Georgian grandeur

The enduring appeal of Georgian architecture in all its guises is highlighted by the recent launch onto the market of three important historic houses

- Penny Churchill

DESCRIBED by selling agent Ed Stoyle of Savills in York (01904 617821) as ‘one of the most magnificent country houses in all of Yorkshire’, Grade II-listed Arthington Hall stands in 22 acres of gardens, grounds and ancient woodland on the banks of the River Wharfe, some nine miles from Harrogate and eight miles from Leeds, looking west over the valley to the arches of the Arthington Viaduct, with Ilkley Moor in the distance. Mr Stoyle quotes a guide price of £7.5 million for the hall, the Classical façade of which conceals a modern family home of rare distinction, following a root-and-branch restoration carried out by the current owners in 2014.

Originally built in the mid-15th century, the hall stands on the site of a Cluniac nunnery endowed by the Arthington family in the late 1200s and granted by Henry VIII to Archbishop Cranmer in 1543, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Following a fire in the late 1700s, the house was substantially remodelled for Henry Arthington by Yorkshire architect John Carr, who at that time was much in favour in Wharfedale, designing nearby Harewood House (jointly with Robert Adam) between 1759 and 1771, Denton Hall, near Ilkley, in 1778 and Farnley Hall, near Otley, in the 1780s.

This was a period when many rich Leeds merchants decided to swap the trading floor for the green and pleasant life of a country landowner, a condition that Carr himself aspired to and later achieved. Born the son of a stonemason in 1723, he went on to become Yorkshire’s most influential architect, was twice Lord Mayor of York and the owner of his own country estate at Askham Richard, near York.