Sledwish Hall, standing lonely and sequestered, is a place of "ghastly grey renown." Upwards of a hundred years ago the bones of an infant were found interred in a stone coffin in the field adjoining. The house, too, like most of these old mansions, is supposed to contain secret passages and rooms. Portions of the present building, more particularly the south front, date back to Plantagenet times, but the house as it now stands is an interesting specimen of Tudor architecture. It was rebuilt by John Clopton, Queen Elizabeth’s Receiver, his great work being the ceiling in the Orchard Chamber. This is divided into compartments by deep mouldings, ornamented by numerous crowned roses, fleurs-de-lis, and pomegranates. In the centre is a shield bearing his family arms, a quarterly shield, first and fourth, paly a lion rampant, and second and third a cross pattee fitchée, over all a crescent for difference. The arms are reversed through the artist having formed his mould without considering that the impression was the final result. Two other shields impressed from the same mould bear the initials E. C. (evidently for the builder’s wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Ralph Ashton of Great Lever, in Lancashire), the date 1584, and "a tun with a rose clapt on."[16] Above this shield is a rose surrounded by three crowns. At the four corners of the room are large decorative groups; two are falcons with pomegranates, the third is a swan, and the fourth a boar under an oak-tree devouring an acorn. A deep cornice running round the whole ceiling is decorated with repeated devices of the Royal lion and the Welsh dragon supporting the crowned rose, the whole evidently symbolic of Good Queen Bess. There are several other good rooms, and a large chimney at the south-west is supported outside by three double brackets.
There are several other interesting mansions in this district. At Cleatlam the old mansion of the Ewbankes still stands, gable-ended, with mullioned windows. It was sold by them in the troublous times of the great Civil War to the Somersets of Pauntley in Gloucester, and later was a seat of the Wards. Another old home of the Ewbanke family was Staindrop Hall, at the east end of the village of that name. The family arms, three chevronels interlaced and on a chief three pellets, are on one of the ceilings. Still another old house, once belonging to the same race, was Snotterton Hall, which stood about a mile to the west of Staindrop. Here the walls were embattled with crocketed pinnacles at the corners, and the windows were triple mullioned lights under square labels. Over the entrance the arms and crest of the Bainbridges, who sold the estate to the Ewbankes in 1607, were sculptured. A portion of the house which was pulled down in 1831 is preserved in the present Raby Grange.
Westholme Hall is another existing good specimen of Jacobean architecture. It consists of a main building, with two gabled wings and mullioned windows. The date 1606, and the name IOHN DOWTHET on a chimney-piece in the hall, points to its erection by the Douthwaites, who purchased the estate from the Boweses in 1603. Erected about the same period, Gainford Hall still stands at the west end of the village. It, too, has gable ends and mullioned windows, and several of the rooms are wainscotted. One of the latter has a stuccoed border of flowers and fruit. Over the door is the three-garbed chevron of the Cradocks and the inscription IOHN : CRADOCK 1600.
At Bishop Middleham a large old gable-ended house has a doorway with jambs and a pediment of carved freestone. It stands on the west side of the road leading to the church, and was originally the property of the Wards, one of whom was Master of Sidney-Sussex College at Cambridge. In 1738 it was the residence of Thomas Brunskill, whose daughter or granddaughter married Edward Watson, of Ingleby Greenhow, in Yorkshire.
Another picturesque fragment of the past is the old house now standing at the western end of Thorpe Thewles village. It is built of brick, with low rooms, and is locally stated to have been visited by Queen Anne. The tradition may possibly be a survival of one of our sovereigns’ passage through the county, but it is impossible that any crowned head can ever have rested in this old mansion. A few fields away a wing of the once great house at Blakiston still stands. It alone remains to show where the birthplace of one of our great old families once stood, and is the only remnant of the later home of the loyal house of Davison, two of whom were slain at the storming of Newcastle in 1644.
Cotham Conyers, or Cotham Stob, derives its affix name
Gainford Hall.
