Slaley Hall, Near Hexham, Northumberland.
From the 1940s to 1983
Pictures and text by Christopher Long
Slaley Hall, in Northumberland, was once a glorious sporting estate of around 3,000 acres lying south of Hexham and just north of the Derwent Reservoir on the Durham border. In the mid-1980s, to the amazement of many, it fell into the hands of developers who built houses and golf-courses across the land and gutted the house to create a vast modern hotel. This is a brief account of its happier days...
Slaley Hall was originally built by the Hunting family in the Victorian baronial style typical of sporting estates of its sort throughout Scotland and northern England. It lay amid unspoilt countryside, moorland and forests which were rich in wildlife. From the moors a river ran through Italianate gardens and then through a series of cascades to a lake fringed by rododendrons and azelias. Originally the house was much larger, built on three floors with high pointed towers and a massive pitched roof.
However, following the First World War and the slaughter of a whole generation of young men, a fundamental change in English social habits occurred. The sensationally lavish Edwardian arrangments made to cater for and entertain very large numbers of guests for shooting and fishing house-parties – often lasting for a month or more in both the autumn and Spring seasons – declined.
From the 1920s onwards house parties seldom consisted of more than about twenty guests at a time – plus their staff. Consequently about fourteen bedrooms – including batchelor rooms in the annexe – and the extensive servants' quarters above, were found to be uneconomic and the house was reduced to a more managable size.
But even then, as my cousin Christine Priestman remembered: "People came and stayed very much as we do in hotels today. They brought their cars and guns and rods and horses and some staff, but, apart from those, the household provided everything they needed for weeks or months at a time. During the day they were very businesslike about their sport and weren't slow to complain if everything was not arranged exactly as they expected. In the evening the atmosphere changed and we all gathered for drinks and dinner – and they were marvellously convivial times. But guests in those days were very demanding and I'm sure I could run a large hotel very well indeed from what I learnt when I was young."
On another occasion she told me: "I'm not sure it was very good form to enquire about people's bedroom habits. They would arrive off various trains and be met and then shown to their rooms. The men would immediately spend a lot of time arranging their dogs in the kennels and looking at each other's new cars and doing whatever men do in the gun-rooms and billiard room. But we women never said hello to each other until drinks time. Then everyone gathered in the morning room, beautifully dressed of course! After dinner they went to their rooms and the next morning they always managed to find themselves in the room allocated to them... but there was certainly a lot of movement in between. Luckily we had two or three layers of carpeting on the landings so that was all right! ... I don't think it was really done ever to discuss anything very serious, you know... You, Christopher, would have been very bored! You would have said all the wrong things and we would have had to send you away for bad behaviour! We'd have put you on the 'milk train' as we said in those days..."
Shortly after World War ll Slaley Hall was bought by Major & Mrs Jack Priestman who had sold a similar property, Shotley Park, nearby. No longer needing to live near Ashington Collieries, which they had owned prior to nationalisation of the coal industry in 1948, they concentrated on developing the excellent shooting, hunting and fishing at Slaley Hall. They acquired additonal moorland and invested heavily in forestry and improving the estate's farms.
Over the next forty years and particularly until the death of Jack Priestman, Slaley Hall was a venue for many great sportsmen of the day. Other regular visitors, included the 'hanging judge', Lord Goddard and the artist patron of the arts Col. Fred Beddington.
Latterly Jack's widow, Christine Priestman (née Long), offered an idyllic and tranquil retreat for a hand-picked number of her young cousins – the author among them. Slaley gradually ceased to be shooting and hunting venue and instead became an important informal conservation area for a wide range of flora and fauna.
Nevertheless, it was here, from 1973 onwards that I learned to train and work dogs, to shoot properly and wisely and to avoid at all costs the occasional formal grouse shoots. Instead our shooting – rough, walk-up and and duck-flighting – played an increasingly important role in preserving and conserving sustainable balances among the prolific wildlife.
© (2002) Christopher Long. Copyright, Syndication & All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
The text and graphical content of this and linked documents are the copyright of their author and or creator and site designer, Christopher Long, unless otherwise stated. No publication, reproduction or exploitation of this material may be made in any form prior to clear written agreement of terms with the author or his agents.
