Captain's Log 

The Winning Way

The first item I came to was a rather detailed timeline of the history of the estate. I scanned the details to try and get a feel of the place. A long story short…
1654 - The Winn family buy the Nostell estate
1729 - Colonel Moyser commissioned to design a new house
1736 - James Paine takes over the Nostell project

1765 - The 4th Baronet dies - the house is half complete, Rowland Winn (5th Baronet) inherits.

1785 - Rowland dies suddenly. The building project is once again halted incomplete
1785 - The 6th Baronet inherits Nostell, dies unmarried in 1805

1817 - Charles Winn, grandson of the 5th Baronet, eventually inherits. A new programme of interiors and collecting begins.

1874 - Charle’s son Rowland Winn inherits. With a career in politics, he became First Baron St Oswald in 1885. Wealth from iron ore and coal enables Nostell to flourish.

Yawn….still with it?
1997 - The National Trust takes over direct management of Nostell 

It sounds like an episode of C4’s Grand Design lasting centuries (oddly enough C4's episodes of GDs seem to last for centuries to me too). The place was never finished off as anybody really wanted. The current Winns, or whoever they are, don’t live in the house; they live on a council estate in Fitzwilliam. 

Another character in Nostell’s story is Sabine, the wife of Rowland (the 5th Baronet). The National Trust’s narrative is that she was a ‘Rebecca’ type character of the house. It was a bit of a heavy start, but at least some names were now familiar as I wandered around the house. 

Doll's House

The first room I entered had rather a large doll’s house. Well, I wasn’t expecting that! It was constructed in the style of a mansion and had little figures that depicted the gentry and servants. It was not actually a child’s plaything, but a toy for the adult imagination. 'Here upper-class women would express their taste, practise household management and play out the social customs which dominated their lives' claimed an information board. I suppose they had to do something with all their leisure time. 

Most of the rooms in the house (the real one, not the doll's house) had a National Trust greeter. They were usually aged between 60 and 80 years old and lurched out of the shadows towards you as you entered the room. Bless them, it must have been a long day for them saying the same things over and over again to people. One of them latched on to me as I came from the doll’s house room. She pointed out the room holding the John Harrison clock which was quite useful and I thanked her before I disappeared into the apothecary. 

Apothecary And Sabine

What, your house doesn’t have an apothecary? You need to get with the times. I suppose the apothecary is as good a place as any to talk about Sabine since she featured in discussions about every other place in the house. 

At the age of 17, the 5th Baronet (that’s Rowland) went to Lausanne in Switzerland, to be educated. While he was there he had an education in love with Sabine Louise.  Once her current husband had croaked, he ended up marrying her and brought her back to Nostell. She said it was ‘One of the most desolate and ill-fated corners of the universe..’ which sounds a bit harsh, but given that she was from Switzerland, I can well understand her view. She couldn’t speak English, brought her own maids and so didn’t really hit it off with the existing servants. Not only that, Rowland was often away from Nostell on business. A lot of her letters to the absent Rowland indicated that she was not in the best mental state and would often retreat to her dressing room. She died in 1798, quite a few years after Rowland and so I guess they must have been the loneliest years of all.

She had an interest in apothecary and herbal remedies; hence this dedicated room in the house.  There was a lovely mahogany Chippendale bench-drawers in the apothecary. Chippendale was one of the main suppliers of furniture at Nostell Priory and there seems to be some item of his in every room. They had a little cube with a ‘C’ on it so that you could tell it was a Chippendale...although the greeter in the room would invariably point them out anyway. 

John Harrison

I went into the room containing one of John Harrison's clocks. It was one of his early clocks and had some wooden components. The NT doesn't keep it running since the wooden components would wear out. There were darkened stains on its wooden frame from the candle Harrison used for lighting. 

He was born near Nostell, but moved away from the area at the age of four. ‘We’re still claiming him, though!’ said one of the greeters that I met, with such enthusiasm that it made me jump. His H4 clock was so accurate that it only lost around one-third of a second per day. The idea of such precision was thought to be unattainable at the time and this is portrayed in one of Hogarth’s prints that was displayed: ‘Madness, Thou Chaos of ye’. The scene in the print is set in Bedlam, London’s madhouse. It includes two ‘longitude lunatics’: one gazes desperately through a telescope and behind him, another scrawls a globe and diagrams on the wall. Hogarth was illustrating the common belief of the day that trying to solve the longitude problem will only lead to madness. John Harrison was a persistent fellow though and he got there in the end.

Room After Room

I was on the ground floor at the moment, which was the servants area. A kitchen area had a secured room attached to it where the silver cutlery was held when not in use. Obviously they didn’t want any of it to mysteriously disappear in the dishwasher. The other place which the servants frequented was at the very top of the house; this area was out of bounds to NT visitors. 

I climbed the stairs to the first floor. The stairwell was open to the second floor too and there were windows above letting in light. Suspended from the very top was a large ornamental light. This was a Chippendale (although for practical reasons it didn’t have a block with a ‘C’ on, next to it). A greeter told me that it used to have candles in it and had to be lowered from the roof so that they could light them. I wondered how much light candles actually cast in such a large space.     

I entered what turned out to be the main entrance vestibule to the mansion. It had extensive, ornate plasterwork on both walls and ceilings. ‘They never got around to putting in the stone floor that they wanted’ the greeter told me. I looked out of the window as we chatted and I told her about attending a music festival in the grounds just outside of here in the late 1970s. ‘Yes they used to do music festivals here, and weddings too, but that’s all stopped now.’         

There was a rather nice Chippendale bureau that I wouldn’t have minded having; probably the only item of furniture in the whole mansion that I’d have had in my house. In the state bedroom the greeter told me about the Chinese wallpaper on the walls. The print was of birds of paradise perched in a tree and flowery landscape. She said that the same image displayed on the nearby Samsung TV screen depicts the vibrancy of the colours when the wall paper was first put up. I was about to dispute that it could never have been as illuminating as a Samsung Neo QLED 8K HDR Smart TV image, but when I turned to the 75 year old, I didn’t have the heart to pursue it with her. I nodded in agreement.    

In the next room, there was an ornate plaster ceiling that portrayed three naked cherubs playing musical instruments. ‘Look, look! Can you see? The bow on the fiddle is actually a real one’ exclaimed the greeter,  with such excitement that I really believed it was the first time he'd noticed it.     

The dining room had light painted walls and had a brighter feel to it. There were only spaces for eight people at the table which must have been a bit tricky when they had a lot of visitors. I guess Sabine wasn’t one for entertaining though.    

Next door was the Tapestry Room. Not surprisingly the tapestries (Flemish ones) hung from the walls. The information board said it was the withdrawing room for ‘...guests to retreat to after an evening’s entertainment.’ I wasn’t really sure about the difference between a drawing and a withdrawing room. Later research revealed there isn’t a difference, ‘drawing’ is just a shortened form of ‘withdrawing.’     

I then entered the library that was spread out over two rooms. The greeter said that there were 9,000 books and they all went through a cycle of cleaning. I took my hat off to the two people who I could see cleaning a couple of the books. I had a look at the collections. They all seemed to be reference books and all looked rather dry. A typical example was the Irish Statues 1510 to 1761 collection which extended to 8 volumes including the index. There were further volumes for future years too. Who would have imagined that there were so many Irish statues? No wonder Sabine felt a bit isolated.     

I found myself back at the entrance and I retrieved my rucksack from the locker. My grand tour of the Nostell Priory mansion was now complete.     

As I walked out of the front entrance, the greeter shouted ‘Did you enjoy it?’ 

I confirmed that I had, and then added out of curiosity, ‘Does anybody ever tell you that they haven’t.’

She thought for a second or two and said ‘No, I don’t think they have.’

Nostell Priory Gardens

The Nostell Priory Gardens is a paid feature (unless you are a National Trust member) and accessed through the Stables. There’s a kitchen garden to potter around and also a woodland trail around a couple of lakes. I entered the kitchen garden and sauntered along its grassy pathways. It was nice to get out into the sun after the persistent gloom of the house. It was a pleasant enough walk and only took15 minutes to walk around. I noticed that the Banana trees seemed to have fewer leaves than when I was here before. Maybe it was a bit early in the year for bananas. 

I left the kitchen garden and joined the woodland trails. A few kids were making good use of the playground apparatus. The zip-wire looked like good fun, but I thought I might get some unwelcome looks if I tried it. I reached the pretty lake and headed off to the menagerie. It seems a bit odd to me to have such a thing in your back garden. I’d forever worry that one of the animals might escape. I continued to the ‘quiet zone’ along the lake where a notice encouraged walkers to stop and become mindful of their environment. Just as I reached the sign, the Yorkshire Air Ambulance approached and hovered for a few minutes in the area. So much for silent meditation. The woodland trail meandered back through the trees and I found myself first at the house and then back at the Stables. 

It had been an interesting tour of Nostell Priory house. I’d always wanted to see a John Harrison clock and now my ambition was fulfilled. Unfortunately, that ambition has now been replaced with one to see his Hx clocks in Greenwich. As with all these houses I have mixed feelings about the opulence portrayed. These places were all about ego and status. Some of the greeters reinforced the narrative of ‘poor’ Sabine, but it was her decision to come here, and we all must make our own bed and lie on it. Although thinking about it, she probably never had to make her bed in her life.