Inspiration

A little bit more history

Posted on by Lisa Homer

The Collins Family

In 1896 the Collins family took up residence at Grassfield House. The head of the household, Major Collins was a Royal surgeon, and met his wife, Olympie Amelie, whilst travelling to Mauritius with the Army. Their seven children were all adults by the time they moved to Grassfield, we are not entirely sure which children lived here in permanent residence, but we know that if they didn’t all live here they were here often, as their second daughter Amy was a keen photographer and took many photographs of her family with the Yorke family socializing together as they were known to be good friends.

Frank the eldest of the seven children was a headmaster at a school in Dulwich. William and James were both in the army  along with Earnest Collins who would become Major E R Collins, commander of East Lancashire Regimental Depot, and later returned to Pateley Bridge to become mayor! James a solicitor in Kensington was married to Dolly, and you can see them pictured together in many of the photographs. Henry, the youngest child born in 1877,  was also a solicitor in Surrey until, like his brothers,  he joined the army in 1914.  Louisa Amelie was the first daughter and sadly died in 1916 after they moved from Grassfield. Amy,  the 2nd daughter was not found in many photographs as she was behind the lens. Her photographs are proudly displayed all around Pateley Bridge and here at Grassfield Hall. I think she would be extremely impressed to know that people valued her work over 100 years later.

Like the Hutchinson family, we felt that the Collin’s were a huge part of the history here at Grassfield, and so have their photographs proudly displayed and have even named several rooms after them.

After the Collins family moved out, the Yorke’s sold Grassfield Hall in 1925 when the Bewerley Estate was broken down for death duties. We are lucky to have found and purchased the sale brochure from when the of the Bewerley Estates were sold.

The history of Grassfield Hall

Posted on by Lisa Homer

The Hutchinson Family

Grassfield house as it was known in 1810, was built by entrepreneur Teasdale Hanley Hutchinson, who, while the house was being constructed, lived across the river at Harefield Hall. The Hutchinson family leased and managed local lead mines in the area, and previously  had been involved with lead mining in Alston, where one of their mines was said to be called ‘’The Grassfield Mine’. Teesdale started construction of the house in 1801 and built it to stand proud on the edge of Pateley Bridge with spectacular scenery surrounding it.

Teasdale lived in the house with his wife Elizabeth, and their first son Hanley was born at Grassfield House in 1811. Teesdale and Elizabeth lived in the house until they passed away. Elizabeth died in 1837 at the age of 61, and Teasdale lived until the age of 77.  After this in 1845 the house  passed to their firstborn son Hanley. The 1851 census tells us that living at the house at this time was lead merchant Hanley Hutchinson, his wife Charlotte, their two sons Teasdale aged two and Charles age 2 months,  plus four servants

In 1883 after his wife had passed away, Hanley moved out of the house to Whitfield Lodge in Ripon, as he said the house was too big and lonely for him! He spent the remaining few years of his life in Ripon. It is at this time that the Grassfield Estate was sold to John Yorke of the Bewerley Estate.

In 1888 John Hawkridge Metcalfe and his wife Adeline move in as tenants.

1895 the first Pateley Bridge Agricultural Show was held on the Grassfield Estate. After this first year it was moved to its current location on what was the Bewerley Estate, now the Pateley Bridge Show ground.

Where will you go on holiday this year?

Posted on by Lisa Homer
Staycations at Grassfield Hall
Around 18 months ago we launched our first house rental here at Grassfield Hall,  Renting the entire house and gardens to one group of people for a family get together.  It worked like a dream, in fact it seemed like the house was made for this purpose, people coming together to celebrate their Special occasion and filling the house with fun and laughter.
During the past year we have mixed our house rentals with bed and breakfast nights and small weddings which has worked perfectly.
The recent pandemic has changed how every business operates and also how we all live our lives, so going forward for the next few months we will be focusing on our house rentals. Getting families together after they have been apart for so many months feels like a perfect way to use the house.
We love helping our guests plan their perfect stay here at Grassfield, and to assist you we have written a guide, including information about private dining experiences in the house with some of the most talented chefs In in the region. We can also recommend suppliers to make your stay memorable, what about having a murder mystery night, or a magician to entertain you after dinner or splash the weekend away in a hot tub.
Locally the area has so much to offer, waking with llamas, trekking the Nidderdale Way or having an adventure at How Steam Gorge, one thing is for sure, you will have a fabulous time.
We have some incredible special offers for rentals which are more than 2 nights long, our brochure has all the information.

 

 

Your Wedding at Grassfield Hall

Posted on by Lisa Homer
Small is beautiful – Isn’t that what they say?
We agree and love hosting our intimate Weddings at Grassfield Hall
So many couples are now thinking about having a small wedding. The idea of an intimate ceremony with your loved ones with you as you say your vows is incredibly special.  At Grassfield Hall we help you plan every detail so that on the day you can just relax and enjoy every second knowing you are in the safest of hands.
We can offer a one or two night wedding weekend, hosting 38 daytime guests, with our team coordinating the day. 16 of your guests will stay with us and have a champagne breakfast to start the celebrations. Your beauty team will pamper your bridal party before the ceremony and reception begins. Extra evening guests may join you after the wedding breakfast and you can dance the night away with our fabulous resident DJ.
Our brochure has details of prices and what is included.
It’s so important to us that your wedding is unique and it’s exactly the way that you dreamed it would be.

the details are so important at Grassfield Hall

Posted on by Lisa Homer
The minute we walked into Grassfield Hall we fell in love with it!
It has now been ten years since that day and after spending a decade restoring the house we can think of nothing more wonderful than sharing it with you.
For so long the house looked so sad and unloved and now It’s just wonderful to see people in the house having fun, and using it as it should be used. All the hard work is made worthwhile when we hear the appreciation that people have for the decor, they understand that every detail has been added with love and a great deal of thought. Everything in the house is a reflection of how we feel about it. The small details make such a huge difference and the finishing touches make a house into a home.

Grassfield Hall in the 1900’s

Posted on by Lisa Homer

From Chapel to Military base to Country Hotel, Grassfield Hall has had many lives!

In 1928 Father Hammond moved into Grassfield House. Previous, he used to pass through the town on his push bike as he cycled to Scar every Sunday after taking the train from Harrogate to say Mass for the Dale’s people. While his church, The Lady Immaculate was being built, he needed a base in the area, so he moved in and converted a room as a place to worship in Grassfield House, and he lived in a room upstairs. The new church was completed in 1934.

From 1939 until 1945 during the war, the Grassfield estate was used by the Military. The 69th Field Artillery was based at Grassfield  to protect the reservoir and used the house for document storage.

In 1971 after being split into apartments, Fred and Gladys Bailey lived in the house with Gladys’s  sister and husband, and it is here that you can see them at the front door as they celebrated their Golden wedding anniversary.

 

Grassfield House was turned into a business in 1975 when it was bought by the Machellan family, who ran it successfully as a Bed and Breakfast. Then after ill health, they sold the house and business to the Garforth family in 1988, who changed its use to a hotel Country House Hotel. It was the hub of the local community for many years. However, after a run of bad luck it finally closed its doors in 2001.

 

The house after being unoccupied for a while then being a little run down, passed to two different owners with plans to renovate it. However, the plans were never to succeed, and the house was repossessed by the bank in 2009. Year after year the house fell into further disrepair.

After standing empty for nine years the Hall had suffered with wet and dry rot, it needed part of the roof replacing and needed to be underpinned. All the original features had now been stripped out by looters, staircases gone and some of the upstairs floorboards were no longer in place. Most of the windows and doors were missing and boarded up. Squatters had taken up residence, and the house was now just an empty shell. The once landscaped gardens had become completely overgrown and the Hall could no longer be seen from the roadside. The derelict building no longer stood proud as it once had. That is where our story begins!

 

Re thinking your Wedding plans?

Posted on by Lisa Homer

Are you Re-thinking your wedding plans?
At Grassfield Hall we specialise in small and intimate weddings, seating 38 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. Get in touch and request to see our brochure.

 

Photography Jessica J Photography
Floristry & Design Forge_Events
Dress The Aisle
Jewellery Alice Clarke Jewellery
Wedding Planner Lucy Wright Events

 

Grassfield Guests…We have missed you!

Posted on by Lisa Homer

We have missed our guests over during lockdown & we can’t wait to welcome them back!

We now have procedures in place to ensure that the house is Covid Secure, and are taking our role within the tourism industry seriously.
The bed and breakfast will not be open for the next few months, however we are taking new bookings for our self catering house rental, sleeping 16 guests with prices as low as £55 per person per night, plus we continue to host small weddings. Please email for our brochures – info@grassfield-Hall.co.uk

 

Whatever next for Grassfield Hall

Posted on by Lisa Homer

 

It was the year that we had been working towards for several years

It certainly turned out an eventful final year to our build… I learned many new skills, tested my patience to its limits, I was amazed by people both in a positive and a negative way, but overall I am just so proud of the end result.

It’s been almost a year since I last posted on my blog, forgive me, I’ve been a bit busy! The pressure was definitely on in 2017, as a year before we had made a decision to book two weddings in for the summer of 2017. The renovation workload was huge, but we believed it was achievable, and achieve it we did! Only just though! The commitment from the team to get us wedding ready was incredible and I was amazed by how they were prepared to work quite literally around the clock to complete the renovations. I also had many friends who turned up to see how we were doing and didn’t go home for days… that’s something I won’t forget. It was possibly the hardest experience I’ve had, the pressure of knowing that letting the bride and groom down was just not an option, yet also being realistic about what was achievable in the time available, and not wanting to push the team of people we had working here too far, but we did it and we gave our couples an incredible day. The icing on the cake was that most of the guests were locals so it was a chance for us to showcase our beautiful Grassfield Hall, and the reaction was far better than I had hoped.
After the weddings we were very busy in the bed and breakfast, and kept that way until October. It felt like being on a very fast rollercoaster and by the time November arrived I was glad to get off. Having now had a few more chilled out months, I can reflect on the chaos, stress and excitement and although I’m so glad that 2017 is behind us I’m also very pleased we pushed ourselves to get the Hall up and running. There is only so long you can live on a building site and still have a smile on your face!

As well as all the building work we were also selected for the final three in visit England’s best B&B plus received a 9/10 score by the telegraph travel.
So now we move forward and January has been great for reassessing what we now want to do with the house, some ideas we have had will be a success I’m sure but other ideas like big marquee weddings simply won’t. life will be different now, no longer running a building site, but runing a business instead, exciting times ahead, and it seems fate that we celebrate our 20th wedding Anniversary this year, on the year that our dream for Grassfield Hall comes to fruition.

 

Award season at Grassfield Hall

Posted on by Lisa Homer

We entered the White Rose Awards

To our delight we made it to the finals, where we were lucky enough to be awarded the highly commended award in our category. After this Welcome to Yorkshire entered us into the Visit England awards and to our amazement we again got through to the finals. Off we went to London last Sunday to the awards at the beautiful Palm Court, what an increadable experience, with the fabulously funny Sue Perkins presenting. The winners really did deserve to win the award, and although we were disappointed we also realise that we are just at the start of our journey and to get to the finals of a national competition before we have even finished the re build of Grassfield Hall is simply amazing for us, and we were very proud to be there. It’s given us a taste of what the future can hold if we keep working hard!