Even a visit from Queen Mary couldn't save this 15th-century Yorkshire mansion from Britain's coal industry
Methley Hall surpassed everyone's expectations and managed to stay standing long beyond its time.
The only surprise about Methley Hall’s demise is that it didn't come sooner. Demolished in 1963, the writing had been firmly etched on the wall of the West Yorkshire property since at least the Victorian era.
Methley Hall was purchased by John Savile in 1588. His descendants who go on to become the the Earls of Mexborough.
The path to the front door that would eventually be encroached upon by open-cast mining.
Despite being extensively remodelled by Anthony Salvin in the 1830’s, the property was regularly left unoccupied and fell into a state of considerable disrepair. However, it was to be offered a brief reprieve from one of industrial Victorian Yorkshire’s greatest figures.
Titus Salt — the Bradford mill owner, politician and renowned philanthropist who created the Victorian model village of Saltaire — moved into the hall on a vastly reduced rent in 1858.
Salt, with all his entrepreneurial vigour and connections, took on the task of repairing the dilapidated mansion, enlisting architects, joiners and craftsmen. The roof was made sound, the gardens made more pleasurable and the rooms were redecorated. The deer park was fenced with smart new iron railings to keep the aforementioned gardens clear of ruminating bucks and does.
According to a census, Salt had moved back to his beloved Bradford by 1871.
Methley’s Elizabethan-era hallway with its vast, carved oak screen. Note the quirky late-17th-century painted figures of children in this and the next photograph.
The foot of the stairway in the entrance hall.
Country Life’s 1907 architecture feature on the lofty pile was far from optimistic about its situation. It opened: 'Methley… is a great house in a park, caught, to its misfortune, by a net of railways that make for Leeds, Dewsbury and Wakefield. All the discomfort of Yorkshire prosperity is at hand; the drift of smoke comes down the air from far-distant chimneys, collieries throw up their dark mounds and the water of the Calder flows inkily foul from the washing of shoddy [a recycled wool product].'
This far-from bucolic scene was worsened by what was going on underground. Somewhere underneath the hall's castellated towers, miners were toiling day in, day out to bring precious coal to the surface of the Savile Mine.
A 1593 fireplace surrounded by old flock wallpaper.
In 1916, the 5th Earl died. The 6th owned the more practical and pastoral Arden Hall in Hawnby, North York Moors, and did not move in. Instead, it was used to entertain visiting royalty and for shooting parties.
It must have been kept in a fairly good state because, in 1935, newspaper reports indicate that Queen Mary popped in for tea, following a visit to an antique shop in Pontefract where she was much amused by a clock that chimed God Save the King.
Four years later, Methley Hall was, like so many other great houses, requisitioned for the war. By the time it was returned to the Mexboroughs, it was in a bad state.
A probably Elizabethan oak stairway.
In 1949, it was reported that the Ministry of Fuel and Power were to begin open-cast mining in Methley Park. It was hoped that the 60-room, 15th-century mansion could be bought and repurposed as a school or hospital, but just nine years later, mining activity had made it all the way up the park and to the front door.
Suffering from considerable subsidence, dry rot and, to add insult to injury, the theft of lead from the roof, a decision was reluctantly made to bring the grande dame down.
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