Qualla: Nostell Priory

Nostell Priory: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wehha, CC BY-SA 3.0. The clock in the billiard room keeps time with wooden gears. John Harrison built it in 1717, before he was famous, before anyone called him "Longitude" Harrison, before the Royal Society and the Board of Longitude and the chronometer that finally let ships know where they were on the empty ocean. He was a young man from Foulby then, son of an estate carpenter, and he had only the materials a carpenter's son could shape. So he carved his wheels and pinions from English oak, and they have turned, more or less faithfully, for over three hundred years. Half a mile from where this clock ticks stands the cottage where Harrison was born. Nostell Priory holds both.

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Image: Wehha | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nostell Priory: What Lies Beneath

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Spellman from Lancashire, England, CC BY 2.0. The house that visitors see today is Palladian, severe, geometric, completed for the Winn family beginning in 1733. James Paine designed the main block; Robert Adam later added a wing and the elegant double staircase that climbs the east front. But the name remembers what was her...

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Image: Dave Spellman from Lancashire, England | CC BY 2.0

Nostell Priory: Sabine's Chippendales

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angelica Kauffmann, Public domain. Inside, the rooms are full of furniture made for them and never moved. Sir Rowland Winn, 5th Baronet, and his Swiss wife Sabine commissioned an extraordinary collection from Thomas Chippendale, who had been born in Otley in 1718, just down the road. Chippendale ran his workshop i...

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Image: Angelica Kauffmann | Public domain

Nostell Priory: Coal, Iron, and the Air Ambulance

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Winns prospered first from London drapery, then in the nineteenth century from coal mined beneath their own estate. Rowland Winn, 1st Baron St Oswald, discovered iron ore on family land at Scunthorpe in 1858 and helped build the Trent, Ancholme and Grimsby Railway to carry it...

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Image: The wub | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nostell Priory: Walking the Park

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wehha, CC BY-SA 3.0. The grounds extend west from the house through a sequence of artificial lakes and across the Druid's Bridge to wildflower meadows and the restored Obelisk Lodge. To the west of Middle Lake lie the Menagerie Gardens, laid out around 1760 on the site of a medieval quarry, where the...

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Image: Wehha | CC BY-SA 3.0