector, but also an
improver of the house, too. He re-ordered the
interior, sashed the windows of the main house
and improved the entrance with a boxy porch
round 1810, before being succeeded by his eldest
son, who also succeeded his distant cousin as
9th Baronet and to the main family estate at
Drakelow.
Th e younger half-brother, Revd. John Morewood
Gresley, had the house settled upon him, and
once again served as rector of the church. His
wife, Penelope, née Vavasour, also recorded the
delightful landscape for posterity. He died in
major transformation. Yet another bay was added
to the west end of the façade, from which the
parapet was stripped to be replaced by a series of
six small sinuously shaped merlons, each topped
by a ball fi nial and pierced by a blind oeuil-de-
boeuf and none matching the rhythm of the eight
bays below them. At the west end, the old service
wing was removed and a new north-south facing
wing added, also of three storeys, of four bays,
with matching string courses over the fenestration
and paned sash windows all under a dwarf
parapet and looking rather old fashioned for its
date. A new, two storey service wing was built
beyond it and Barrons re-landscaped the grounds.
It is presumed further alterations were made
within, if only to accommodate the demands of
the new extension.
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