Country Images Magazine North January 2018 | Page 23

Greenhill Lane B6016 emparkation granted by Edward I in 1288 . The family were Bishops successively of St . Davids , Durham and ( titular ) Jerusalem .
This Alan is almost certainly to be identified with Alan son of Hugh de Glapwell and grandson of Simon de Pleasley , facts which we can be fairly sure of thanks to the survival of the charters of the Woolhouse family , later of Glapwell Hall . By the middle of the fourteenth century Robert Stuffyn , probably great grandson , was of Shirebrook , and before long his name had become attached to the landscape , when a portion of his estate was called Stuffynwood .
John son of Hugh Stuffyn ( 1615-1695 ) was the first of the family to be styled ‘ gent ’ instead of ‘ yeoman ’. His eldest son , John died aged 55 a year after him without leaving issue and his widow married Gilbert Mundy of Allestree Old Hall . His brothers having predeceased him unmarried , the estate passed to John Hacker of Trowell and by various inheritances and sales to Robert Malkin of Chesterfield .
Having never seen an inventory for any of the Stuffyn family , I cannot really assess what sort of or size of house they lived in , but suffice it to say that when Charles Paget , a member of an old Ibstock family lately grown affluent through business , mainly in Nottinghamshire , bought the 300 acre estate from Malkin , there was a modest Georgian house on the site of the hall . The Pagets had intermarried with the Hollins family , who had acquired the Pleasley Mills from that supreme entrepreneur , Henry Thornhill ( 1708- 1790 ), and thus Charles was keen that his son Joseph should live nearby with a view to taking a hands-on role at the mills . are known to have made Talbotypes of several Derbyshire houses in the late 1840s early 1850s . Abney also encouraged Derby ’ s pioneering Victorian topographical photographer Richard Keene ( 1825-1894 ). Would that we still had any photograph Joseph ’ s father-in-law might have made of Stuffynwood !
Jacks notes that the house boasted ‘ large and well-lit rooms , had a separate billiard room with an adjustable frosted glass roof ( to let out the fragrant vapours of the contestants ’ Havanas no doubt ) and that the house was very early fitted with self-generated electricity , hence the billiard

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players ’ ability to utilise an electric scoreboard ! The electrical apparatus would have been supplied by Cromptons of Derby and Chesterfield . His detailed inventory of the family ’ s furniture ( a cabinet in the hall by Michael Angelo must be taken with salt ) and paintings is something of a disappointment after the hype he gives the family : all ‘ also rans ’: not a single accepted ‘ old master ’ – even the Guido Reni turns out to have been a copy !
When Joseph Paget died in 1896 , the house was let by his widow to Chesterfield grandee , Sir Arthur Markham 1st Bt ., MP for Mansfield
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The upshot was the building of Stuffynwood Hall , which was to enjoy a short and really rather unhappy existence . Photographs of the interior have proved elusive , although some may exist in the family papers lodged at the LSE . Fortunately my copy of Leonard Jacks ’ s account of the country houses of Nottinghamshire ( 1881 ) strays over the border here so that he can continue to flatter the Pagets , who also owned Ruddington Grange . He tells us that the house was greatly extended by Joseph Paget from 1873-1880 , adding the rear wing , the hulking great tower ( complete with skied water tank to improve the domestic economy ) and a domestic ( Catholic ) chapel .
Joseph married Helen , daughter of Revd . Edward Abney of The Firs , Derby . He was a great friend of W H Fox-Talbot , the photographic pioneer who was married to a Mundy of Markeaton . They

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