Hamsterley Hall is an 18th-century

English country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

at Hamsterley, Rowlands Gill,

County Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly �About North East E ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. It is a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

. The estate at Hamsterley was given, in 1762, by Sir John Swinburne Bt to his younger brother

Henry Swinburne Henry Swinburne (1743–1803) was an English travel writer. Life He was born at Bristol on 8 July 1743, into a Catholic family, and was educated at Scorton school, near Catterick, Yorkshire. He was then sent to the monastic seminary of La Ce ...

. In 1769, Henry carried out substantial alterations to the then existing house to create the present two-story, four-bayed

castellated A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at interva ...

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

-style mansion. Swinburne died in 1803 and in 1806 the property was sold to Anthony Surtees. His son

Robert Smith Surtees Robert Smith Surtees (17 May 180516 March 1864) was an English editor, novelist and sporting writer, widely known as R. S. Surtees. He was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, a member of an old County Durham family. He is reme ...

, a novelist, acquired the estate in 1838. He was

High Sheriff of Durham This is a list of the High Sheriffs of County Durham, England. In most counties the High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. In the Palatinate of Durham the officeholder was appointed by and was accountable to the Bishop of D ...

in 1856. He died in 1864, leaving his estate to his daughter Eleanor, who married John Gage Prendergast Vereker, 5th Viscount Gort in 1885. Their first son

John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, (10 July 1886 – 31 March 1946) was a senior British Army officer. As a young officer during the First World War, he was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his actio ...

VC was succeeded in 1946 by his brother Standish Vereker, 7th Viscount MC who lived at Hamsterley until his death in 1975.

References

Newcastle University:SINE, photographs and English Heritage description of listed building
* ''A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland Sir Bernard Burke 4thEd, Pt2(1863) p1460 Surtees of Hamsterley. Google Books Grade II* listed buildings in County Durham Country houses in County Durham History of County Durham