Sandbeck
The following extract from the Leeds Mercury describes Sandbeck and it's residents,in 1900.
First through a copse you go, leaving to rightwards the fine white carriage drive sweeping upwards with most elegant curves to the noble Hall in the distance.
Though the front of Sandbeck is so very much easier to get at than Duncombe House, the Earl of Feversham's seat, ordinary tourists and sightseers rarely succeed in finding their way thither, chiefly owing to the superior attractions of Roche Abbey.
Perhaps no great house in Yorkshire is more out of the way than the Earl of Scarbrough's seat, and nothing can be seen of it at all until several sylvan labyrinths and luxuriant groves in the 350 acred park have been threaded.
Viscount Lumley was a celebrated officer who had chief command at the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, wherein the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was defeated. As Richard, first Earl of Scarbrough, he rose to a higher grade in the social scale on April 15th, 1690. Dying in 1721, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard, the second Earl, K.G., of Tickhill Castle.
The Sandbeck Estate, a valuable appendage to Roche Abbey, appears next to have fallen to the portion of a Lumley, who had been Envoy to Portugal. It was Richard, the fourth Earl, and Deputy Earl Marshall of England, who built the house, with the picturesque chapel alongside it, not many years before his death in 1782, the architect being James Paine. It forms a notable example of Grecian architecture of the Domestic order. The withdrawing-room is noted for its statuary marble "on grounds of verd-antique" a wonderful variety of parge figures supporting the cornices of its coved ceiling. Here used to hang a portrait of the fourth Earl's brother-in-law, the incorruptible and never-to-be-forgotten Yorkshire patriot, Sir George Savile, represented in a very comfortable position with a map of the Calder spread out before him; and my readers will do well to remember that it was by Sir George's exertions in and out of Parliament that the River Calder was made navigable. At the principal front there is a lawn of four acres, from which a double flight of steps give access to a magnificent saloon 60ft. in length and 22ft. in width, most prodigal in its decorations. At the east side there is a terrace 300ft. long, commanding a woodland vista to which the soaring spire of Laughton-en-le-Morthen in the western distance forms a terminus.
A herd of Fallow Deer rove at their own sweet will through the noble oaks, elms, and chestnuts, crouching at times on the shadowy lawn, drinking in the beautiful lake, or watching mimic warfare between couples of antlered bucks. Swans spend their valuable time in, as Miller with unconscious comicality putteth it, "proudly sailing along" - to nowhere in particular, and Ringdoves coo throughout the summer's day in the various plantations, helping to complete the picture of what a nobleman's park should be.
See also Earl's of Scarbrough
