Oakwell Hall, Charlotte Bronte and the Battle of Adwalton Moor

The blue skies of the weekend had disappeared by the time we arrived at Oakwell and I was rather rueing the fact that I’d forgotten the cardinal rule of a good walker in the UK – always bring a waterproof with you.  Sure enough the odd spot of rain turned into rain driven by a north easterly wind.  Still at least I wasn’t being pursued by a bunch of Cavaliers (the Royalists) unlike the Parliamentarian (or Roundhead if you want) Lord Fairfax and his men on the 30^th of June 1643.

Oakwell Hall appears in Charlotte Bronte’s novel disguised as Fieldhead.  She describes it like this:

If Fieldhead had few other merits as a building, it might at least be termed picturesque: its irregular architecture, and the grey and mossy colouring communicated by time, gave it a just claim to this epithet. The old latticed windows, the stone porch, the walls, the roof, the chimney-stacks, were rich in crayon touches and sepia lights and shades. The trees behind were fine, bold, and spreading; the cedar on the lawn in front was grand, and the granite urns on the garden wall, the fretted arch of the gateway, were, for an artist, as the very desire of the eye.

Charlotte Bronte (2009) Shirley. London: Wordsworth Editions

Oakwell Hall

Its appearance hasn’t changed much since 1849 when Charlotte described it.  There's been a building here since the medieval period. Indeed it looks much as it must have done in the seventeenth century when fleeing Roundheads and pursuing Cavaliers hurtled down

Warren Lane

or

Bloody Lane

 as it was known after the battle.

The walk taken from Battlefield Walks in Yorkshire led us away from Oakwell towards Adwalton.  The directions indicated that we would have to walk along the side of the A650 but I hadn’t realised just how busy the road was going to be or that there was no path.  Oddly a broad green verge offers a less secure sense of safety than a nice narrow tarmac pavement.  Don't ask me why.

Most of the nobility in Yorkshire turned out for King Charles I during the English Civil War of the seventeenth century.  York was a Royalist stronghold.  The king even came to York when life in London became too difficult for him.  Two notable exceptions to the king’s cause was Lord Ferdinando Fairfax and his son Thomas.

The Royalist target was Bradford – a town without a wall.  So it wasn’t a good place to hole up for a long siege.  The Earl of Newcastle had an army of 10,000 men and he was determined that Bradford would fall.

Lord Fairfax set out to meet the Royalist army with 4,000 men.  For some reason they were delayed on their journey and by the time they met with the Royalists, Newcastle had his men drawn up on a ridge above Adwalton Moor in their battle lines.

View of Adwalton Moor from Marker Four

Once we achieved the ridge where the Earl of Newcastle lined his army up for battle I relaxed.  There were no hurtling lorries to distract me from discovering more about Yorkshire and its history.  Cavalry and infantry are now replaced by 1950s bungalows and red brick terraces. The moor itself is surrounded by roads and buildings but in 1643 the landscape was much more rural despite the open cast mining that took place nearby. 

The Royalists, despite their advantages in positioning, men and guns very nearly lost the battle. Lord Fairfax made good use of his experienced musketeers who were able to make good use of hedges for cover.  These days the only hand to hand combat takes place on Adwalton’s rugby pitch. 

For a while it looked as though the Parliamentarians were going to win despite the heavy odds against them. However an attack by Royalist pikemen led by the intriguingly named Sir Posthumus Kirton resulted in a collapse of the centre of the Parliamentarian lines.  In a short time the Roundheads were in full flight.  Sir Thomas Fairfax  (Lord Fairfax’s son) and his men were unable to retreat towards Bradford with the rest of his father’s army and fled down

Warren Lane

in the direction of Oakwell Hall.

Warren Lane where Thomas Fairfax and his men fled from Newcastle's Royalists.

There are still warrens and plenty of rabbits lining

Warren Lane

today.  There’s also an underpass going beneath the M62.  Somehow or other I’d overlooked the sound of traffic during our walk and exploration of the stone markers outlining the events of 30th June 1643. There are four stone markers but we never did locate one of them- we found dog walkers, two piebald ponies and a pond though.

The Battle of Adwalton meant that the whole of Yorkshire was ripe for the taking.  All that the Royalists had to do was to secure Hull from the Parliamentarian forces holding it.  Somehow or other it all went terribly wrong for them.  Perhaps it was the fact that the Earl of Newcastle- claiming 500 dead Roundheads ( a suspiciously round number) to his own 22 casualties eventually found himself fighting the Scots not to mention the role of Sir Thomas Fairfax in forming Parliament’s New Model Army that meant that the Royalists won this particular battle but eventually lost the war.

The Batts who lived at Oakwell Hall were Royalist sympathisers but it didn’t stop Newcastle’s men from bursting into the house to search for fleeing Parliamentarians.   Having strode down

Warren Lane

, its line slightly shifted with the advent of the railways we made our way to Oakwell Hall’s café for a well deserved sandwich followed by a stroll around the herb garden.

Temple Newsam - treachery, hens and rhododendrons

Arriving at Temple Newsam

Temple Newsam is approximately four miles north-west of Leeds.  It can be glimpsed from the M62 if you know where to look.  Like so much else in Yorkshire as well as offering a great day out for the whole family it has hidden layers of history that are well worth exploring. 

It belonged originally to the Knights Templar, a religious order who managed to irritate King Philip IV of France in part because of their power and in part because of their wealth.  He had prominent members of the order arrested, tortured and executed.  In fact, the superstition about Friday 13^th springs from these events. The knights were never vilified in England the way they were in France but the order was eventually dissolved.  Philip’s accusations rather stained their reputation.

The property moved into the Darcy family at the beginning of the sixteenth century, hence the typical Tudor brickwork.  Unfortunately, Thomas, Lord Darcy, a devout Catholic, objected to Henry VIII’s move to Protestantism along with the suppression of all the monasteries so became involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536.  He held Pontefract Castle for the king but gave it up to the rebels, claiming lack of provisions for a siege.  Actually he sympathised with the political, social and economic aims of the rebels led by Robert Aske- as did many other northern nobles.  Despite his many years of loyal service to both Henry VII and Henry VIII he was executed for his part in the rebellion. 

Henry VIII, always generous with other people’s property, handed the estate over to his niece Margaret Countess of Lennox.  And it was here, that her son Lord Darnley, the rather unpleasant syphilitic second husband of Mary Queen of Scots was born.  Once he’d weaselled his way into Mary’s affections, their cousin Queen Elizabeth I  (Henry's daughter) seized the property once more.  Lord Darnley’s violent death in 1567 helped to seal Mary Queen of Scots’ fate.  It was never satisfactorily explained how the gunpowder that caused an explosion at Kirk o’ Field where he was staying came to be there or how his body was found in the garden along with that of his groom both of them clearly killed by some other means.

After that brush with history things settled down for Temple Newsam, in so far as English history is ever settled.  Temple Newsam was purchased by the Ingram family who remodelled the house so that by 1628 it looked much as you see it now.  One generation lost money in the South Sea Bubble.  Another generation summoned Capability Brown to landscape the grounds. 

In time it was purchased by Leeds Corporation, hence its ownership by Leeds City Council today.  During World War Two, Leeds City Art Gallery sent its paintings here and by 1948 with the return of more than a 100 family pictures to the house it was well on the way to being a museum of fine and decorative art.

Today there are 1500 acres to explore as well as the farm which is home to some chunky and rather endearing pigs, sheep, goats, ducks, hens and turkeys as well as three donkeys.  There are swings, slides and seesaws, there are oceans of green rolling space. In spring the rhododendrons are spectacular and there’s always something to admire in the kitchen gardens and green houses – there’s not much in the way of treachery though!



An inhabitant of The Home Farm courtyard.