The Middle Ages - and beyond . . .
Langar Hall manor house through the ages
(Go back to The Middle Ages. See also Lords of the Manor in the Middle Ages, Langar
church, St Andrew's,
Rectors of Langar, Barnstone church, St Mary's and The lost church of St Ethelburga.)
The manor house was where the lord of the manor lived. During the Middle Ages the lords of the manor were very important to the lives of the villagers.
They had to pay him rent for the land they farmed, they had to work for nothing in his fields, they had to pay to grind their corn at his mill, they had to pay him when they got married and they even had to pay him when they died.
Langar Hall in the Middle Ages
Nobody knows where the first Langar Hall was built.
Nobody knows when it was built. Nobody knows what it looked like.
And nobody knows who built it, but
when Sir Ralph de Rodes (c1180 - 1241) inherited Langar and Barnstone from his father, he got permission from the Prior of Lenton Abbey, who was responsible for St Andrew's church, to have a chapel in his hall, provided that his priest was chosen by the rector of Langar church. So we do know there was a hall here at that time - but nobody is sure where it was.
A new Langar Hall may have been built by Sir Robert de Tibetot (c1228 - c1298) when he became the new lord of the manor in 1285. Although the Tibetots had various manors in England, Langar was their main home.
However, Sir Robert's house was not where the Langar Hall is now. It stood north of Langar Hall near the River Smite and the Bingham Road. There was very likely a water mill nearby. You can see nothing in the fields there now, but who knows what lies below the ground?
The first hall may have looked like the picture above - a very large farmhouse with outbuildings and surrounded by a wall for protection. Sir Robert was a fighting man and the Governor of Nottingham Castle. As King Edward I's Lieutenant for Wales he defeated the Welsh in a battle where 4000 Welsh soldiers were killed. A fortified manor house would have been just his style.
Langar Hall in Tudor times
When Sir Robert's oldest daughter, Margaret Tibetot married Sir Roger le Scrope in about 1390, the couple rebuilt Langar Hall where it is now by the church.
The hall was visited by John Leland, King Henry VIII's historian in about 1543. He described it as built in stone and looking like a castle, though by Tudor times this was for decoration rather than defence.
Langer, a village wher hard by the chirch is a stone howse
of the Lord Scropes embatelid like a castel.
There are no pictures of the hall at this time. The picture above shows Gainsborough Old Hall which was built about the same time. It has crenellations - a pattern like castle battlements along the top of the building. Langar Hall may have looked like this.
Oh - deer!
There was a park at Langar Hall stocked with deer.
Deer parks dated from Norman times and were revived again by Henry VIII who loved hunting. Every wealthy lord felt he had to have one. However, deer parks were very expensive to create and to maintain. Fences had to be checked and repaired daily to stop the deer escaping, the deer had to be fed throughout the winter months, the young deer had to be cared for and a constant watch was kept for poachers stealing the deer.
And all this was for no profit - lords did not sell deer meat. The purpose of a deer park was to provide sport for guests to hunt the deer and for deer meat (venison) at the hall's feasts.
Margaret and Sir Roger also had the moats and fish ponds dug at this time. These moats are still there and were cleared out in 2011.
Langar Hall in the time of the Stuarts
Oh dear!
FIRE!
Sometime before 1660, Langar Hall caught fire
and was destroyed.
Soon after the fire, the heiress of Langar, Annabella Scrope married John Grubham Howe and they had the house rebuilt. They also extended and improved the deer park.
Langar Hall in the time of the Georgian kings
By the end of the 18th century, the front of the 3-storey hall had a handsome portico and pediment the full height of the house with six tall pillars in the style of a Greek or Roman temple. The work was carried out by Charlotte, the wife of 1st Viscount Howe.
However, their son, lord of the manor, the famous Admiral Lord Howe rarely visited the hall. He spent his time at sea fighting the American, Dutch, French and Spanish navies.
By 1790 the hall's parkland did not impress a visitor, John Throsby who thought that it looked like farmers' fields. When Admiral Howe died in 1799, the steward of Home Farm lived at the hall.
Victorian Langar Hall
In 1818 the hall and its estate were sold to John Wright, a wealthy banker and the owner of a major iron-producing company. Having plans for a much posher and more modern house elsewhere (Lenton Hall, Nottingham), he had no need for Langar Hall. He demolished some of it (no doubt selling good stonework such as the columns from the porch) and it stood empty for the next 20 years. He had the old deer park divided up into small hedged fields (closes) which he sold and he had most of the old trees chopped down and sold.
The house was then sold to Richard Marriott, a prosperous local farmer with a large family. When an old wooden beam caught fire and proved impossible to put out, Mr Marriott decided to demolish the house and in 1837, build the present, much smaller hall on the same site. He used the same local builder he had used to build similar houses in nearby villages. In a local directory of 1864, he is listed as a farmer of Old Hall.
Not all the old hall was lost - part of the old house was used as the kitchen.
Some time after 1864, Anne Bayley, the wife of Thomas Bayley, MP for Chesterfield, bought the hall. She planted the avenue of lime trees down to Cropwell Road.
The 20th century Langar Hall
The house passed down through the same family and in 1983, the great grand-daughter of Anne Bayley, Imogen Skirving (1937 – 2016) turned it into a hotel and restaurant which is still is to this day, run by the great great grand-daughter of Anne Bayley.
You can find out more about the lords of the manor who lived at Langar Hall by clicking on these links -
Lords of the Manor in Tudor times, Stuart times, Georgian times, Victorian times.