'A trailblazing illustration of how a historic estate can thrive': Doddington Hall's confident march into the 21st century
John Goodall looks at the later history of Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire — home of Claire and James Birch — and the present initiatives that are allowing it to thrive. Photohgraphy by Paul Highnam for Country Life.
On August 23, 1760, the Revd Robert Hurton, the rector at Doddington, wrote an exasperated letter to the patron of his living, John Hussey Delaval. Work had just begun to renovate Doddington Hall, but progress seemed to the rector hopelessly slow and the chief contractor, the master carpenter Thomas Lumby, dilatory. Lumby had, he asserted, ‘received more cash than he has done work’ and he passed on the steward’s despairing assessment of the carpenter’s promises as being ‘like the wind, they blow as they list and he hears the sound thereof but cannot tell whence they come or whether they go for he can lay no hold on them’.
As explained last week, Doddington is an Elizabethan house built in the 1590s (Fig 1). It seems to have survived relatively little changed into the mid 18th century, but, in 1749, became one in a group of the large estates inherited by the colourful Delaval family. The chief of these estates were Seaton Delaval and Ford Castle, Northumberland, both of which became the property of Francis Blake Delaval in 1752. Extravagant, dissipated and an enthusiast for theatricals, his affairs had to be regularised by an Act of Parliament in 1755.
Fig 1: The garden front, much as it was in the 1590s..
The Act authorised the mortgage of Ford and gave control of Francis’s remaining property to his younger brother, John. Doddington, meanwhile, remained a possession of the brothers’ widowed mother, Rhoda. In 1759, however, she bequeathed it to John and the house briefly became his seat; hence his initiative to remodel it a year later. His approach, moreover, was unusual for the period.
There was no cosmopolitan architect involved in the project; rather, John chose to direct the work himself. No less remarkable was the fact that he preserved almost unchanged the Elizabethan exterior of the house at the same time as entirely modernising the polite interiors. Even in the entrance hall — a favoured space for the celebration of lineage in great English houses — there is no decorative reference to his ancestry or the historic character of the building. All this is in striking contrast to the contemporary treatment of such early-17th-century buildings as Aston Hall, Birmingham, or Audley End, Essex.
Fig 2: Thomas Lumby’s stair, completed in 1762, rises the full height of the building and must have been complex to install within the existing fabric shell. It replaces an Elizabethan timber stair.
The rebuilding of Doddington is well documented, both through surviving correspondence and in 18 volumes of accounts and receipts now at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A valuable recent study that has focused on this material, as well as the outstanding associated collection of paintings in the hall, has been published online by the Paul Mellon Centre.
Work began at Doddington in the spring of 1760 — probably just after a second surviving inventory was taken of the contents — and was largely complete by the end of 1762. The leading figures involved were all local and included the surveyor John Dixon, the plasterer Matthew Rennison, the painter Robert Lilly and the unreliable, but evidently accomplished, master carpenter Lumby. The rector and the estate steward, William Portis (or Portes), also corresponded in detail about the project. The latter was a Scot joiner who had earlier worked at Seaton Sluice, the harbour on which the prosperity of Seaton Delaval depended.
Fig 3: The drawing room. The present paper was installed in 1953, replacing the blue-flock wallpaper of the 1760s.
In 1761, when the renovation of the house was in full swing, John both succeeded in buying his brother out of the Ford estate and in securing a baronetcy. Without abandoning Doddington, he now also began modernising Ford, a medieval castle. The two concurrent projects were undertaken in much the same spirit, making use of local expertise and respectful of the external character of the existing building (Country Life, February 3 and 10, 1994).
A certain amount can be reconstructed about Sir John’s internal redecoration of Doddington. Some of the rooms preserve traces of decorative wallpaper and emphatic use was also made of the colour blue, which enjoyed a particular vogue in the 1750s and early 1760s. It appeared, for example, in the original flock wallpaper of the drawing room over the hall (Fig 3) and was the dominant colour in the gallery at the top of the house. This latter room was otherwise transformed during the course of the work (Fig 8). All the windows along one side were blocked up to create space both for porcelain niches and an array of family portraits.
Fig 4: The Yellow Bedroom, with its cleaned and restored Flemish tapestries. The green fading to fashionable blue perhaps made the tapestries attractive to Lady Hussey Delaval.
The most significant structural change to the interior of Doddington was the replacement of the main Elizabethan stair, which presumably looked hopelessly dated to Georgian eyes. Its successor was grandly conceived and completed in October 1762 at a cost of £197 8s 5d (Fig 2).
In July 1762, Portis reported that he was ‘hanging the tapestry in the 2 bedchambers adjoining the best staircase according to Lady Hussey Delaval’s orders’. These rooms are now known as the Holly and Yellow Bedrooms (Fig 4) and the tapestries in question are of 17th-century Flemish production. It is presumed that they had survived in the house and, given what has been already said about the character of the interior remodelling, it is odd that they were reconfigured at this time. Perhaps Lady Hussey Delaval had different tastes from her husband. Whatever the case, the tapestries in both rooms have recently been the object of an ambitious conservation project undertaken in collaboration with the University of Lincoln.
Fig 5: The MC Tsen Collection of British Military uniforms. Most of the objects on display were made between 1881 and 1945.
Sir John’s last positive contribution to Doddington was the reconstruction of the church beside the house. In a draft letter to the Bishop of Lincoln dated 1770, he observed that the building was ‘in a very ruinous condition and unfit for the performance of Divine Service [and] it will give me a great pleasure if your Lordship shall approve of my rebuilding it where it now stands at my expense’. It would seem that the bishop did not object. Some elements of the old church were recycled in the new structure and medieval detailing was copied with remarkable assurance (Fig 7). The tower, surmounted by a spire until the 20th century, incorporates a fine Gothic west door. Lumby was again the main contractor, albeit disappearing for a period to escape arrest for debt.
In the meantime, Sir John’s circumstances were transformed by the death, in 1771, of his childless elder brother. This brought the entailed Delaval estates into his ownership. By the terms of his mother’s will, however, Doddington ought at the same moment to have passed to his younger brother, Edward. Sir John objected, claiming to have spent £17,000 on improvements there. It was eventually agreed that Edward would receive an annuity from the estate, but the dispute estranged the brothers. Presumably out of spite, Sir John subsequently felled all the timber at Doddington with the exception of three ancient sweet chestnuts that still grow beside the house.
Fig 6: The pyramid built in 2014 to the design of Antony Jarvis, from the broken concrete foundations of a grain store, as an eye-catcher. The house is visible in the distance.
As a compounding difficulty, in 1775, Sir John’s son, heir and namesake died. His body was brought to the newly completed church at Doddington for burial, the interior of which was painted black for the occasion. His parents, doubtless heartbroken, did not attend the funeral and Sir John began a mausoleum at Seaton Delaval to receive the body. Yet the mausoleum, now ruinous, was seemingly never consecrated and the younger John remains at Doddington, his grave unmarked.
It’s not really clear what the status of Doddington was for the remainder of Sir John’s long life. That said, an inventory of 1786 records a fully furnished house filled with paintings and furniture. Edward was nearly 80 by the time he succeeded his brother in 1808. When he died in 1814, however, the Delaval estate was broken up. The main beneficiary was Edward’s nephew, Sir Jacob Astley, but Doddington Hall and much of its estate passed to his wife and daughter, both called Sarah.
Fig 7: Doddington Church was rebuilt in the 1770s, both reusing and copying, with unusual fidelity, elements of the medieval building. The tower formerly had a spire.
The daughter married James Gunman, collector of Customs at Dover, who predeceased her. She, by the terms of her will in 1825, subsequently and surprisingly bequeathed her fortune and her interest in Doddington to Lt-Col George Jarvis, a former neighbour in Dover. He was the youngest of 21 children born to an Antiguan plantation owner and a veteran both of the Peninsular War and the ill-fated Walcheren Campaign. In 1829, Sarah’s mother also died and bequeathed the contents of Doddington to the colonel, who, the following year, successfully bought out the remaining Delaval interests in the property and reunited the entire estate. He remarried and, in later life, he became an accomplished woodcarver. His tools and examples of his sculpted panels survive both in the house and the church. The property remains in the hands of his descendants to the present.
The colonel’s son, George, inherited the hall in 1851 and undertook extensive repairs to the building. His initials today ornament the weather vane of the central dome of the house and his portrait by Charles Lutyens, the father of the celebrated architect, remains in the collection. During the lifetime of his son, another George, there appeared the History of Doddington (1897), a remarkable piece of antiquarian research by the Revd R. E. G. Cole. It remains the standard account of the house and the families associated with it.
Fig 8: The gallery was painted deep blue in the 1760s. The windows to the left have been blocked and incorporate porcelain recesses.
In 1961, the great-grandson of the colonel, Antony Jarvis, took over the management of the estate. His parents had opened the house to the public in 1954 and secured funding from the Historic Buildings Council for repairs. Mr Jarvis and his wife, Victoria — they were married in 1962 — undertook important restoration work to the building and further developed visitor arrangements including school visits. Their eldest daughter, Claire, and her husband, James Birch, a former chairman of the Historic Houses Association (now Historic Houses), have built impressively on these foundations since they assumed responsibility for the estate in 2006.
One aspect of their work has been the development of the commercial potential of Doddington with a host of different businesses. There is a farm shop, supplied by the restored walled garden, the Giant Bike Shop and a home store, plus the award-winning Grain Store Café, Restaurant and Bar, holiday cottages and padel courts. Doddington can accommodate weddings and manages a busy calendar of events and concerts. Cumulatively, these initiatives have made Doddington a destination in its own right, but the couple’s contribution goes much deeper.
One of Doddington Hall's bedrooms, with a bed that fit right in at a royal palace.
Mr and Mrs Birch have actively encouraged collaborative research into the house and its collections and the Doddington Conservation Charity, established in 2006, has helped make possible the tapestry conservation project, described above. Meanwhile, new attractions have been established on the estate. These include a building to house the historic farm wagon collection assembled by Antony Jarvis and also, in the roof space above it, the MC Tsen Collection of British Military uniforms (Fig 5). This comprises more than 900 uniforms and 3,000 accessories made from 1881 to 1945 and is on long-term loan. The collection is accessible by appointment.
There have been changes, as well, to the gardens and formal landscape, including the creation of a pyramid at the end of the main avenue (Fig 6). Built in 2014 from the broken concrete foundations of a disused grain store, it incorporates a small shelter for walkers as well as accommodation for bats and owls. Perhaps most remarkable of all, however, are the ongoing plans to develop the wider estate, which has become the object of an ambitious nature-recovery initiative. ‘Wilder Doddington’ is a project planned over 400 years that aims to revive ecosystems on the estate’s marginal land. To this end, arable farming ceased in 2021, artificial drainage systems were blocked and a herd of rare-breed Lincoln Red cattle introduced. The intention is to make this project accessible both through educational initiatives and the creation of permissive access trails.
When Country Life last wrote up Doddington in 1936, the writer concluded by assuring readers that the house was on the National Trust’s schedule of potential acquisitions. Had the Trust acquired Doddington, however, we all know exactly what the house would now be like. How uplifting, by comparison, to have a trailblazing illustration of the ways in which a historic estate can thrive, develop and contribute in the 21st century. How inspiring, too, to see its collections researched, cherished and even expanded.
Doddington Hall is open to visitors — see their website for more details.
This feature originally appeared in the June 3, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
