The Lost Houses
of Derbyshire
by Maxwell Craven
Sheffi eld.
To Glossop Hall he added a rather overlarge
three storey and three by three bay residential
block of the SE angle, and rebuilt the chapel
at the NE end in heroic style complete with a
space-rocket campanile which looked for all
the world as if it had slipped across the Irish sea
from somewhere like Tara. His client essentially
wanted a lot more than the size, cost or the site
of the existing building could allow, and the
result was the rambling inchoate house of later
years. It was however, set in splendidly designed
grounds, almost certainly the work of Edward
Milner (1819-1884) mainly re-modelled before
the rebuilding of the house. Milner was later
to design the park at Buxton. To the east, a
series of massive terraces led up to the entrance,
whilst the private garden and lawns were to the
south, where an impressive conservatory by
Messengers of Loughborough was added.
Francis, 2nd Lord Howard succeeded in 1883
and about two decades later called in the Arts-
and-Craft s architect John Douglas of Chester
to make alterations on the recommendation
of the 1st Duke of Westminster, but the family
made increasingly little use of the house, even
during the shooting season, aft er the Great War
and when Lord Francis died in 1924, his son
and successor (another Bernard) found himself
saddled with death duties and decided to sell
the house and the 9,110 acre estate.
Th is page; top to bottom:
Th e surviving lodge, photographed in the
1960s, with the truncated rusticated gate piers
beside it. [Private collection]
Th e NE angle with chapel and space rocket
campanile being demolished. [Private
collection]
Interior of the chapel as rebuilt in 1850, from
the sale catalogue 1926. [Private collection]
18 | CountryImagesMagazine.co.uk
Th e immediate Parkland, however, was
purchased ‘with rare public spirit’ by the
Glossop Borough Council and remains an
attractive park (called Manor Park) to this day,
having been added to the National Register of
Parks and Gardens at Grade II in 2001. Th e
house, not wholly surprisingly in that un-
optimistic age, failed to sell and was instead
let as a school becoming the Kingsmoor
Residential School, moving in at the beginning
of May, 1927, and aft er a period of uncertainty,
fl ourished until the post-war period, when
numbers fell and in 1953 the school left the
hall and moved to new premises in Marple,
Cheshire.
Th ereaft er, no tenant could be found, and
the site was eventually sold to a developer,
being fi nally demolished in 1958-59. One of
Hadfi eld’s lodges survives as a house at the top
end of Norfolk Street where it meets Talbot
Road, and the house site is covered with the
1950s bungalows of Kingsmoor, Park and Hall
Closes.