A look at the history of Nunnington Hall, with Dr Emma Wells

With origins reaching back to a nunnery dissolved around 1200, and mentioned in Domesday Book, Nunnington Hall is an impressive Elizabethan manor house situated beside the River Rye on the edge of the North York Moors, near the historic market town of Helmsley.

In the 16th century, William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton and brother to Henry VIII’s final wife, Katherine Parr, built the earliest surviving west front. The house passed through several owners, including Dr Robert Huicke, physician to Parr and Elizabeth I. Major redevelopment came in the 1680s under Sir Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston, who added the elegant south-facing five-bay front with projecting wings, a broken-pedimented entrance, and a wrought-iron balcony.

During the English Civil War, Parliamentarian forces garrisoned the Hall, damaging the west wing. In 1839, William Rutson acquired the estate, which later passed to his great-niece, Margaret Rutson. She and her husband, Colonel Ronald D’Arcy Fife, commissioned architect Walter Brierley in the 1920s to restore Tudor and classical features, including the balcony and interior panelling. On Margaret’s death in 1952, the Hall, gardens, and much of its contents were bequeathed to the Trust.

The oldest section, the 16th-century Stone Hall, has served as a great hall, kitchen, and now entrance hall. It displays hunting trophies, period furniture, and Brierley’s Tudor-style fireplace. The Oak Hall, remodelled by Viscount Preston, features carved panelling, pedimented doorcases, an arcaded screen, and patterned stone floors, with a heraldic chimneypiece by York carver John Etty. The Drawing Room, once the great chamber, opens onto the garden balcony and showcases Fife-era furnishings. Preston’s bedchamber now serves as an Edwardian dining or smoking room. The Hall also holds Shrimpers at Lyme
Regis, a painting attributed to Turner, rediscovered in the attic. A unique treasure is the Carlisle Collection—sixteen miniature rooms at 1/8 their original scale, furnished with tiny period pieces and artworks—created by Mrs FM Carlisle over four decades and gifted to the Trust.

The Hall’s eight acres of organically managed gardens feature a formal walled garden, planted terraces, orchards, rose beds, and a tea and iris garden. Traditional Ryedale fruit varieties grow beneath wildflowers, with peacocks roaming freely.

Address: Nunnington, York YO62 5UY, United Kingdom

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Books by Dr Emma Wells