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Haddon Hall
Haddon Hall is
situated in the valley of The River Wye in Derbyshire not far from the town of Bakewell. According to Simon Jenkins in England's Thousand Best Houses "Haddon is the most perfect
English house to survive from the Middle Ages"
and who am I to dispute him.
William Peverel, an illegitimate son of William the Conqueror held Haddon in 1087 at the time of the Domesday Survey. The Peverel family owned Haddon up 1153 when the estates were forfeited as the family was on the losing side in the civil wars.
The estate was granted to William Avenal who was tenant there, and about 1170 he divided the manor of Haddon between his sons-in-law, Richard Vernon and Simon Basset. Simon Basset is not really heard of after this date and the Vernon family began 400 years of ownership of Haddon.
The Vernon Family owned Haddon from about 1170 to 1567. They produced a number of notable figures, knights of the realm, a Speaker of the Commons, and Sir Henry Vernon (d. 1515) who was Treasurer to Arthur, Prince of Wales (elder brother of Henry VIII). The last of the Vernons was Sir George Vernon 'King of the Peak' who died in 1567. The estate passed to his daughter Dorothy Vernon, wife of John Manners, a son of the Earl of Rutland.
The Manners family have owned it ever since. In 1641 another John Manners succeeded to the title Earl of Rutland, and the earldom became a Dukedom in 1703.
There has been a building at Haddon since Norman times when it was mentioned in the Domesday Book. The present day Haddon Hall is fusion of Mediaeval and Tudor building but has not been substantially altered for about four hundred years. The reason for this is that Haddon Hall was more or less abandoned by the Manners Family. When John Manners succeeded to the Earldom of Rutland in 1641 the family focussed on their estate at Belvoir Castle (in the soft south) and the house was not lived in again until the time of the 9th Duke of Rutland. Its shell was kept intact until the 9th Duke undertook a lifetime's work to bring the house back into full order in the 20th Century.