Brodsworth Hall
Images of a Victorian Estate
Sometimes I use real estates for inspiration in my stories. In The House at the End of the Moor, I flat-out stole the layout and descriptions for hero Oliver Ward’s childhood home from Brodsworth Hall. Last spring I had the pleasure of visiting this gorgeous estate, and now you get to as well. Here is a visual journey of a beautiful home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
Brodsworth Hall and the accompanying pleasure gardens were built in the 1860s, home for the Thellusson family and their servants.
Even today the grounds are immaculately kept.
Walking through the gardens is like a stroll through Eden.
But just like at the fall of Eden, death is never far away. Behind all the lovely flowers and trimmed shrubbery is the family pet cemetery.
When you step in from the front door, here is the view.
Even the ceilings are a piece of art.
The owner of this magnificent home, Peter Thellusson, died in 1797 and is best known for his will in which he left the bulk of his fortune in trust for as yet unborn descendants. The protracted legal battles between family members which followed may have been one of the examples that inspired the Jarndyce v Jarndyce case in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House.
After a legal judgment in 1858 the inheritance was finally divided the between two of Peter Thellusson’s great-grandsons. Frederick, 4th Lord Rendlesham, received the estate in Suffolk and remaining Caribbean property. Charles Sabine Thellusson (1822–85) was granted the Brodsworth estate. Both used their inheritances to build their own country estates.
Charles Thellusson commissioned a London architect, Philip Wilkinson, to build the Italianate mansion between 1861 and 1863.
Charles’s third son, also called Charles, eventually inherited the estate. He and his wife redecorated rooms and introduced electricity to the house in 1913. After Charles’s death in 1919, his brother, Augustus, who lived in Kent, stayed at Brodsworth only for the winter shooting.
Can you imagine having a library like this?!
Fast forward to 1931 when Brodsworth was inherited by Charles Grant-Dalton, the son of Charles Sabine Thellusson’s daughter Constance. Charles, his wife, Sylvia, and their 12-year-old daughter, Pamela, came to live at Brodsworth.
Needless to say, by that time it needed a bit more updating…but the economy didn’t allow for it. So, they ended up just closing off a lot of the rooms.
The house fell into disrepair but the up side is that the closed off rooms were kind of like a time capsule.
After her husband’s death in 1952 Sylvia Grant-Dalton remained at the hall for over 30 years. Widowed for a second time in 1970, she lived alone at Brodsworth, with eventually only one member of staff, until her death in 1988. Can you imagine rattling around this big house all alone?
Eventually this gorgeous house was given to English Heritage and opened to the public.
As I walked the halls and entered room after room, I wondered what it would be like to live here, or even to visit as a guest back in the Victorian era, and that’s where I got the idea came to use this estate in my next book.
So now you can see for yourself why Brodsworth Hall made it into The House at the End of the Moor. I changed the location from Yorkshire to Bath, but I kept the interior the same. Want to visit it for yourself? Travel along with heroine Maggie Lee and see it with your own eyes right along with her. Here’s a blurb:
What Can a London Opera Star and an Escaped Dartmoor Prisoner Have in Common?
Opera star Maggie Lee escapes her opulent lifestyle when threatened by a powerful politician who aims to ruin her life. She runs off to the wilds of the moors to live in anonymity. All that changes the day she discovers a half-dead man near her house. Escaped convict Oliver Ward is on the run to prove his innocence, until he gets hurt and is taken in by Maggie. He discovers some jewels in her possession—the very same jewels that got him convicted. Together they hatch a plan to return the jewels, clearing Oliver’s name and hopefully maintaining Maggie’s anonymity.
