History of Eggleston Hall

In the Domesday Book of 1086, there is an entry for the village of Eghiston (the homestead of Eghis) which over the course of time was altered to Egglestone. This was how the village was known in the Great Rolls of 1320. Further changes meant that in the Survey of the Palatinate of Durham of 1345-82, the village name was entered as Egliston and by 1539, in the Vaslor Ecclesiasticus, it had reverted to Eglestone.

In 1552 the manor of Egglestone belonged to Charles, the last of the Earls of Westmoreland. He was implicated in the Rising of the North against Elizabeth 1 in 1569. Found guilty of high treason, his estates were forfeited and the Earl fled to Flanders, dying in exile in 1602. In 1571, the manor of Egglestone was demised by the Crown to Ralph Bares. The manor passed through several owners before being sold by John Child of the Minor Temple in London to Tobias Ewbank of Staindrop in the early part of the 17th century. It then passed to the Sanderson family.

There has been a house on the site since the 1600's. The gardens were well known in the late seventeenth century when the Sanderson family owned the property. Ownership passed to the Hutchinsons in the early eighteenth century and William Hutchinson enlarged the house in 1816. It was designed in the Greek revival style by the architect, Ignatius Bonomi.

Internally there are fine plaster cornices and an unusually fine oak staircase in the main hall. At the same time the Coach House was built and the old Parish Church which stands in the grounds was altered in keeping with the style of the new house. The bulk of the funds for the new construction were raised from the profits of the local lead mining industry as the Hutchinson family had developed a very profitable lead smelting mill just outside the village of Egglestone.

The house is open by prior appointment only to interested groups. Please e-mail Sir William Gray or write to Eggleston Hall for details.

The old village church within the grounds was returned to the estate by the Church Commissioners in the early 1990's and the building has been stabilised. It was originally a Chapel of Ease and there was a chapel on the site prior to 1539. It was enlarged and refaced by William Hutchinson when the house was altered in the 19th century. The chapel was replaced by a new church in the village in 1869 and it would appear that the roof was removed at that time. A weathervane is built into the wall above the entrance to the nave. The churchyard has recently been restored from the field of nettles and ivy which had taken over many of the headstones. Mature trees grow from within the stark remains of the church and original memorial tablets can still be seen inside the church. In the old graveyard, beautifully engraved headstones can be seen dating from the early 18th century. Amongst the headstones can be found the graves of family dogs and even a parrot!