The medieval manor

Kirby Hall was built to the north of the medieval village of Kirby and probably incorporated elements of an earlier manor house. With easily worked soils suited to arable and pastoral farming, the area has a long history of occupation stretching back to the Romans. In 1086 there were six households recorded in the settlement, and this had grown little by the 16th century, with only ten able-bodied men recorded in 1539.

The manor passed through several hands before Humphrey Stafford of Blatherwycke (or Blatherwick), a nearby manor, bought it in 1542. Soon afterwards he styled himself as ‘of Kirby’, suggesting that Kirby had now become his principal residence.

After his death in 1548 his son, also Humphrey, inherited Kirby, and began building the house which remains today. By this time, little of the village remained, and the expansion of Kirby Hall’s gardens in the early 17th century probably swept away any surviving vestiges.

The ‘finest garden in England’

Sir Christopher Hatton (IV) also became governor of Guernsey and lived there during the 1670s. He and his family were at the governor’s castle one stormy night in 1672 when the gunpowder magazine there was struck by lightning: Hatton was blown from his bed onto the ramparts but was rescued by a black servant, James Chappell. Hatton’s three infant daughters also survived, but his mother, wife and the children’s nurse died.

Hatton was made Viscount Hatton in 1683 and after a successful political career retired to Kirby to focus on his passion: gardening. He remodelled the gardens extensively in 1685–6 and by 1700 little had been left untouched. In the remodelling Hatton took advice from the popular garden designer George London and his own brother, Charles, a plant collector, while both his second and third wives, Frances and Elizabeth, also played a role. Perhaps Hatton’s greatest pride and joy was his exotic and unusual collection of plants, some obtained from as far afield as the Pacific, East Asia and the Americas.

During Viscount Hatton’s time, the house was also updated. His second wife, Frances, oversaw extensive alterations in the 1670s as well as running the wider estate and managing accounts during her husband’s absences. Her correspondence describes rooms being plastered and panelled, new windows and chimneypieces being fitted, the creation of a chapel, and the addition of a new clock, the chime of which ‘you may hear … as far as Deene’ (1½ miles away).

Kirby in ruins

As the family withdrew from Kirby the house became home to farm servants, labourers and estate workers. The family rarely visited beyond charitable events in the grounds or as a stop on tours of their quarry in Weldon. The house fell into decay and soon became uninhabitable.

Kirby gained new admirers, however – both those interested in its fine architecture and those attracted by its romantic, semi-ruinous state. In 1899 one visitor likened Kirby to ‘a petrified poem – an epic in stone … it is impossible to look on this magnificent specimen … without feeling the keenest sorrow that it should be allowed to crumble’. Another, in 1913, imagined past lives: ‘where the courtiers trod a graceful measure grass grows … for days together no one goes to that great lonely house which once resounded with revelry and throbbed with life’.

Throughout Kirby’s decline there were glimmers of hope that the house would be preserved, and attempts were made to halt further ruination. Eventually, in 1930 the family transferred Kirby Hall to the Office of Works, making it one of the first country houses taken into state care. The estate’s former shepherd, Mr Hawkes, and his wife lived there as custodians, with their Alsatian puppies and cat.

The science of garden archaeology was pioneered at Kirby in the 1930s and the house underwent several campaigns of research, repair and conservation. Today, the house – stripped to its bare bones and ruinous in some places, in others decorated to give a sense of the house in the 19th century – allows visitors to imagine the vibrant life of its past occupants, as well as to appreciate its beauty as a romantic ruin. The gardens have been recreated to reflect their late 17th-century form.