Renishaw Hall

by Desmond Seward

  Jane also corresponded with Francis’s first cousin and heir, another Francis Sitwell, an attorney in Sheffield and a nephew of Mr Justice Sitwell. Inheriting his father’s practice, Francis became the leading lawyer there, patronised by the Duke of Leeds and other local magnates. He acquired a considerable fortune, partly from his salary as legal adviser to the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire – then the most influential corporate body in Sheffield – but more from investments in indigo and diamonds that brought him over £1,000 a year. He was probably the town’s richest inhabitant.

  It looks as if he first met Jane in 1726, at young Henry Sacheverell’s funeral. At the end of November the following year, while visiting London, she wrote to this other Francis, ‘I wish yourself & family joy of your new relation,’ a reference to his sister Catherine having recently married a Mr Hurt, of whom more will be heard. She says, ‘Kensington Air was [so much] more agreable to my Constitution than any Country Fever, that I Bless God I and my ffriend the Widow are as well in Body as the cold season will permit.’ She grumbles that ‘Cousin Sitwell [of Renishaw] has not thought fitt to afford me one informing line since you left the Towne.’ The real point of her letter is to seek his advice on disposing of Barton’s contents without upsetting relatives.

  In December 1731, again from London, we find her thanking him for ‘yr Noble Present of Woodcocks’. Once more, she wants advice on managing her property. She ends, ‘Our Cousin, the Esqre. [the Renishaw Francis], had a safe tho’ sharp journey. Was here yesterday: says he’s free from cold & better in health than he has been some time.’ In autumn 1735, Francis writes, ‘I doe now think it long since I saw you, but hope to give my selfe that satisfaction next this next spring.’ Giving news of other cousins, he says they are at York, ‘where abundance of our neighbouring gentry have took into their heads to rendezvous this winter, where they find good & cheap provisions and operas, plays, musick meetings, and I know not what, event to view with the great Metropolis.’ He sent her woodcock every year till his death in 1741.

  The few letters to Francis Sitwell of Sheffield from Squire Francis treat him as an attorney rather than an heir. But at least they agreed on Jane. After the last Sacheverell boy’s death in 1726, the Sheffield Francis was told by the Squire, ‘I had rather cosin Jane had the right of administration’ than anyone else, a testimony to the respect in which she was held by the entire family.

  Reserved and fastidious, Francis Sitwell of Renishaw was not an easy man to approach. In the spring of 1729, his cousin Robert Wilmot of Chaddesden wrote asking his help in finding a bride for his son – ‘such a young agreeable lady as will make him happy, endowed with good sense & virtue; for he will certainly make such a lady perfectly happy’. Robert makes it clear she must be in possession of a large fortune. On the back of his letter, Francis wrote a single word – ‘nausious’.

  As one might expect of a scholar, Francis steadily expanded Renishaw’s library. Eventually it numbered nearly 2,000 titles, amounting to 4,000 volumes, which he catalogued himself. Some were in bookcases in the Great Parlour.

  In a letter of 1730, Dick Cowley described the Renishaw gardens as ‘very handsome’. The one on the south of the house was relaid in 1728 with 3,000 yards of sods bought at Worksop, a green alley being constructed in a straight line from the new garden door out of the hall. In the middle, a flight of stone steps led up to a sundial while elaborate flowerbeds were dug for anemones, jonquils, carnations and auriculas. The centre beds sported stone obelisks, fourteen feet high. There were box borders, and yews and hollies clipped into globes or pyramids.

  The next year a terrace walk was added on the east, the wall beneath it planted with cherries, plums and pears. The kitchen gardens grew artichokes, asparagus and spinach. Besides apples (Nonpareil and Golden Pippin) and pears (St Germain and Divydale), the orchards produced Red Roman nectarines, old Newington peaches, plums, cherries, apricots and grapes.

  In midlife Francis Sitwell had his portrait painted, in 1742, by Charles Philips, a portrait painter then enjoying a great vogue. It shows a stern, stately gentleman in a bag-wig who has a surprisingly full mouth with thick, fleshy lips. He may have looked a little different in real life – a letter of 1736 from Cousin Francis to Jane Sacheverell describes ‘Our Squire’ as ‘plump and fat as a partridge’.

  Next year he lost his favourite brother, the don. ‘Poor Tom is alive, but in a very bad way, as you may well imagine,’ a cousin noted early in January. ‘He sitts up in his Chair & is pretty Chearfull & seems strong, but has no appetite, sleeps badly, & his leggs are swell’d & turn’s blackish, & the Doctor gives no hopes of him, but he seems not to think himself in so much danger.’ He died a week later, leaving his estate of Povey to his brother. Francis’s other brother, George the India merchant, also died before him, in 1745. He had bought land at Whiston near Rotherham, which he too bequeathed to Francis. This is still part of the Renishaw estate.

  Since he was a young man, Francis had abominated the Stuart pretenders and their popish supporters. The handwritten draft of a pamphlet which he wrote, Defence of our Penal Laws, survives, but was probably never published. (It strongly supports measures that banned Catholics from celebrating Mass or holding public office.) In 1745 he contributed £60 for defending England against Bonnie Prince Charlie. No doubt he was terrified when, in December, the Jacobite army occupied Derby for three days.

  Francis died suddenly in May 1753 on a visit to London, of an attack of asthma at his lodgings in Warwick Court, and was buried at Eckington. An obituary in the London Evening Post of 29 June describes him as ‘immensely rich . . . A Gentleman in whom (as with the greatest Truth it may be said) real and unaffected Piety and Virtue, various and extensive Learning, strict Honour and Integrity, great Candour and Humanity, and the most extensive Charity, were eminently conspicuous.’ The deceased had been, added the enthusiastic obituarist, ‘a publick Blessing’.

  Francis Sitwell had been a worthy steward of Renishaw who enlarged the estate by buying Plumbley Hall and the manor of Morton. He had also made shrewd investments, such as two entire shares in New River stock. Despite his fine mind and strong character, he is the least interesting of the eighteenth-century squires, but this may be because we do not know enough about him.

  Chapter 4

  THE MERCHANT SQUIRE

  he man who succeeded Francis as squire of Renishaw was a younger brother of the other Francis Sitwell, the rich Sheffield attorney.

  Born in 1697, a younger son of a younger son, William Sitwell can never have expected – even into early middle age – that he would inherit Renishaw, although he had other, if somewhat distant, expectations of an inheritance from his mother, Mary Reresby, who belonged to an ancient, well-to-do family of Derbyshire landowners, the Reresbys of Thrybergh. Nor can William have supposed that his elder brother Francis would die young.1

  William had gone to London where, in the Sitwell tradition of younger sons entering trade, he was apprenticed to an ironmonger – no doubt because of his father’s contacts with Sheffield manufacturers. Eventually, he became a general merchant in partnership with the fabulously wealthy William Parkin, the offices of Messrs, Parkin & Sitwell being at the White Lyon in Foster Lane. In consequence, William made a fortune, especially after Parkin’s death in 1746, ending as one of the richest men in the City.

  Among other business enterprises, he underwrote shipping. In about 1960, two old tin boxes bearing his name were found in the vaults of the Goldsmiths’ Company in London. Among the papers they contained was a batch of documents concerning a legal action he had brought over a vessel that sank in harbour before even setting sail. He won the case with full compensation.

  Plainly, he enjoyed the London of Hogarth and Canaletto – dirty, dangerous and beautiful – and liked to relax at Child’s Coffee House near St Paul’s Cathedral. In those days the City contained mansions besides offices and warehouses, and his residence, No. 6 Aldermanbury in Dyer’s Court, was probably inherited from a kinsm
an. Pulled down in the 1880s, this had been a large building with a courtyard entered through a large archway with high, wooden doors that were closed after nightfall.

  A prominent philanthropist, William subscribed to many charities. In 1753 he became a governor of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and, two years later, of Christ’s, while in 1757 he was elected honorary auditor general of the royal hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, a post he retained until his death. He also contributed to a fund for educating clergymen’s orphans, and to another for helping crippled merchant seamen.

  Already well into middle age, William Sitwell’s prospects were transformed by the death of his elder brother. As Francis had been a bachelor, William inherited his substantial fortune as well as becoming the heir to Renishaw. For the moment, it did not make much difference to William’s habits, although he regularly visited Derbyshire, and in June 1746 he organised Cousin Jane Sacheverell’s funeral, sending an account of the arrangement to Renishaw.

  Despite his absorbing London life, when he became squire William made Renishaw his home, although he kept on his house in Dyer’s Court. He had known Renishaw since he was a boy, having been on friendly terms with Squire Francis, who while his brother was still alive had promised to leave him £30,000. He did not make many changes, but ensured the hall and estate were well run, appointing as his land agent a Mr Foxlowe – son of the Master of Chesterfield Grammar School. Yet, while a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant, he took no interest in county affairs, and paid £500 to avoid serving as High Sheriff – an honour avidly sought by his predecessors.

  No sportsman, his relaxations were music and the theatre – especially music. He played the flute, hautboy (oboe) and violin. Fortunately he had an heir who shared these tastes: his nephew, Francis Hurt, his widowed sister Catherine’s son. On Francis reaching the age of twenty-one in 1749, William, who by then was well over fifty, formally adopted him as his son, with an allowance of £400 a year. When Francis’s mother died in 1754 and he was left without a home, his uncle invited him to live at Renishaw in summer and Dyer’s Court in winter.

  As music lovers who played the same instruments and gave music parties, they got on well. At Renishaw they entertained the kindred named by William in a will he made in 1773 – such cousins as the Reresbys, Phippses, Allestrees, Shirecliffes, Shepherds and Stathams. The pair went regularly to the new assembly rooms and theatre at Sheffield, while from London they visited Bath or other fashionable watering places.

  William’s health began to fail him in his seventies, and for the last two years of his life he stayed in London apart from rare visits to Bath for the waters. During this time Renishaw Hall was let to Mr and Mrs Clay of Bridgehouses. William died at Dyer’s Court in April 1776 in his eightieth year, with the York Chronicle for 3 May recording that he had been buried with great pomp in the family vault in Derbyshire. ‘Mr Sitwell is said to have died worth 400,000 l.’ says the article, adding, ‘He had 30,000 l. in an iron chest when he died.’ Other reports put his wealth as high as £500,000.

  Sadly, few of William Sitwell’s letters survive, and no portrait, so that he is the most shadowy of all the squires of Renishaw. But he had taken excellent care of the house and the estate, besides enormously increasing the family fortunes, a legacy that would benefit succeeding generations and transform the house. A particularly attractive feature of his character was his happy relationship with his heir.

  Although you can still feel fairly close to the eighteenth-century Sitwells, at both Renishaw Hall and Eckington church, you can only do so up to a point. Despite all their shrewdness, benevolence and cultivation, these last members of the direct Sitwell male line are no more than ghostly phantoms in a charming landscape.

  Chapter 5

  PASSING ON THE TORCH

  illiam Sitwell’s heir, Francis Hurt of Hesley Hall near Sheffield, belonged to a family of small Yorkshire landowners. Until now, its sole member of note had been Francis’s grandfather, employed as a land agent by Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford – Charles I’s great minister.1

  An only son, born at Sheffield in 1728, Francis lost his father Jonathan Hurt when he was three and was brought up by his mother and grandmother. Medium-sized and stocky, with a noticeably blunt, no-nonsense sort of face, he grew to be a steady, capable man who had no difficulty in handling his affairs and money, although there was never any question of his earning a living. He also developed a sensitive, imaginative side, becoming the first aesthete to live at Renishaw. His taste has been underrated by later generations.

  At the time of his birth his parents lived in the High Street near Sheffield’s parish church, but soon after Jonathan’s death in 1731 Catherine Hurt moved with her mother to a large house close to the Lady’s Bridge, not far from the ruins of Sheffield Castle.

  Despite being a smoke-filled manufacturing place whose prosperity came from high-quality knives – Horace Walpole called it ‘one of the foulest towns in England’ – Sheffield was surrounded by beautiful countryside. In winter the local gentry flocked there, renting houses or apartments, as they would otherwise have been prevented from visiting each other by the dreadful roads.

  Francis received a good education in Latin, Greek, French and mathematics, probably at Chesterfield Grammar School. His uncle Francis left him £500, with the proviso that some should be used to pay for his schooling, while as a boy he often visited Renishaw. Almost certainly he was taught music, since he learned to play the ‘German Flute’ and the violin, accomplishments that gave him pleasure for the rest of his life. In addition, he had lessons from an art master, developing a gift for figure drawing in pen or pencil.

  As a very young man he paid a subscription to the Sheffield Assemblies, to join in the weekly minuets or card games (ombre and piquet) that took place on three nights during the Sheffield Races and the Cutlers’ Feast. He also subscribed to the York Assemblies. He had more serious interests, however, visiting art galleries and artists’ studios, while he may have travelled in France in the early 1750s, inspired by a love of French literature.

  In common with more than a few Derbyshire gentry, Francis was a secret Jacobite who drank the King-over-the-Water’s health, passing his wine glass over a finger-bowl. At seventeen, he must have deplored Prince Charles Edward’s decision to turn back from Derby in 1745 and withdraw to Scotland, even if not prepared to risk his life by joining him. How he derived his opinions is unknown, but plainly he kept them secret from his staunchly Whig Sitwell kindred, as they would have jeopardised his inheritance.

  His adoption by William Sitwell filled an emotional void, his uncle taking the place of the father he had never known. Together, the pair travelled all over England. In the summer of 1755 they visited Portsmouth to see Admiral Lord Anson’s fleet at anchor in the harbour, twenty-nine ships of the line, then attended a reception in honour of Anson and the Duke of Cumberland. Next year they went down to Surrey to view the ‘encampments’ of the Guards, who were stationed there in readiness for a French invasion.

  Most of their expeditions were to watering-places, not only Bath and the Hot Wells at Bristol, but Harrogate, Buxton and Scarborough (the start of a long family association). Occasionally they went back to Sheffield, as in 1755 when they attended a ‘grand musical entertainment’ to inaugurate a new organ at St Paul’s church, where William’s father had been a trustee. The winter was always spent in London, where they gave evening music parties with as many as six performing sonatas, symphonies and concertos in which William played his German flute. Both uncle and nephew enjoyed going to Child’s Coffee House.

  In 1766, when nearly forty, while taking the waters Francis met Mary Warneford, the ‘Beauty of Bath’, a bluestocking or ‘précieuse’ who shared his love of music. Her father was a canon of York, her uncle squire of Warneford Place, a great Elizabethan manor house in Wiltshire, and her cousin a colonel in the army. The next year, the couple were married at Clifton near Bristol.

  They began their married life at Littl
e Sheffield, a village a mile outside the town, from which it was separated by Sheffield Moor (where the races were run). They often took part in the Renishaw music parties. Three sons and a daughter were born, a relative pinning a banknote to the eldest boy’s christening robe. There were others, who died in infancy.

  Francis enjoyed attending York Assembly Rooms, and for the winter of 1773 he rented a house in Bootham Bar, bringing his furniture. He was a fop, a portrait painted by his friend Nathan Drake showing him in a suit of light blue satin trimmed with silver, while he owned others of superfine green cloth, of Tyrian Bloom (purple red), of white with silver buttons and of pea-green kerseymere with silver-wire buttons. Even before succeeding to his inheritance, he dressed his servants in the green and yellow Sitwell livery.

  He and his wife were often with his uncle William, at Renishaw and in London. While the young couple visited Scarborough in the summer of 1774, they kept their affection for Bath, where they had first met, wintering there from October 1774 to January 1775.

  Francis got on well with his Warneford in-laws, from the evidence of a silhouette from the 1770s by Francis Torond, a leading ‘profilist’ at Bath. At the left, the old couple sit at a tripod tea-table; Francis stands at the right, showing his watch to his baby daughter on his wife’s knee, with a small girl behind him. On the far right his young son and heir, who has tactfully been given Sitwell as a first name, plays with a dog.

  Francis was with his uncle William when he died in 1776. After the funeral, he and his wife moved into Renishaw Hall. That same year a certain Mrs Bagshaw is recorded as observing, ‘Renishaw may be ye most beautiful place in Derbyshire.’ Yet the new squire was not entirely under its spell, since he continued to spend winter months at Little Sheffield. He also spent time in London, although his residence was no longer Dyer’s Court in the City, but a smart house in Audley Square in the increasingly fashionable West End.