Gledhow Hall is an English country house in Gledhow, Leeds, West Yorkshire, rebuilt for Jeremiah Dixon in 1764, by the Yorkshire architect John Carr. It is a Grade II* listed building. [1] [2]
Gledhow Hall is an English country house in Gledhow, Leeds, West Yorkshire, rebuilt for Jeremiah Dixon in 1764, by the Yorkshire architect John Carr. It is a Grade II* listed building. [1] [2]
Gledhow Hall was built on what was monastic land, the property of Kirkstall Abbey. The abbey was the major landowner in the Allerton area in the 13th century. The abbey lands were seized by the Crown in 1539 at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. John Thwaites bought the land and built a house in the 17th century.
Jeremiah Dixon bought Gledhow Hall in 1764 [3] . He engaged John Carr, who extensively remodelled the estate for three years to 1767 [4] . J. M. W. Turner painted a watercolour view of the hall in about 1816, staying at the house while he made preparatory sketches. [4] [5] [6] .
James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale bought the estate in 1885. Kitson employed Leeds architects Chorley and Connon, for further changes.
During the First World War, the Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale offered the Hall as a VAD Hospital. His cousin, Olive Middleton, great-grandmother of Princess of Wales, worked there as auxiliary nurse.
The Barons Airedale sold Gledhow Hall after the Second World War, moving to Ufford Hall, Cambridgeshire, after Malcolm Wolryche–Whitmore who left it to his nephew Oliver Kitson, 4th Baron Airedale, on his death in 1940.
John Dixon (1726-1782) descended from William Dixon of Heaton Royds (1535-1608) [7] . He married Frances Gower, heiress of Sir Thomas Gower, 2nd Baronet, in 1752. Their only son, Jeremiah Dixon (FRS), High Sheriff of Yorkshire, remodelled Gledhow in the 1760s.
His heir John Dixon (1753-1824) was Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for West Riding, and High Sheriff of York, held estates of Gledhow and Weeting Hall. B.A. Oxford, 1776, and barrister at Lincoln's Inn from 1783 [8] [9] and joined the Society for Constitutional Information in 1783. He married Lydia Parker in 1784, heiress of Astle Hall, giving rise to the later Dixon baronets of Astle. Their son Jeremiah Dixon (1754-?) was Mayor of Leeds in 1784, married Mary Smeaton, and lived at Fell Foot [10] . Henry Dixon is an ancestor of present Marchioness of Blandford, as he married Catherine Townley Plombe (1772-1819), of the Tempest family in 1794. After the Napoleonic Wars, John Dixon spent more time at his estate in Weeting, Norfolk, eventually selling Gledhow Hall in 1817.
John Dixon (1799-1873) of Gledhow married Sophia Tatton, of Wythenshawe Hall, at Astle Hall.
George Dixon, 1st Bt Dixon of Astle, was born in 1842 at Astle Hall. See Dixon baronets, of Astle (1919).
Gledhow was sold to James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale in 1885.
By 1885, James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale, industrial magnate, founder of the Kitson Airedale locomotive foundries and notable figure in the Liberal party, [1] had purchased the hall and was living there. [11] Between 1885 and 1890, the hall was altered and extended by architects, Chorley and Connon. [1]
Albert Kitson, 2nd Baron Airedale succeeded to the title and the estate on his father's death in 1911. The Kitsons entertained several Liberal Prime Ministers and their families at Gledhow: William Gladstone and his son, [12] H. H. Asquith and his wife in 1913, [13] and in 1920, Margaret Lloyd George when she was in Leeds for a reception of women supporters of the wartime coalition. [14]
After the outbreak of the First World War, Lord Airedale offered the hall for use as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) hospital. [15] Run by the British Red Cross, it was staffed by both professional and VAD nurses. [16] The hospital opened in 1915 and his cousin Edith Cliff was its commandant (officer in charge) throughout the war. [15] She kept a scrapbook, The Great European War, Gledhow Hall Hospital, documenting life there between 1915 and 1919. [17]
The scrapbook, filled with "photographs, newscuttings, letters and ephemera" is held by Leeds Libraries as one of its most important treasures [17] The scrapbook was chosen for the UK-wide Digital War Memorial, hosted by Historypin, a user-generated archive in 2014. Community groups from local libraries, guided by an artist, worked to "find the voice" of the scrapbook and explore themes around it, visited and photographed Gledhow Hall including its faience bathroom. [18]
The two-storey house is built in stone ashlar, with chamfered quoins, cornices, a balustraded parapet, and a hipped roof in slate and lead with a tall chimney stack. The south front has two two-storey canted bay windows with three sash windows between them. The centrally-placed doorway has a Gibbs surround, a fanlight and a pediment and is accessed by stone steps. The extension by Chorley and Connon at the rear has three bays, two pairs of Ionic columns forming a loggia, and a porch in the corner with Tuscan columns, over which is an oriel window. [1]
The main entrance through the rear loggia has paired panelled doors glazed in stained glass with fruit and butterfly motifs. The entrance hall has mosaic floor and has been partition for flats. The stone cantilevered staircase has a wrought-iron scrolled balustrade and a mahogany handrail. The top-lit stair well retains eight lunette windows, each with stained glass representing foliage, flowers and fruit. On the first floor is the tiled bathroom from 1885. [1] The elaborate faience (glazed architectural terra-cotta) bathroom in Burmantofts Pottery was created for a visit from the Prince of Wales. [19] The bathroom has panelled mahogany doors and a bolection moulded fireplace. The walls are covered with moulded tiles in brown, blue and white, with a dado, moulded rail, scrolled frieze and a dentilled cornice. The ceiling is tiled in a strapwork design and has three diamond-shaped vents. The adjacent toilet is similarly decorated. [1]
Headingley is a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, approximately two miles out of the city centre, to the north west along the A660 road. Headingley is the location of the Beckett Park campus of Leeds Beckett University and Headingley Stadium.
Baron Airedale, of Gledhow in the West Riding of the County of York, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 17 July 1907 for the Liberal politician Sir James Kitson, 1st Baronet, who had previously represented Colne Valley in the House of Commons and served as Lord Mayor of Leeds. Kitson had already been created a Baronet, of Gledhow in the West Riding of the County of York, in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom 1886. Variations of the name Kitson included Kittson whose family crest incorporated a demi-unicorn. This unicorn is evident in the Airedale crest atop the arms granted to James Kitson, 1st Baron Airedale in 1907. Both the title (Barony) and Baronetcy became extinct on the death of his grandson, the fourth Baron, in 1996.
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