Ragdale Hall

Ragdale Hall
Ragdale Hall
General information
Type	Historic house
Town or city	Ragdale, Leicestershire
Country	England
Coordinates	52°46′32″N1°1′50″W / 52.77556°N 1.03056°W Coordinates: 52°46′32″N1°1′50″W / 52.77556°N 1.03056°W

Last updated July 26, 2019

Ragdale Hall is a large hall in the Melton district of Leicestershire, England.

Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warwickshire to the south-west, Staffordshire to the west, and Derbyshire to the north-west. The border with most of Warwickshire is Watling Street.

History

The original hall was built in 1785 in the late Georgian period by Robert Shirley, 6th Earl Ferrers,^[1] and was made of timber. It was destroyed by fire (date unknown). At that time it was known as Rakedale Hall.

Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I, George II, George III, and George IV—who reigned in continuous succession from August 1714 to June 1830. The style was revived in the late 19th century in the United States as Colonial Revival architecture and in the early 20th century in Great Britain as Neo-Georgian architecture; in both it is also called Georgian Revival architecture. In the United States the term "Georgian" is generally used to describe all buildings from the period, regardless of style; in Britain it is generally restricted to buildings that are "architectural in intention", and have stylistic characteristics that are typical of the period, though that covers a wide range.

Robert Shirley, 6th Earl Ferrers was a British nobleman.

It was re-built in redbrick and became known as Ragdale New Hall. It was built for hunting, which became fox hunting. It was purchased in 1908 from the Earl Ferrers Estate by Albert Cantrell-Hubbersty. In the early 20th century, it was owned by the Cantrell-Hubbersty family. Philip Cantrell-Hubbersty was the Master of the Quorn Hunt. He had no children and his widow sold the hall in 1955.

Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase and, if caught, the killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of unarmed followers led by a "master of foxhounds", who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.

The Quorn Hunt, usually called the Quorn, established in 1696, is one of the world's oldest fox hunting packs and claims to be the United Kingdom's most famous hunt. Its country is mostly in Leicestershire, together with some smaller areas of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

The late '50's represented the last private ownership when Mr Charles Keightley acted spontaneously in 1956 and moved onto the estate as the first stage of his purchase of Ragdale Hall. He established himself as a gentleman farmer at Ragdale Hall but it wasn't until February 1958 that the final conveyancing transferred full ownership from Phyllis Cantrell-Hubbersty to himself and his wife, Olga. The Keightley's moved their family of five children from Burton Hall. Some time after 1959 it was bought by a Leicester industrialist by the name of Benton, who operated it as a country club, with a sideline of illegal gambling. Undesirable characters, such as the Kray Twins, started showing up, which may have contributed to a hurried sale in 1963.

In 1968/1969 Ragdale Hall Country Club as purchased by Dimitrios Kaouklis (known locally as 'Jim'). He was a Greek Cypriot who had joined the Cyprus Regiment in the early part of WWII and had fought in Palestine and Later on in Italy, where he saw action at Monte Casino. At the end of the war he met and married an Italian girl. In 1949 he, his wife and new born son migrated to England. Dimitrios Kaouklis commenced renovating the hall; rebuilding the old wing and adding 13 bedrooms as well as a conference room and modern kitchen. After a near drowning the partial moat was filled in. He became financially over-extended and sold the hall in 1973.

It was purchased by Slimming Magazine's Audrey Eyton of the F-plan diet, who turned it into Ragdale Hall Health Hydro. It offers a destination spa. In June 1990 it was bought by two of the founders of Our Price Records (which itself was bought in 2004), who still own it today. In 2007 a thermal spa was opened.

The F-plan is a high fibre diet designed to induce healthy weight loss, created in the 1980s by British author Audrey Eyton, founder of Slimming Magazine, and based on the work of Denis Burkitt. The F-Plan diet book was in the top ten best selling books in America in April and May 1983. The diet works by restricting the daily intake of calories to less than 1,500 whilst consuming well-above the recommended level of dietary fibre. The fibre has a number of beneficial effects, such as making the dieter feel "full" for much longer than normal, reducing the urge to overeat, and promoting a healthy digestive system.

A destination spa is a resort centered on a spa, such as a mineral spa. Historically many such spas were developed at the location of natural hot springs or mineral springs; in the era before modern biochemical knowledge and pharmacotherapy, "taking the waters" was often believed to have great medicinal powers. Even without such mystic powers, however, the stress relief and health education of spas also often has some degree of positive effect on health. Typically over a seven-day stay, such facilities provide a comprehensive program that includes spa services, physical fitness activities, wellness education, healthy cuisine, and special interest programming.

Our Price was a chain of record stores in the United Kingdom and Ireland from 1971 until 2004.

Geography

The hall is east of the Six Hills junction of the A46 dual carriageway (Fosse Way) with the B676 in the parish of Hoby with Rotherby. It is east of the Charnwood borough boundary.

The A46 is an A road in England. It starts east of Bath, Somerset and ends in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, but it does not form a continuous route. Large portions of the old road have been lost, bypassed, or replaced by motorway development. Between Leicester and Lincoln the road follows the course of the Roman Fosse Way, but between Bath and Leicester, two cities also linked by the Fosse Way, it follows a more westerly course.

Hoby with Rotherby is a civil parish in Leicestershire, England. In the 2001 census it had a population of 594, reducing to 556 at the time of the 2011 census. It includes the villages of Hoby, Rotherby, Ragdale and Brooksby. The parish is part of Melton local government district, and within the Rutland and Melton constituency.

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Brooksby Hall is a late–16th-century manor house on 3.2 square kilometres of land between Leicester and Melton Mowbray. Situated 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) northeast of Leicester, the hall and the neighbouring church of St Michael and All Angels are the last remnants of the medieval village of Brooksby, which was founded during the period of the Danelaw in the 9th century AD. In the 15th and 16th centuries Brooksby was depopulated by enclosures carried out by the estate's owners, which turned its cultivated land into sheep pastures in order to profit from a boom in wool.

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Stapleford Park is a Grade I listed country house in Stapleford, near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, England, which is now used as a hotel. It was originally the seat of the Sherard family, later the Earls of Harborough and, from 1894, of the Gretton family, who would become the Barons Gretton.

The Cottesmore Hunt, which hunts mostly in Rutland, is one of the oldest foxhound packs in Britain. Its name comes from the village of Cottesmore where the hounds were kennelled.

Quorn Hall is a grade II listed country house in the village of Quorn, Leicestershire.

Staunton Harold Hall is a large 18th-century Grade I listed country house built by the Earls Ferrers, situated within the 2,000-acre (810 ha) Staunton Harold Park in Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, England, which includes the 17th-century Grade I listed Holy Trinity Chapel.

Baggrave Hall is an 18th-century Grade II* listed country house in the parish of Hungarton, Leicestershire, UK.

Stoughton Grange was a country house in the parish of Stoughton in Leicestershire and the family seat of the Farnham and Beaumont family. The house dated back to 15th century but was demolished in 1926, after being a successful family home for over five hundred years.

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Robert Shirley, 7th Earl Ferrers FSA, styled Viscount Tamworth from 1778 to 1787, was a British nobleman.

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References

↑ Leicestershire Villages

External links

Ragdale Hall

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[1] Leicestershire Villages