Biddulph Old Hall: A Romantic Ruin, Still Lived In Today

[00:00:00]Hidden in the Staffordshire Moorlands, overlooking the Cheshire Plain, lies a romantic ruin that's still lived in today.

[00:00:08]Half fortress, half family home, Biddulph Old Hall has stood on this hillside for over 500 years.

[00:00:14]It survived siege and cannon fire. It's been abandoned, forgotten, and very nearly lost for good.

[00:00:21]And yet, somehow, it's always found someone willing to save it.

[00:00:25]This is a house with many stories to tell.

[00:00:27]Some have been uncovered, many more are still waiting. And one story, [music] brought to light only in the last 20 years, reads less like local history and more like something torn from a Victorian novel. Forbidden love, secrecy, and a portrait that was never meant to give the game away.

[00:00:45]The Biddulph family have been settled in this area since the earliest records began.

[00:00:50]In the late 14th century, they moved to this site from a home 2 mi away, bringing much of their old timber-framed building with them.

[00:00:57]By the 1530s, they were replacing those disorganized medieval structures >> [music] >> with something altogether grander, an ambitious stone mansion, described at the time as Mr. Biddulph's fair new house of stone.

[00:01:09]>> [music] >> Building continued for decades, but the family's devout Catholicism in an England growing steadily less tolerant of it would cost them dearly. [music] When civil war broke out, the Biddulphs, Catholic and Royalist, found themselves firmly on the losing side. And in February 1644, Parliamentarian forces laid siege to the unfinished hall, bringing up a cannon from Stafford with the name Roaring Meg.

[00:01:35]You can still see the scars in the stonework today.

[00:01:38]>> [music] >> And when the house finally fell, the family were taken prisoner, the building ransacked, and what remained was set alight.

[00:01:45]The grand new mansion was left a smoldering ruin. Only the older, more modest stone house, the one the family had once considered too humble for their ambitions, survived at all.

[00:01:56]The Biddulphs, and later their descendants the Stoners, held onto the ruin for another two centuries, patching up what little they could afford. But by 1861, the house had finally passed out of the family altogether, and sold to a Staffordshire man already famous in his own right, [music] the horticulturalist James Bateman, creator of the celebrated gardens next door at Biddulph Grange.

[00:02:19]Bateman linked the Old Hall to his gardens with a picturesque woodland walk. It would be his last significant purchase. Within a decade, his finances had collapsed, [music] and in 1871, he was forced to sell almost everything and move to London to settle his debts.

[00:02:34]But before he went, he secured a lifetime tenancy at the Old Hall for his third son, Robert, [music] who would remain there until his own death in 1922, and in doing so, would turn this ruined Elizabethan house into something it had never quite been before, an artist's refuge.

[00:02:52]Robert Bateman was a genuine talent, mentored by Edward Burne-Jones, and moving in the same circles as Simeon Solomon and Walter Crane, part of a fellowship of artists sometimes known as the Dudley Group.

[00:03:05]He exhibited at London's fashionable Grosvenor Gallery, and for a while, he was a name.

[00:03:11]Then, for reasons nobody quite understood, he largely disappeared from public view, retreating to Biddulph and converting the Old Chapel Wing into his studio.

[00:03:20]For over a century, historians simply filed him away as a footnote.

[00:03:25]The truth, when it finally surfaced, [music] turned out to be worth the wait.

[00:03:29]In the early 1870s, Robert fell for a woman named Caroline Howard, granddaughter of the fifth Earl of Carlisle, and daughter of the Dean [music] of Lichfield.

[00:03:38]An artist, however gifted, was not considered her match, and her family refused to allow the marriage.

[00:03:44]So, the story that has since been pieced together, painting by painting and record by record, suggests that they simply could not wait. [music] In 1873, the evidence points to Robert and Caroline becoming lovers regardless and having a son, Henry, who was quietly placed with relatives and never publicly claimed as their own.

[00:04:03]Three years later, to [music] shield the family from scandal, Caroline married the Reverend Charles Wilbraham, a clergyman 30 years her senior, a man who, by all accounts, gave up the life he loved out of nothing but kindness.

[00:04:16]He died in 1879.

[00:04:19]On the 18th of October, 1883, Robert and Caroline finally married at St. Mary's Church, Bryanston Square in London, a full decade after that pivotal year.

[00:04:29]Robert never stopped painting her. Three years into the marriage, in 1886, he completed a large and quietly haunting portrait, exhibited that year at the Grosvenor Gallery, simply as a portrait.

[00:04:40][music] The full story of their love and their lost son is told in The Lost Pre-Raphaelite by Nigel Daly, who is current owner of the house.

[00:04:53]The story of Robert and Caroline could be straight from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.

[00:05:00]Their marriage, once it finally began, lasted almost 40 years.

[00:05:04]Robert's life [music] eventually carried him away from Beddows, first to Bent Hall in Shropshire, then to a final home near Frome in Somerset, although he kept his [music] tenancy at the old hall until he died.

[00:05:15]Caroline died on the 30th of July, 1922.

[00:05:19]Robert followed her just 12 days later, reportedly of a broken heart.

[00:05:23]And they're buried together in a single grave in Somerset.

[00:05:28]That portrait and the rest of Robert's story might have stayed buried forever had the house not needed saving all over again.

[00:05:35]By the early years of this century, decades of neglect had left Beddows Hall on the official buildings at risk register.

[00:05:41]It was rescued by Brian Bowles, together with his late partner, Nigel Daly, and Nigel's brother, David, who took on a painstaking program of restoration for both the hall and its grounds.

[00:05:53]In the process, Nigel became fascinated by the artist who had once lived and worked there, and spent years tracking down Robert Bateman's surviving paintings, sculpture, and correspondence.

[00:06:04]What he uncovered became a book, The Lost Pre-Raphaelite, and a work that reads less like art history and more like a detective story.

[00:06:13]I recently had the privilege of touring Biddulph Old Hall myself, and I'm now the proud owner of a signed copy, and I genuinely cannot wait to read the full story in Nigel's own words. A story that stayed hidden for well over a century until two people restoring a ruin out of love chipped away [music] at it until the truth finally came free.

[00:06:32]Today, the hall remains privately owned by Brian Vowles, who carries on the work he began with Nigel.

[00:06:37]It's not open to the public in the way of a National Trust property. There's no ticket office or gift shop.

[00:06:43]Instead, there are guided tours led personally by the owner, regular events throughout the year, and the chance to hire the hall and the grounds for something a little more special.

[00:06:52]The livable part of the house has been restored with real care. The ruins, meanwhile, have been left exactly as ruins, but given a second life as something quietly beautiful.

[00:07:01]A romantic garden of white briar roses growing up through 500 years of Staffordshire history.

[00:07:08]Hidden in the Staffordshire Moorlands, overlooking the Cheshire Plain, Biddulph Old Hall is still standing, still lived in, still after everything being cared for by people who fell in love with it, much as Robert Bateman once fell in love with the woman he spent a lifetime quietly painting.

[00:07:23]And we've only scratched the surface here. There's far more to tell about this house and the family who built it, about James Bateman's genius next door at The Grange, and about Robert and Caroline's story, which deserves far more time than 9 minutes could ever give it.

[00:07:38]I fully intend to come back to Biddulph Old Hall and to give this incredible hidden piece of Staffordshire history the full attention it deserves.

[00:07:46]For now though, if you get the chance to visit, take it. Some houses simply tell you the story.

[00:07:53]This one makes you work for it.

[00:07:55]And it's all the better for it.

[00:07:58]If you want to learn more, I would highly recommend going and purchasing the book The Lost Pre-Raphaelite, The Secret Life and Loves of Robert Bateman.

[00:08:07]>> [music] >> It is available on Amazon, and you can also purchase it from the hall.

[00:08:12]Thank you for watching. And if you love Staffordshire history, please give me a follow, and check out some more of my local history videos.