Qualla: Nunnington Hall

Nunnington Hall: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wehha, CC BY-SA 3.0. Dr Robert Huicke had drawn the short straw. As personal physician to Elizabeth I, it fell to him to tell the Queen what no courtier dared to say: she would never bear children. The conversation must have been one of the more dangerous in Tudor England, conducted with whatever delicacy a sixteenth-century doctor could muster. Huicke kept his head, kept his post, and at one point even held the lease on a quiet estate above the River Rye in North Yorkshire. He never lived there. Stewards ran the place. But Nunnington Hall counted that man among its owners, along with kings' brothers-in-law, Jacobite conspirators, and a peacock named Bluey who in 2007 died, the National Trust solemnly recorded, under suspicious circumstances.

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Image: Wehha | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nunnington Hall: The Long Roll of Owners

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pauline E, CC BY-SA 2.0. Nunnington takes its name from a nunnery dissolved around 1200, before the building of the present hall began. William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton and brother to Henry VIII's last queen Catherine Parr, raised the oldest surviving sections of the house. He lost everything in...

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Image: Pauline E | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nunnington Hall: What Preston Built

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The Oak Hall is where Lord Preston signed his name on the architecture. Split pediments, finely carved doorcases, an enormous cartouche bearing the Graham coat of arms above the fireplace, all attributed to John Etty, the master carpenter from York. The fireplace itself is carved...

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Image: Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Nunnington Hall: A Turner Found in the Attic

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wehha, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the early 2000s, housekeepers cleaning a storage rack at Nunnington came across a small picture in oils on board. On the back, a faint inscription emerged after cleaning: Presented to me by JM Turner, 1832. J Harding. Five years of investigation by National Trust and Tate spec...

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Image: Wehha | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nunnington Hall: Cromwellian Defacement

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Panelled Bedroom still bears the marks of soldiers. Civil War-era Cromwellian troops were billeted at Nunnington, and the panelling around the window shows their work: gouges, scratches, defaced carving. The room and its small adjacent Oratory are reputed to be haunted by a p...

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Image: Keith Evans | CC BY-SA 2.0