Beheadings, a duplicitous solicitor and a Rembrandt for the price of an Oasis ticket: The sorry story of Sprotborough Hall

When Sprotborough Hall, Doncaster, was put up for auction in 1925, it had a reserve price of £5,000.

The property dated back to the reformation and end of the reign of Charles II. From the 17th century, the house remained in the same family. That family would, in a twist of sublime historical fate, eventually reclaim the title of Baron Cromwell — although not that Cromwell.

Solicitor Mr Frederic Stockton Gowland of Ripon was the only person who bid over the reserve, securing the three-centuries old property at the bargain price of £5,100 (£276,970.81). He told the Hull Times he’d bought the 'fine original Charles II mansion' as an investment. He meant it. His plan was to strip it of its constituent parts, then demolish it for a profit. In 1925 there was little to protect a property such as Sprotborough Hall.

Despite surviving over 300 years, it was among hundreds of structures overlooked by the newly-formed Ancient Monuments Branch — a government department set up in 1913 to ‘schedule monuments’ — for not being ancient enough. Their primary focus was on prehistoric and Roman sites, or castles and abbeys, not post-Reformation mansions.

Sprotborough had been built by Sir Godfrey Copley between 1686-90, on a site high above the River Don. Sir Godfrey’s house was inspired by one he had seen in France. That property was Versailles.

Enthused by his visit to the grand palace, Sir Godfrey returned to his ancestral land on Christmas Eve 1685, and, having spent Christmas one last time in his old house, started the New Year with a (literal) bang, demolishing the existing property and beginning work on his own, South Yorkshire palace.

The end result was not particularly French in style. Indeed, Christopher Hussey describes the building as being 'singularly Jacobean' in its presentation. However, Sir Godfrey did install a Versailles-esque fountain in the forecourt — pressure-powered from a tank on the roof, which in turn was fed by a pump direct from the River Don. He also, unusually for the time, had a 35-feet long swimming pool constructed within the property, which apparently could be heated.

When Country Life’s Christopher Hussey visited Brigadeer-General Sir Robert Calverly Alington Bewicke Copley, KBE, CB, in 1922, he was a little sniffy about the interiors, only instructing the photographer to photograph the hall and its adjacent library. They were both picked out for their distinctly Carolean qualities.

Hussey’s accompanying article explained that the house had been let out for the only time in its existence in the mid-19th century, with the tenants partaking in some dubious, Victorian redecoration during their time in the house.

However, a year after the article, disaster struck. On June 23, 1923, Sir Robert, who had just returned from a trip to South America, died of suspected pneumonia.

Just four days later, his wife, Dame Selina Frances Bewicke Copley also died, according to some newspaper reports, in Sprotborough Hall during the funeral of her husband. The double family tragedy came just months after years of dedicated research had resulted in Dame Selina successfully petitioning for the termination of the abeyance in her favour of the ancient title of the Barony of Cromwell.

The couple’s eldest son, also Robert, therefore, lost both his parents, inherited a brand new title, two sets of crippling death duties and a gargantuan, ancient mansion overlooking the (by then) far-from bucolic industrial creep of Doncaster all within the same month. So the new Baron Cromwell decided to sell.

First there was the sale of the contents — a four-day, in-situ sale in October 1925. It was noted that the best furniture, art and books had been packaged off to Christie's and Sotheby’s for consideration.

The November book sale at Sotheby’s was much enhanced by the sale of one unrecorded poem On the late massacre in Virginia by Christopher Brooke, which fetched £2,700 of the total £3,987 realised. The work was considered to be the earliest celebration in verse of the British settlement in America.

Next came the sale of paintings at Christie's, which raised a further £6,000. It included four works by Sir Peter Lely, six van Dycks, and a Rembrandt, which fetched £126.

Earlier, on May 16, 1925, Country Life reported on the impending sale of the house itself. An anonymous correspondent was quoted: 'The mansion is one of the those very big ones (about 30 bedrooms) and I fear it may have to be pulled down.' The correspondent wasn’t wrong.

After Christmas, and just into 1926, The Times reported that solicitor Mr Gowland had handed his 'investment”'to the housebreakers. They were swift in their execution.

On February 27, 1926, newspapers reported on the sale of fixtures and fitting, including the front hall panelling, bookcases, mantlepieces, fine iron gates, tanks, engines and pumps. Stone balustrading was recycled to Riseborough Hall in North Yorkshire. Demolition began in May 1926.

Later that month, reports emerged that a number of murals had been uncovered beneath reeds and plaster in what was once the central hallway. There was a full-length portrait of a woman wearing a coronet, which was broken at the neck while being taken down, and a head and shoulders portrait of a man wearing a Stuart-era wig.

Nothing was recorded as to what happened to them, but one can’t help but wonder what other treasures were hidden within those historic, 300-year-old walls.

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