NEWBY HALL

Explore the impressive Statue Gallery showcasing Roman statuary, the Adventure Gardens offering family-friendly fun, and the renowned UK National Collection of Cornus, providing a stunning display of blooms.

Newby Hall

It is easy to see why Newby Hall, near Ripon, has been described as being the ‘jewel of the north’. Newby’s recent history begins in the 1690s, when local MP Sir Edward Blackett bought the manor and promptly built a new mansion on the site – so it is said, with the help of Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St Paul’s Cathedral.

In 1747, the house passed to the Weddell family. Local MP William Weddell inherited a sizeable portion of money, and used it to enlarge the house in the 1760s with help from architects John Carr and Robert Adam, whose work is evident at Newby today. After Weddell died, the estate passed to Thomas Robinson, sometime Lord Grantham, whose daughter Lady Mary Robinson inherited Newby on his death in 1859. If this sounds like a plot from a Sunday night television drama, it almost is. Lady Mary’s granddaughter, Mary Compton, inherited Newby in 1915, and the house remains in the hands of the Compton family today.

When in 1940 the Coats Mission was devised to evacuate the royal family from London in the event of a German invasion, Newby was chosen as one of the houses to which they’d go. This never happened, and as a result, Newby remained safe during the war, unperturbed by visiting troops, and untouched by stray bombs. The house was opened to the public in 1948 by current owner Richard Compton’s grandfather Major Edward Compton, a fanatical gardener who described his inheritance of Newby as ‘a lovely picture with no frame’ – a house without a garden. He put this right, and now the garden includes a popular model railway, on which visitors can ride.