The Thoresby Society

509th Excursion

Sunday July 8th 2018

Visit to Gawthorpe Hall, Padiham, Lancashire

Time: 9.15 Coach pickup point in Leeds

9.30 Alwoodley Park and Ride

Cost: £14 to include entrance and coach ( National Trust Member £10)

Room guides are available and very knowledgeable

Gawthorpe Hall is a stunning Elizabethan/Jacobean Country House on the Banks of the River Calder. It originated as a Pele Tower built by the Shuttleworths in the 14th C as a defence against the Scots and was remodelled in 1600-5. Colonel Richard Shuttleworth, who was a leading Parliamentarian in the English Civil, lived here for 60 years. Janet Shuttleowrth inherited in 1816 aged 4 months and in 1842 married Sir James Kay of Rochdale who added the Shuttleworth name to his. They commissioned Sir Charles Barry to remodel the House…he designed the House of Parliament and Highcere (tv’s Downtown Abbey) to which it bears more than a passing resemblance. Regular visitors were Mrs Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte both of whom corresponded with the Kay-Shuttleworths.

Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth was a physician and social reformer. He wrote the Moral and Physical condition of the Working classes in England in 1844 and was involved in setting up the first teacher training college in London. His son, Ughtred, served in Gladstone’s Government .Two of his grandsons were killed in the First World War and a third, his successor, was killed in the Battle of Britain. Another lost a leg and his other was left paralysed There will be an exhibition about the Kay Shuttleworth family’s war time connections and tragedies.

There is an important collection of textiles, the finest outside the V and A, amassed by Rachel Kay Shuttlewoth, the last resident of Gawthorpe Hall ,who died in 1967 and the family gifted the House to the National trust in 1970.

Apart from the beautiful interior there are formally laid out gardens and woodland walks. You are advised to bring a packed lunch as the café is small