A MILE or so from the cars madly gyrating around Scotch Corner roundabout is an oasis of countryside quiet where, many centuries ago, the king bred some of the first thoroughbred racehorses.
On Saturday, the 200-year-old stables at Sedbury Hall is open to the public for an exhibition of art by an extraordinary Darlington painter, William Rees, which also gives visitors a chance to soak up a little local history.
William, whose 90th birthday was yesterday, grew up in the Albert Hill area of Darlington surrounded by the heavy industry of the ironworking community. “When the armistice at the end of the Second World War was declared, no one could sleep that night because they had got so used to the thumping of the steam hammers which had suddenly stopped.”
The Echo told recently how Bill had escaped Darlington Forge and had worked his way around the world as an artist – he has sculptures in Botany Bay in Australia and in the Sultan of Brunei’s palace – and is holding his first solo exhibition for decades at Sedbury for a week from next Saturday.
There has been a settlement at Sedbury since time immemorial. Its name is the Yorkshire pronunciation of south Durham’s Sadberge as both mean “flat-topped hill”, and the Scotch Corner roundabout and the metal skeletons of the forthcoming designer village are on a raised, flat plain with views for miles around.
Sedbury Hall’s lodgehouse is on the westbound carriageway of the A66 and from there a long lane winds through trees down the side of Holmedale to the stables.
Sedbury Hall was built down there in the 15th Century. Sedbury’s D’Arcy family fought alongside Charles I in the English Civil War. Although the monarch lost his head, when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, he rewarded them with knighthoods and titles, including making James D’Arcy his Master of Horse – his studmaster.
But, when James reached the Royal Stud at Tutbury in Staffordshire in 1660, he found it had been destroyed during the war and so, with the king’s permission, he relocated it to his own stables at Sedbury.
The war had also caused a shortage of horses so the finest animals were imported from the Barbary region of north Africa. It is said that all thoroughbred racehorses are descended from the three imported stallions, Darley Arabian, Godolphin Arabian and Byerley Turk which Captain Robert Byerley stabled for a while at Middridge Grange, near Heighington, to the north of Darlington.
Byerley Turk may even have visited Sedbury stables to do his gene-spreading work because James D’Arcy bred several successful racehorses there for the king: Sedbury Royal Mare, Darcy Yellow Turk and Darcy White Turk.
READ MORE: REMEMBERED AT LAST: HOW DARLINGTON'S CENOTAPH WAS UNVEILED 95 YEARS AGO
When James died in 1673, the Royal Stud moved back down south, but Sedbury, in the heart of horsey and hunting territory, retained its equine reputation.
In the 1770s, Sir Robert D’Arcy Hildyard had John Carr, the great Yorkshire bridge-builder, create a new stableblock in front of Sedbury Hall. Now a Grade II listed building, it is where the exhibition is being held from November 18 to 24, with “1772” carved into the stonework where the paintings are hung.
Sir Robert also employed Thomas White, the landscape architect who is Yorkshire’s equivalent of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, to create the parkland around the hall: an orangery, a fruithouse plus melonframes and, in 1787, an icehouse for £503.
In 1826, the Sedbury estate was sold to the Reverend John Gilpin, the vicar of Stockton, for £24,000. Through his wife, he inherited much of Arkengarthdale where he is memorialised in the church for “zealously promoting the spiritual and temporal wellbeing” of the dalesfolk.
When his grandson sold the estate at the end of the First World War, no buyer could be found for the hall so, in 1927, it was demolished with much of its stone sold for road-building. A smaller house, in the arts and crafts style, was built on its site just behind the stables where Bill Rees’s exhibition, Expressions, will run from Saturday, November 18, to Friday, November 24, from 10am to 4pm.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here