Memorials of Old Lincolnshire

by Unknown

It is not our purpose here, however, to trace the early history of the place. It will be sufficient to say that as early as 1194 John Pigot asserted against the Abbot his right to hold not only the manor, but the advowson of the rectory, the patronage of which has remained to his successors down to the present day. Another Sir John Pigot in 1275 claimed to have not only right of free chase and warren in his woods at Doddington, but also his own gallows there—a right which he pleaded that his ancestors had exercised for a hundred years past. The last of the family, yet another Sir John Pigot, was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1433, and died without surviving issue in 1450. His widow not only retained possession of the estate, in spite of two remarriages, but contrived to sell the reversion of it after her death to her neighbour, Sir Thomas Burgh, Knt.

Sir Thomas Burgh, who was summoned to Parliament in 1487, and in the same year was created K.G., became the owner of Doddington in 1473, and the inheritance of it continued in his family for some 110 years. Their chief Lincolnshire manor place, however, was at the Old Hall, Gainsborough, and Doddington was an outlying possession with which they had little personal connection. We cannot wonder, therefore, that when Thomas, 5th Baron Burgh, also K.G., fell into difficulties, chiefly owing to the burdens entailed by his honourable offices as Governor of Brill and Lord Deputy of Ireland under the thrifty Queen Elizabeth, Doddington was the first of his estates sold to meet his expenses.

This was in 1586, and the purchaser was John Savile, Esq., son of Sir Robert Savile, of Howley, co. York. At this time he was M.P. for Lincoln, and doubtless found it convenient to have a residence in the neighbourhood; and as John Savile of Doddington he held the office of High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1590. Later he became “the famous Sir John Savile,” who was several times Knight of the Shire for Yorkshire, and was created Lord Savile of Pontefract in 1628. His son Thomas, born at Doddington in 1590, became Comptroller and Treasurer of the Household to Charles I., and was created Earl of Sussex in 1644.

In 1593 Mr. Savile, having ceased to represent Lincoln, sold his Doddington estate. It was bought by Thomas Tailor, gent., who for many years had been Registrar to the Bishops of Lincoln, and whose neat handwriting may still be seen in the diocesan registers, dating from at least 1570. His residence hitherto had been in the parish of St. Martin, Lincoln, in which his two wives and others of his family were buried. The first of these wives was a daughter of Sir William Hansard, of South Kelsey, Knt.; the second a daughter of Martin Hollingworth, Mayor of Lincoln in 1560. Evidently the office of Episcopal Registrar was a lucrative one, for it appears by the inquisition taken after his death that, besides Doddington, he had purchased five other Lincolnshire manors, with messuages and lands in other parishes to the extent of nearly 10,000 acres.

Whatever the ancient manor-house at Doddington may have been like—and it had at least served as a residence for one of Mr. Savile’s position—we must suppose that it had become out of date, and not suited for the requirements of a man of Thomas Tailor’s wealth. And if we wish to see what sort of mansion was considered suitable, when Elizabeth was Queen, as the residence of a man of means, wishing to retire and set up as a country gentleman, we may find one in the present Hall, which remains in all essentials in its original state as it was built by him between the years 1593, when he purchased the estate, and 1607, when he died. Probably the date 1600 on a leaden plate at the top of the central cupola, marks the year of its completion.

Its site, closely adjoining the parish church, was doubtless that of the former manor-house. The principal entrance is on the east, through a three-gabled gate-house, two storeys high, standing back from the public road. Coped walls of brick connect this gate-house with the Hall itself, and enclose a quadrangle, which appears in 1700 as an open grassy court, but is now well-nigh filled by four stately cedars of Lebanon. A similarly walled quadrangle on the west is laid out as a flower garden. Between these courts is placed the house itself, facing east and west, and rising in three storeys to the height of 52 feet, surmounted by a plain parapet and flat roof of lead, from which rise three octagonal turrets of brick, capped with leaden cupolas. Roughly speaking, its ground plan is of that E-shape, fancifully said to represent the initial letter of the great Queen’s name, with projecting wings at either end, and a smaller projection in the centre, the lowest storey of which forms an entrance porch on either side. Its extreme length from north to south is 160 feet, and its greatest breadth at the wings is 75 feet. The house, as well as the gate-house and connecting walls, is built of brick, with stone groins, string-courses and coping, and has large square, stone-mullioned windows. Many of the small-sized bricks, made in fields close by, and of unsifted clay, are over-burnt and black; these are built in alternately with the others, or in parts are arranged so as to form a diamond pattern.

We may be permitted here to quote the description of the house as given by such an authority on the architecture of the period as Mr. Gotch. “Twelve years later,” he says, than Barlborough in Derbyshire, “we get Doddington in Lincolnshire (1595), a plan which reverts to the type of Montacute. It has the usual characteristics of the simplest kind—wings one room thick—the entrance at the end of the hall, leading on the left to the buttery, pantry, and kitchens; the parlour at the head of the hall, and the principal staircase adjacent. Here, however, as at Montacute, the hall is only one storey in height; it has a room above it, the great chamber, and on the top floor the gallery extends over the whole central part from wing to wing.

“There is an entrance court in front of the house, enclosed by a wall. It is approached through one of the quaint gate-houses of the time, which were a reminiscence of a more turbulent state of society, when it was necessary for all who went to the house to do so under the porter’s eye, but which in the calmer times of Elizabeth were occupied by some of the numerous functionaries who ministered to the pleasures of the rich. The detail at Doddington is of the plainest, the only attempt at richness being round the front door. The windows are of reasonable size, the strings are narrow, and are all of the same quasi-classic profile. The parapet is perfectly plain, and the roof is without gables, the sky-line being broken, as at Barlborough, with turrets, formed by carrying up the porch and the two projections in the internal angles of the front. The house is an example of a plain and businesslike type, which may be accounted for by the fact that it was built for a business man, one Thomas Tailor, Registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln.”[131]

Doddington Hall.