It was a lovely sunny Sunday morning. I had only 2 days left on my Tyne Tees Taster mini-venture and I’d decided to make use of my National Trust card and visit Seaton Delaval Hall. The weather forecast was for sun all day and I did feel that I’d be better off walking, rather than roaming around a mansion. Unfortunately, the hall wasn’t open on Mondays and Tuesdays and so it was either today or never. The carpark didn’t look that big when I looked at the site on Google Maps and since it was a Sunday, I decided to get there as soon as possible after it opened. I arrived 5 minutes after opening time and the carpark was already more than half full. This was obviously a popular place. 

The Gardens

I’d an hour before the hall opened and so I decided to take a wander around the gardens first. By National Trust standards, the gardens didn’t seem that big. It only took half an hour to do a full tour. The Church of Our Lady was in the grounds and some of the estate's past aristocracy have found their final residency in its small graveyard. It wasn’t possible to get into the church from the garden. I headed over to the Italian Parterre with its hedges, ‘lollipop’ trees, fountains and urns. Given it was early March, the flower beds were less colourful than they could have been. There was a rather violent, nay grizzly statue of Samson slaying a Philistine. It wasn’t one I’d particularly want in my garden. 

In the South East Garden, I came across the Mirror Cube and Dark Matter Cube installations that were basically a set of large mirrors. These reflected the surrounding foliage and also the screaming kids that were chasing each other around and through them. At one point, a youngster came scuttling out of the mirror maze and nearly collided with me. One of the parents gave an unenthusiastic instruction to ‘Calm down.’ I wasn’t really sure whether it was directed at the kid or me. A ha-ha wall ran along the south of the garden. About half a kilometre away, I could see a large obelisk. The 18m high pillar is dedicated to Admiral George Delaval. On the 22nd of June 1723 the Admiral fell from a horse and was dragged, with one foot trapped in a stirrup, across the fields and died at the location marked by the obelisk. If this story was true, then I’d find it a remarkable coincidence since I noted that the obelisk was in a direct line with the main entrance on the south side of the Hall.   

It was still early for the house opening and so I treated myself to some coffee and cake at the café. This was an inspired decision since when I returned to the café after the tour of the house, I found a queue so long that I gave up and went hungry and thirsty instead.

A Bit More History

After George popped his clogs, his nephew Francis inherited the estate. From what I’ve read about him, I’d categorise him as a ‘spender’ rather than a ‘saver’.  He liked the theatrical limelight and at one point invited 4,000 guests to enjoy an exhibition of tumbling and rope-dancing in the grounds of the hall. He also hosted evenings of puppet shows, ass-racing, gurning matches and sack races for his estate workers. There was even a competition to bite off the heads of sparrows. These antics earned the family the name of ‘Gay Delavals.’ Being a fully paid up member of the RSPB, I can think of a less diplomatic description. Such jovial acts didn’t just remain in the domain of Francis, but to the family’s descendants too. They sounded like people you definitely wouldn’t want to reside in the room next to yours at a university’s hall of residence. I’d see examples of their high jinks as I took a tour of the hall. 

The Hall

I walked up the steps on the south side of the hall and stepped through the entrance. I was interested to find that all I could see was a cavernous space of brickwork. On each side, cartoon clouds were suspended halfway down the wall from the ceiling. They reminded me of something Terry Gilliam might have used in one of his Monty Python cartoons. For the first time on the tour of the house, and definitely not the last, it occurred to me to ask, ‘Why?’  

On the 3rd of January 1822, a fire raged through the Hall. Maybe it was a prank that went wrong. Who knows? The house burned for 5 hours and only the east and west wings could be saved. The central hall was gutted. The hall didn’t get a roof back on until 1861, but funds and thus renovations then ground to a halt. The redbrick I could see today was all that remained from the fire.     

 I stepped from the entrance  hall into the main hall. It was another massive space and there was a huge witches ball suspended from the ceiling. I couldn’t help muttering to myself, ‘Why?’ 

Tour

I started to walk along the one-way system through the house. It didn’t feel like a coherent system and I found people moving in both directions during the tour. The Delaval theme went off at a tangent in the first corridor where there were some ink cross-section prints of the Sycamore Tree from Hadrian’s Wall. Of course, I thought ‘Why?’  The tour covered the ground floor, an upper floor and a basement. I found examples of the Gay Delavals pranks in one bedroom where the sound of geese could be heard under the bed. I presume real geese would have been used back in the day. Another room was an upside-down room which was exactly as you might expect, with furniture hanging upside down from the roof. There was even quite a large stage in the kitchen so that the Gay Delavals could watch or maybe participate in performances. There was a games room where there was a board game as large as a dining table  (Game of Seaton Delaval Hall). I guess without a TV or YouTube, people had to make their own entertainment in those days. 

There were also items from the Hall’s collections on display. These were an eclectic mix including vases, chairs, cabinets, paintings and sculptures. There were curiosities too. I rather liked a 20th century glass Tizer bottle with a letter inside. This had been embedded by workmen into a front gate pier at Seaton Delaval Hall. Unfortunately the information board didn’t say what the letter contained. During WWII, the Hall was commandeered by the Army. It later ended up as a POW camp for German and Italian prisoners. They were housed in the East and West wings. That sounded like a pretty good deal to me. After working in the fields, they returned to the hall and some spent their spare time making little trinkets. These included a puppet known as ‘Kasparli’ and a carved wooden toy cow.     

There were two impressive cantilever spiral staircases in the house. Unfortunately it was not possible to climb to the top because the resident ‘...bats could not be disturbed.’ The information board said that there were 5 species of bat that had made their home in the Central Hall. I headed downstairs into the basement area. 

In the Housekeeper’s Room I found a massive anchor that filled most of the room. There was a NT Greeter there who answered the inevitable question that everybody asked when entering the room, but didn’t answer the one I really wanted to know, ‘Why?’ Regarding the former question, the anchor came down the chimney in pieces and then was assembled in the room. Another room had a massive ship in a bottle. I was impressed with the sizes of the beer and wine cellars. I could quite understand the Delavals being ‘gay’, if these had even been half full. 

The Servant’s Hall had a large coal table at its centre. This was exactly as it sounds: a glass topped table with coal underneath. Maybe the Delavals did this to remind the servants where they could be working, if they didn’t perform adequately in the house. The Delavals made a lot of their money from the local coal fields. This declined after the nearby New Hartley Colliery disaster in 1862 when 204 men and boys died in an accident. New safety rules made it mandatory for 2 shafts to be sunk, making it more expensive to extract the coal. 

Stables

I left the house and wandered over to the stables. These were rather grand  with stone partitions between each area for the horses. The name of the horse was written above each pen. I wondered if it had been Julius or Hercules that had caused the demise of George. The place looked comfortable enough for POWs to bunk down.     

It had been an interesting tour of Seaton Delaval Hall and its gardens. As it seems with most National Trust properties, there was a typically  bizarre backstory to the place. The gardens were pleasant enough to wander around. The house and its collections were fascinating and some of the exhibits did make me ask, ‘Why?’