At Kiplin Hall you’ll encounter of stories about international adventure enjoyed by members of the four families who lived there – the Calverts, Crowes, Carpenters, and Talbots. During the current lockdown we’d like to share a glimpse through the keyhole, exploring a different room each week. This week we make our way up the grand staircase

Leaving the dining room visitors move into the centre of the house and head upstairs via the grand staircase.

This staircase is not original to the building, infact, much of the layout today has evolved over the years as fashions and needs have changed.

The Northern Echo:

We know that when Christopher Crowe bought Kiplin in 1722 the family wanted a more comfortable lifestyle and set to turning the hall into a home. In addition to putting in fashionable Georgian ceiling mouldings, dado rails and fireplaces, the Crowes transformed the flow of the hall by adding this grand central staircase. They also added a service wing joining the north tower of the hall. The Crowes continued to buy land around the estate until they owned approximately 4,500 acres.

There was once a shallow serpentine lake at Kiplin near the hall where the lawn is now flat. The curling stones at the foot of the stairs were used by the Kiplin Curling Club in the 1880s when the old lake iced over. The large lake that now exists is the product of gravel extraction that funded the restoration of the hall in 1990s.

Back to the staircase, and look up and you will see a large, arresting portrait of George Calvert, the first owner of Kiplin Hall. Calvert was interested in colonising the New World and, in the early 1620s he sent settlers to Newfoundland, Canada, where he founded a colony that he called Avalon.

The Northern Echo:

Over the winter of 1627 to 1628, he took his family to Avalon but the soil was very rocky and the climate very harsh, so he left the colonists to make the best of it and he and his family returned to England. In 1629 he gently petitioned Charles I for lands in a more congenial climate and was given what became Maryland – then Terra Mariae. George Calvert died just two months before the founding charter was granted by the King in 1632 and so it was his sons who colonised Maryland.

In 1633, they sent 150 settlers and 50 sailors to Maryland in two small wooden ships, the Ark and the Dove. They left in November and arrived in March. Travelling across the Atlantic in the winter was brave but sensible as the trade winds are more favourable during the winter and they were able to take seeds with them enabling them to plant crops when they arrived, buying food from the native American Indians for only a short time before the harvest.

The Northern Echo:

There is still a Society of the Ark and the Dove in Maryland today, made up of direct descendants of the first settlers who travelled there in 1634.

The Northern Echo:

The first-floor landing makes an ideal place to pause, taking in views of the south lawn and lake, out towards the folly. From the landing visitors can explore in more detail some intriguing individuals associated with Kiplin, beginning with the first door at the top of the stairs, leading to the Admiral's study...