Qualla: Ribston Hall

Ribston Hall: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thedavegray, CC0. In 1217, Robert de Ros granted the estate at Ribston to the Knights Templar. The transfer was not unusual for the time. The Templars were a military religious order, accumulating land across Christendom to fund their operations in the Holy Land. They built a preceptory on the bend of the River Nidd, ran sheep, banked money, and trained their European recruits for the long ride east. By the early fourteenth century the Templars were dissolved across Europe under pressure from the King of France, their leaders burned, their property confiscated. Ribston passed to the Knights Hospitaller, the Templars' rival order, who held it until Henry VIII dissolved them too. The estate has rotated through warrior monks, dukes, royalist baronets, and modern private owners for eight hundred unbroken years.

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Image: Thedavegray | CC0

Ribston Hall: From Templars to Tudors

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia, Public domain. After the Hospitallers were dissolved in 1540, the Crown took back the estate. Henry VIII granted it to Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, his close friend and the husband of his sister Mary. Suffolk did not keep it long. He sold Ribston to Henry Goodricke in 1542. The Goodric...

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Image: Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Ribston Hall: A Royalist Escapes the Tower

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sir John Goodricke, 1st Baronet, chose the wrong side in the English Civil War. He fought for King Charles. After the Royalist defeat he was fined, then imprisoned in the Tower of London. From the Tower, he escaped to France, an unusual feat for a baronet in his middle years. He ...

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Image: Gordon Hatton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ribston Hall: St Andrew's Chapel

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Attached to the south-east of the hall is St Andrew's Chapel, separately grade II* listed, built in 1444 and altered in 1700 and again around 1850. The construction is limestone and sandstone with sandstone quoins and a flat roof. A continuous nave and chancel run the length of t...

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Image: Gordon Hatton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ribston Hall: Stables and Sphinxes

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Billinger, CC BY-SA 2.0. The mid-eighteenth-century stable block, also grade II* listed, encloses a courtyard in red brick with stone dressings and a hipped Westmorland slate roof. There are two storeys, nine bays across the main range, with the middle three projecting under a triangular pediment that ho...

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Image: Jonathan Billinger | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ribston Hall: Still Private

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ribston Hall remains in private hands today. Unlike so many other grand Yorkshire estates that passed to the National Trust or English Heritage during the twentieth century, Ribston has stayed inside its private ownership. The fifteen-bay entrance front looks out across the Nidd ...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0