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Haddon Hall is an English country house on the River Wye near Bakewell, Derbyshire, a former seat of the Dukes of Rutland. It is the home of Lord Edward Manners (brother of the incumbent Duke) and his family. In form a medieval manor house, it has been described as "the most complete and most interesting house of its period". The origins of the hall are from the 11th century, with additions at various stages between the 13th and the 17th centuries, latterly in the Tudor period style.
The Vernon family acquired the Manor of Haddon by a 12th-century marriage between Sir Richard de Vernon and Alice Avenell, daughter of William Avenell II. Four centuries later, in 1563, Dorothy Vernon, the daughter and heiress of Sir George Vernon, married John Manners, the second son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland. A legend grew up in the 19th century that Dorothy and Manners eloped. The legend has been made into novels, dramatisations and other works of fiction. She nevertheless inherited the hall, and their grandson, also John Manners, inherited the Earldom in 1641 from a distant cousin. His son, another John Manners, was made 1st Duke of Rutland in 1703. In the 20th century, another John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland, made a life's work of restoring the hall.
Sir George Vernon (c. 1503 – 31 August 1565) had two daughters, Margaret and Dorothy Vernon. Dorothy married John Manners, the second son of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland in 1563.Trutt, p. 24 Sir George supposedly disapproved of the union, possibly because the Manners family were Protestants whereas the Vernons were Catholics, or possibly because the second son of an earl had uncertain financial prospects.Walford, Edward. "Tales of Our Great Families: The Heiress of Haddon Hall" . 1877, Haddon Hall Books edition 2010, accessed 10 September 2011 According to legend, Sir George forbade John Manners from courting the famously beautiful and amiable Dorothy and forbade his daughter from seeing Manners.Trutt, p. 7 Shielded by the crowd during a ball given at Haddon Hall by Sir George in 1563, Dorothy slipped away and fled through the gardens, down stone steps and over a footbridge where Manners was waiting for her, and they rode away to be married.Trutt, p. 8; Although it is known that Dorothy's older sister, Margaret, had been married for several years before Dorothy's marriage, in many versions of the legend, the ball is a pre-wedding celebration for Margaret. If indeed the elopement happened, the couple were soon reconciled with Sir George, as they inherited the estate on his death two years later.See "Haddon Hall" . Britain Express, accessed 6 September 2011; and "Haddon Hall" . Picturesque England, mspong.org, accessed 6 September 2011. The story was briefly mentioned in the personal journal of Absalom Watkin in 1817, after a visit to the hall and its caretaker William Hage, but in its full-blown form, it was first published (or first documented, if one believes it to be history rather than legend) in The King of the Peak – A Derbyshire Tale, written by Allan Cunningham in 1822 and published in the monthly London Magazine. The story was romanticised further and published in many forms thereafter. Their grandson, also John Manners of Haddon, inherited the Earldom in 1641, on the death of his distant cousin, George, the 7th Earl of Rutland, whose estates included Belvoir Castle.
That John Manners' son was John, the 9th Earl, and was made 1st Duke of Rutland in 1703. He moved to Belvoir Castle, and his heirs used Haddon Hall very little, so it lay almost in its unaltered 16th-century condition, as it had been when it passed in 1567 by marriage to the Manners family. In the 1920s, another John Manners, the 9th Duke of Rutland, realised its importance and began a lifetime of meticulous restoration, with his restoration architect Harold Brakspear. The current medieval and Tudor period hall includes small sections of the 11th-century structure, but it mostly comprises additional chambers and ranges added by the successive generations of the Vernon family. Major construction was carried out at various stages between the 13th and the 16th centuries. The banqueting hall (with ' gallery), kitchens and parlour date from 1370, and St Nicholas Chapel was completed in 1427. For generations, whitewash concealed and protected their pre-Reformation frescoes.
The 9th Duke created the walled topiary garden adjoining the stable-block cottage, with clipped heraldic devices of the boar's head and the peacock, emblematic of the Vernon and Manners families. Haddon Hall remains in the Manners family to the present day, "Haddon Hall – the Estate" . The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 6 September 2011 and is occupied by Lord Edward Manners, brother of the 11th Duke of Rutland, and Lady Edward Manners since they decided in 2016 to relocate to the hall. Family will be the first to live in Haddon Hall for nearly 200 years Derbyshire Times, 24 March 2016. Retrieved 6 March 2022
The house was Grade I listed in 1951 following the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. The estate and gardens were separately listed at Grade I in 1984 on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
In 2011 the hall's foundations were identified as needing urgent repairs to mitigate potential damage to the ornate plaster ceiling and central bay of the Long Gallery, but the owners were unable to finance repairs. Haddon Hall gets Covid recovery funding for essential repairs to Elizabethan architectural masterpiece Derbyshire Times, 24 October 2021. Retrieved 6 March 2022 In 2021 a £262,662 grant from Historic England, together with an additional £50,000 from the Historic Houses Foundation, enabled works to be started. Cash boost to restore part of Derbyshire's Haddon Hall described as 'the most perfect English house to survive from the Middle Ages' Derbyshire Times, 11 January 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2022 Haddon Hall, Derbyshire Historic Houses Foundation. Retrieved 4 March 2022 Haddon Hall subsidence repairs secure funding BBC News, 7 November 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2022 Derbyshire's Haddon Hall at risk without 'vital' repair work Derbyshire Times, 23 November 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2022 Race to rescue historic Derbyshire hall Derby Telegraph, 27 December 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2022
It was also a location used in the feature films Lady Jane (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), Jane Eyre (1996), Elizabeth (1998), Pride & Prejudice (2005), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Jane Eyre (2011), Mary Queen of Scots (2018), The King (2019), and Firebrand (2023).
Layout
The hall stands on a sloping site, and is structured around two courtyards; the upper (north-east) courtyard contains the Peverel or Eagle Tower and the Long Gallery, the lower (south-west) courtyard houses the chapel, while the Great Hall lies between the two. As was normal when the hall was built, many of the rooms can only be reached from outside or by passing through other rooms, making the house inconvenient by later standards.
In literature and the arts
The hall has figured prominently in a number of literary and stage works, including the following, all of which describe the Vernon/Manners elopement:
Filming location
The hall has been used as a location for the filming of the television series Treasure Houses of Britain (1985), The Silver Chair (1990), Jane Eyre (2006), "Thornfield Hall in Masterpiece Theatre's Jane Eyre , hookedonhouses.net, 12 January 2009 A Tudor Feast at Christmas (2013), Time Crashers (2015), and Gunpowder (2017).
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