(448) Bateson, later De Yarburgh-Bateson, of Belvoir Park and Heslington Hall, Barons Deramore

Bateson of Belvoir Park

The Bateson family were farmers at Catterall

De Yarburgh-Bateson,
Barons Deramore

in Garstang (Lancs) for several generations in the 17th century, but the two surviving sons of Robert Bateson (b. 1683) went to Northern Ireland as young men. Richard Bateson (d. 1766) settled in County Donegal and also owned land in Co. Tyrone and Co. Antrim. His descendants took the name Bateson-Harvey and will be the subject of a future post. Thomas Bateson (1706-91) sold the family property in Lancashire and moved to Belfast, where he became a partner in Mussenden, Bigger and Co., wine merchants, who imported rum from the West Indies as well as wines from Europe. He retired from this firm (by then Thomas Bateson & Co.) in 1785, having invested his surplus capital in property, buying a 99 year lease of the Salters' Company estate at Magherafelt (Co. Londonderry) in 1744 (in which he later sold a stake to the Earl of Londonderry) and a 250-acre property called Orangefield (Co. Down) by the 1760s. 

His son, Thomas Bateson (1752-1811) was educated at Glasgow University and seems never to have been involved in his father's business or any enterprise of his own. He perhaps devoted himself to the management of the Salter's Company estate, but he took no part in public affairs, and his death in 1811 went unremarked in the Belfast press. In 1805 he purchased Moira Castle, but he seems never to have occupied that house. He married a daughter of the mathematician, George Lloyd FRS, and was succeeded by their only child, Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt., who was a much more dynamic figure. He was sent to university in Cambridge, and served as High Sheriff of Co. Down in 1809 (rather curiously, the only member of his family to hold this office). In 1811, when he inherited his father's estate and also married, he promptly sold Orangefield and bought Belvoir Park, a significantly grander property with spectacular views over the Lagan valley. At some point in the early 19th century he also pulled down Moira Castle, which had fallen into disrepair. In 1818 he was made a baronet, probably as a result of the close relationship of the family over several generations with the Earls of Londonderry, but perhaps also because he was starting to be politically useful. In 1830, he became Conservative MP for Londonderry and seems to have been popular with the electorate since he retained his seat until 1842, when he announced his retirement, as he was finding the frequent late-night sittings of the Commons injurious to his health. He resigned in favour of his eldest son, Robert Bateson (1816-43), who was elected unopposed, but died just eighteen months later when he caught typhus while on holiday in Jerusalem. In the face of this unexpected calamity, Sir Robert's second son, Thomas Bateson (1819-90), was hurriedly introduced to the electors of Co. Londonderry and became their member, proving as popular as his father until ill health forced his resignation in 1857. 

Although Thomas Bateson seems to have been quite seriously ill in 1857 and had to go abroad for a time, he made a full recovery, only to be pitched into a family crisis in the early 1860s when first his sister Elizabeth (1817-62) and shortly afterwards her husband, Capt. John Gladstone (1807-63) - the brother of the future Prime Minister, W.E. Gladstone - died, leaving him as guardian of their infant son and seven daughters. The Gladstones had settled at Bowden Park (Wilts), which was near Devizes, the town which Capt. Gladstone had represented in Parliament until his death, and Sir Thomas, as he became on his father's death in 1863, was obliged to spend some time there. In 1864 the Conservative interest in Devizes invited Sir Thomas to stand for their Parliamentary seat, and he was elected and continued to represent the town until 1885, when the constituency was disenfranchised as part of the process of parliamentary reform. He was rewarded for his long service by being raised to the peerage as Baron Deramore, taking his title from a village in Northern Ireland.  Since he had no sons to inherit the title, he persuaded the Government to allow a special remainder in the peerage patent, by which it would pass to his brother George and the latter's sons.

In 1890, on the death of the 1st Baron, the peerage, the family baronetcy and the Belvoir Park estate therefore passed to his brother George William (1823-93), who had taken the additional surname De Yarburgh on inheriting his wife's family's estates at Heslington and Snaith in Yorkshire in 1876. Now, in recognition of the inheritance from his brother, George reversed the order of his surnames, becoming De Yarburgh-Bateson rather than Bateson-De Yarburgh. He survived his brother by only three years, after which the titles and property descended to his eldest son, Robert Wilfred De Yarburgh-Bateson (1865-1936), 3rd Baron Deramore. Robert seems at first to have preferred Belvoir Park to Heslington Hall, although he divided his time between the two, but when the city fathers of Belfast decided to build a fever hospital close to Belvoir, he carried out improvements at Heslington Hall and moved out of Belvoir Park, which he let. He became one of the leading figures in York and the East Riding, serving as an officer in the territorial army for nearly thirty years, and being Chairman of the East Riding County Council for 24 years and as Lord Lieutenant for fourteen years. Land was not the safe investment it had once been, however, and although the 3rd Baron does not seem to have been particularly hard up, he sold the Snaith estate in 1919 and most of the Belvoir Park estate in 1934. At his death in 1936 he left an only daughter, but his titles and estates passed to his younger brother, George Nicholas De Yarburgh-Bateson (1870-1943), 4th Baron Deramore, who lived nearby in York. Heslington Hall was requisitioned for military use during the Second World War, and returned in 1946 to the 4th Baron's eldest son and heir, Stephen Nicholas De Yarburgh-Bateson (1903-64), 5th Baron Deramore, who was actually stationed at Heslington Hall for much of the war and was perhaps able to protect the building from too much military abuse. Nonetheless, the house was neglected and in poor condition, and the 5th Baron did not move into it; in 1962 it became the headquarters of the University of York. The 5th Baron also sold off the remaining parts of the Belvoir Park estate in Ireland, so when he died in 1964 all that was left of the estate for his younger brother, Richard Arthur De Yarburgh-Bateson (1911-2006), 6th Baron Deramore, was some agricultural land in Yorkshire. The 6th Baron, who had qualified as an architect before the Second World War, built himself a modest new house at Aislaby (Yorks NR), where he lived until his death. Since had no sons, the peerage and the family baronetcy then became extinct.

Orangefield, Co. Down

According to legend, the Orangefield estate, now part of the eastern suburbs of the city of Belfast, derived its name from the fact that King William III mustered his troops on this spot in 1690, before the Battle of the Boyne, but there is no evidence to support this, and it seems more likely that the name was bestowed by the De Beers family, who are said to have owned land here, and whose Dutch estate had the same name. The house is shown in a picture which hangs on the wall in the background of the well-known 'conversation piece' picture of the children of Thomas Bateson (1706-91), attributed to Strickland Lowry and dated to 1762, which is now in the National Museums of Northern Ireland collection. It was built in about 1742-44 for David Hunter, and was described in Harris' Antient and present state of County Down (1744) as: 

"a new and elegant House and Improvement of David Hunter Esq...begun the last Year, and brought already to a considerable Degree of Perfection. The House is an oblong Square of 60 Feet by 40, consists of four Rooms on a Floor, and is four Stories high, coined with Freestone, and belted with the same at each Story, besides the Windows and Door-Cases. And as this Gentleman has travelled in the East-Indies, he has followed the Fashion of that Country in covering his House with a flat Roof, without arching, which is laid on strong Burghers or Joists, and secured from the Weather by a Cement made of Brickdust, Lime, and Blood. A little Time will shew whether this sort of roofing will answer the purpose in this moist Climate. Mr. Hunter has laid out also Gardens, Orchards, Lawns and other Improvements suitable to the House, which perhaps is one of the best in the Country."

Orangefield House: detail of the painting within the group portrait of the Bateson children by Strickland Lowry, 1762.
Image: © National Museums of Northern Ireland

It would seem that the flat roof did not 'answer the purpose' for by 1762 the house had a regular hipped roof. Perhaps Thomas Bateson was responsible for the change after he bought the property in about 1760. Enlarging the picture reveals a house with an impressive seven bay three storey front, and a hipped roof behind a parapet but no pediment. The house was probably two rooms deep, for two flues rise up the end wall even though there was only a single window in the centre of the end elevation on the upper floors, and this would be consistent with Harris' statement that there were four rooms on each floor (allowing for circulation spaces). Low connecting blocks linked the main block to essentially detached two-storey L-shaped service wings set back from the house on either side. The forecourt of the house is shown enclosed by white painted gates and railings, and further brick enclosures to either side may have included the 'very extensive' walled garden mentioned when the house was advertised for sale in 1812. The house and offices were then described as 'very commodious, and [in] complete repair', but unfortunately no further description is given of the accommodation they provided.

Orangefield House: a print of 1829 gives a rather different impression of the house, which may have been rebuilt.

A second glimpse of the house is provided by a print of 1829 which gives a rather impressionistic view of the landscape around the house. Unfortunately it depicts Orangefield itself as a two-storey house of five bays, and although the style of the engraving does not encourage confidence in its topographical accuracy, we should perhaps bear in mind the possibility that it had been altered to this form.

On 28 March 1862 the Belfast News-Letter reported rather coyly that "We understand that the family mansion of Orangefield, in the immediate vicinity of  Belfast, on the County Down side of the Lagan, the residence of J. B. Houston, Esq., J.P., is to be entirely rebuilt, in a very elegant style of architecture. Preparations for that purpose are shortly to be commenced, under the superintendence of a very efficient architect", but unfortunately there seem to be no subsequent reports of progress with the work, or to identify the architect: could it have been Charles Lanyon? The result, however, was a rectangular two storey stone building with a large porch facing east on the five-bay entrance front. The south side had a broad curved bow with a single bay to either side, and the longer west front had three bays each side of a similar curved bow. To the north, a long and lower service range connected the house to a stable court.

Orangefield House: the entrance front and side elevation of the house as rebuilt after 1862.

Orangefield House: the garden front of the house as rebuilt after 1862. Photographed in 1902 by Lady Mabel Annesley. Image: PRONI.

The house descended in 1933 to John Matthew Blakiston-Houston (1898-1984), who offered the estate for sale to Belfast Corporation in 1938. The City fathers haggled over the price, and in the end bought only part of the estate, lying south of the house, which was developed for housing. The house remained empty and the site was requisitioned for military use during the Second World War. In 1946, having been returned to the Mr Blakiston-Houston in a neglected condition, the house was advertised for sale, but there seem to have been no takers. Further land was sold for the building of schools immediately to the east in the 1950s and the remainder of the estate in the 1960s. The house remained unoccupied and became increasingly derelict. There are also some reports of arson damage to the building, but it seems still to have been roofed when it was demolished in 1971-72 to make way for an extension to the adjoining school.

Descent: David Hunter (fl. 1744); sold c.1760 to Thomas Bateson (1706-91); to son, Thomas Bateson (1752-1811); to son, Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt.; sold c.1812 to Hugh Crawford (d. 1819)... sold 1824x1829 to John Holmes Houston (c.1767-1843); to daughter, Mary Isabella, wife of Richard Bayly Blakiston (later Blakiston-Houston) (1793-1857); to son, John Blakiston-Houston (1829-1920); to son, Richard Blakiston-Houston (1864-1933); to son, John Matthew Blakiston-Houston (1898-1984), who sold c.1964 to Belfast City Council.

Belvoir Park, Newtownbreda, Co. Down

The estate, then known as Ballylenaghan, was acquired in 1722 (for £2,000) by Arthur Hill (later Hill-Trevor) (c.1694-1771), who was the younger son of Michael Hill of Hillsborough. It is thought that a small single-storey house with a noticeable breakfront was built here in about 1731, probably as a temporary residence; it was marked on Sloane's map of 1739 and Harris in 1744 calls it 'an agreeable seat'. Hill-Trevor then turned his attention to laying out the grounds, possibly with the help and advice of his twice-widowed mother, Lady Midleton, whose childhood at Belvoir Castle (Leics) is said to have suggested the new name for the estate. In 1744 Walter Harris recorded that the grounds were ‘laid out lately in Taste; the Avenue is large and handsome, the Fruitery, from an irregular Glyn, is now disposed in regular Canals, with Cascades, Slopes and Terraces... The Offices are finished, but the House not yet build' [sic]. In the 1730s Lady Midleton employed Richard Castle to build Knockbreda parish church, and if she was involved at Belvoir Park it raises the possibility of Castle's involvement in either the temporary house of 1731 or its successor. But Castle died in 1751, probably before work on the main house had begun, so at most he may have made some designs that influenced his successors. Work on the house evidently took place in the 1750s, for when Mrs Delany came to stay in October 1758 she found it a ‘charming place, a very good house, though not quite finished'. The new house was built onto the north end of the temporary residence, which then became the eastern range of service court.

Belvoir Park: detail of painting by Jonathan Fisher showing the house from the west c.1770.

Belvoir Park: detail of painting by Jonathan Fisher showing the north and east sides of the house c.1770

Belvoir Park: detail of painting by Jonathan Fisher showing the south and west sides of the house c.1770

We know just what the new house was like because Lord Dungannon (as he became in 1766) commissioned four superb oil paintings of the house and grounds from Jonathan Fisher (d. 1809), a young artist who first came to public attention in about 1763: the full set of paintings can be seen here. He depicts a rectangular two-storey house with a north-facing entrance front commanding a view down the Laggan Valley. The entrance front was of seven widely-spaced bays, with the central three stepped forward with a giant portico of Doric pillars supporting a pediment containing an armorial achievement. The side elevations to the west were also of seven bays, but more closely spaced, and the east side had a canted two-storey bay while the west side had a secondary entrance doorway. On the fourth side, facing south, the close spacing of the windows continued, and there were nine bays overlooking a service court that incorporated part of the original house. The seems to be no documentary record of the architect, but the recent attribution to Christopher Myers (1717-89), who arrived in Ireland from Cumberland in about 1755, seems plausible. Photographs of the interior taken in the 20th century, when the house was being considered as a possible official residence for the Governor of Northern Ireland, show that it was perhaps the first house in Ireland to have the ceilings of all of its principal rooms decorated in the Rococo style, and they could well be the work of the leading Irish stuccadore, Robert West (d. 1790).

Belvoir Park: watercolour by Lord Mark Kerr, 1802 or 1805, showing the additions to the house from the north. 

Belvoir Park: watercolour by Lord Mark Kerr, 1802, showing the additions to the house from the east.

At some point between 1784, when the 2nd Viscount came of age, and the mid 1790s, when his family moved him to Brynkinalt (Denbighs) following his attempted suicide, an attic storey was added to the house at Belvoir Park, and the entrance front was altered so that the pediment sat against the attic and was flanked by two oculi. The columns of what had been a freestanding portico were engaged with the wall behind. The house was recorded in this state in several views by Vice-Admiral Lord Mark Kerr in 1802 and 1805.

Belvoir Park: the galleried staircase hall, probably created during the Victorian refitting of the house in about 1865.

The house was further remodelled in about 1865 for Sir Thomas Bateson, who commissioned Newry architect William John Barre (c.1826-67) to carry out some alterations to the house, including balustrades around the roof parapet and a balustraded entrance porch. Inside, his interventions included the creation of a handsome galleried staircase hall with the gallery carried on console brackets and having an elaborate wrought-iron balustrade. In the 1870s the house was still the centre of a 6,000-acre estate, but after 1903 it was leased, and from 1918 it was unoccupied and a long period of decline set in. By the 1920s the estate land was wanted to accommodate Belfast's expanding suburbs, and part of the park became a golf course. The house was considered as a possible official residence for the Governor of Northern Ireland, but Hillsborough Castle was chosen instead. During the Second World War the house was occupied by the Admiralty, but after they relinquished it the buildings began to fall into ruin. In 1956 it was noted that 'The ravages of age and occupation by the Admiralty have left it beyond restoration. The National Trust and other bodies have given up hope of saving it: to-day it is used as a contractor's store'. Reusable fixtures and fittings were removed until only a sad brick shell was left, which was blown up by the army in 1961, leaving only some fragments of the stable yard buildings. 185 acres of the demesne are preserved as a forest park.

Belvoir Park: waiting for the detonators in 1961. Image: Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Trust

Descent: sold 1722 to Arthur Hill-Trevor (c.1694-1771), 1st Viscount Dungannon; to grandson, Arthur Hill-Trevor (1763-1837), 2nd Viscount Dungannon; sold part of the estate in 1809 to a consortium of Belfast merchants who sold 1811 to Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt., who bought the remainder of the estate from Lord Dungannon in 1818; to son, Sir Thomas Bateson (1819-90), 2nd bt. and later 1st Baron Deramore; to brother, George William Bateson (later De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1823-93), 2nd Baron Deramore; to son, Robert Wilfred De Yarburgh-Bateson (1865-1936), 3rd Baron Deramore; who sold 1934 to Stewart & Partners Ltd for housing development; requisitioned by the Admiralty during WW2; sold 1955 to Northern Ireland Housing Trust; rest of the estate sold to the Ministry of Agriculture and Belvoir Park Golf Club. The house was leased in c.1905 to W.H. Wilson, and in 1917-18 to Sir William Johnston, Lord Mayor of Belfast. 

Moira Castle, Co. Down

The first house on this site is thought to have been built in 1651 for Major Edward Burgh, who had bought the land in 1639, and will have been fortified, but it was acquired soon afterwards by the Rawdon family. At some point in the early to mid 18th century (the traditional date of 1690 is not credible) Sir John Rawdon (later 1st Earl of Moira) rebuilt it as a five-by-three bay, three-storey house with a hipped roof, giant pilasters at the angles, and an elaborate pedimented doorcase with Gibbsian rustication. The house was accompanied by an elaborate formal garden, probably begun at the end of the 17th century by Sir Arthur Rawdon, who employed James Harlow to bring back more then 1,000 trees and shrubs from Jamaica and had a conservatory – considered possibly the earliest in Ireland – erected in the Demesne in 1690. Later in the 18th century, the fairly modest house was enlarged by the addition of two-bay wings, which were made slightly taller than the centre by the addition of massive parapets concealing their low-pitched roofs. The wings stretched backwards to enclose a courtyard at the rear of the house. 

Moira Castle: drawing of 1799 by Gabriel Beranger. Image: Royal Irish Academy.

Moira Castle: distant view of the house from the park by Gabriel Beranger, 1799. Image: Royal Irish Academy.

The house was intact and the estate evidently well maintained when it was drawn by Gabriel Beranger in 1799, but after the property was sold to Thomas Bateson (1752-1811) in 1805 it fell into disrepair and by 1830 it was said to be in ruins. The site had been cleared by the time of the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map in about 1840.

Moira Castle: the landscaping remains but the house has gone at the time of the 1st edition OS map c.1840.

Descent: built for Maj. Edward Burgh; sold 1650s to Sir George Rawdon (d. 1684), 1st bt.; to son, Sir Arthur Rawdon (1662-95), 2nd bt.; to son, Sir John Rawdon (1690-1723), 3rd bt.; to son, Sir John Rawdon (d. 1793), 4th bt. and 1st Earl of Moira; to son, Francis Rawdon, 1st Baron Rawdon of Rawdon, later 2nd Earl of Moira, and lastly 1st Marquess of Hastings; sold 1805 to Thomas Bateson (1752-1811); to son, Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt., who demolished it. The estate was let from the 1770s-1803 to William Sharman MP (d. 1803).

Heslington Hall, York, Yorkshire

At the heart of what is now essentially a Victorian and Edwardian house is still the mansion built in 1565-68 for Sir Thomas Eynns, secretary to the Council of the North (and incidentally uncle to Sir John Thynne of Longleat). This was a gabled brick mansion consisting of a central hall range nine bays wide, with two main storeys, a basement and gabled attics, and with cross-wings projecting to enclose an entrance court on three sides, one of which formed the stable block. 

Heslington Hall: an early 19th century painting of the house showing it before the Victorian rebuilding. Image: Country Life.

The earliest views of the house seem to be 19th century and show the entrance front very much in its present symmetrical form, with three evenly-spaced gables, a central pedimented stone doorway with Corinthian columns, mullioned and transomed windows, and two canted bay windows rising through two storeys. However, I am suspicious that this may not be the original arrangement of the 1560s, which would be very early for a fully symmetrical layout, unless the owner's kinship with Thynne provided relevant influence. There are other examples (e.g. Siston Court (Glos)) where an original irregular late 16th century design was altered in the 17th century to make it fashionably symmetrical, and this may have happened here. On the garden side, the two flanking staircase towers belong to the original house, but the centre between them is wholly a Victorian creation, where new rooms were created between the staircase towers. The house seems to have been conventionally planned, with a two-storey Great Hall in the traditional position, entered from a screens passage at one end. The original Elizabethan plaster ceiling of the hall, with patterns of ribs and many pendants is preserved, and the wooden panelling at the north end of the hall is original too. The house was taxed on 16 hearths in 1672.

Heslington Hall: engraving by W. Monkhouse, 1860, showing the entrance front as rebuilt by P.C. Hardwick in 1852-55.

Heslington Hall: the garden front in 1913, soon after Brierley's alterations of 1903-04. Image: Country Life.

Little is known of any changes to the house in the 17th or 18th centuries, since it was very largely rebuilt for Yarburgh Greame by P.C. Hardwick in 1852-55. The forecourt face of the building and the great hall behind it were faithfully restored, with a copy of the stone doorway replacing the original which was moved into the walled garden. But the entire garden front, apart from the staircase towers, was rebuilt and enlarged and the two side wings (one of which had been the stable block) were completely rebuilt to a new design. The sober Elizabethan skyline was punctuated by flamboyant chimney stacks and the two staircase towers were capped with ogee-shaped slated pyramid roofs. Inside new panelling, new doors, new rooms and decorative ceilings (many with heraldic devices) replaced the originals. The canted bay window of the great hall (dated 1855) received twenty-five stained glass shields displaying Yarburgh Graeme's personal 'quarterings'. What had been a modest Elizabethan country house became a Victorian mansion with 109 rooms. Further alterations were made in 1876 by David Brandon for George Bateson-de Yarburgh and his wife, when a small south-west wing may have been added, and by Walter Brierley of York in 1903-04 for the 3rd Baron Deramore after he decided to abandon Belvoir Park in Co. Down and move to Heslington. He removed the ogee-shaped roofs from the Elizabethan towers on the garden front and largely renewed the interiors other than the Great Hall. 

Heslington Hall: the Great Hall in 1913. Image: Country Life.

The house was requisitioned for use by RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War and not reoccupied by the family afterwards. In order to ensure that the house did not suffer the fate of so many at this time, it was sold in 1956 to a charitable trust which sold it on to the new University of York, founded in 1960. The University converted it to function as its administrative centre, to the designs of Sir Bernard Feilden, who is often seen as a leading conservation architect. Here, however, although the exterior was little changed, he stripped out and functionally refitted the interior for the third time in its existence, with few concessions to the historic fabric. In the main hall, the fireplace and much of the panelling was removed, and a dreadfully intrusive new staircase and gallery were built, quite spoiling the effect of the space. The two wings were gutted to provide accommodation for the university library (later offices) and a dining hall, with a new kitchen block behind it. Only in the former reception rooms, which were repurposed as meeting rooms, was the Edwardian panelling and plasterwork generally retained.

Heslington Hall: the great hall as brutally treated in the 1960s.

Heslington Hall: the entrance front in recent years. Image: York University.

A modest formal garden was laid out around the house in the late 17th or early 18th century for James Yarburgh, which included a canal extending into the parkland. The position of the canal (filled in in the 1850s) is still marked by an indentation in the lawn, and by a charming early 18th century brick gazebo which overlooks it. The gazebo forms one corner of a walled garden which also contains a five-bay orangery, and a further survival of the historic landscaping is the group of ancient clipped yews south-west of the house. In the 1850s a new terrace created, and much of the available space was taken up by an irregularly shaped lake with a boat-house. 

Descent: Crown leased 1557 to Thomas Eynns (d. 1573); to son, Thomas Eynns (d. 1578) who bought the freehold; to son, Richard Eynns, who sold 1601 to Sir Thomas Hesketh (1548-1605); to brother, Cuthbert Hesketh (d. 1629); to son, Thomas Hesketh; to son, Thomas Hesketh (d. 1708); to daughter Anne (d. 1717), wife of James Yarburgh (d. 1728); to son, Thomas Yarburgh (1696-1741); to brother, Henry Yarburgh; to brother, Hesketh Yarburgh (d. 1754); to brother, Charles Yarburgh (1716-89); to son, Henry Yarburgh (c.1748-1825); to half-brother, Maj. Nicholas Edmund Yarburgh (d. 1852); to nephew, Yarburgh Greame (later Yarburgh) (d. 1856) of Sewerby Hall, Bridlington (Yorks ER); to nephew, George John Lloyd (later Yarburgh) (1811-75); to daughter, Mary Elizabeth (d. 1884), wife of George William Bateson (later Bateson-De Yarburgh and then De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1823-93), 2nd Baron Deramore; to son, Robert Wilfred De Yarburgh-Bateson (1865-1936), 3rd Baron Deramore; to brother, George Nicholas De Yarburgh-Bateson (1870-1943), 4th Baron Deramore; to son, Stephen Nicholas De Yarburgh-Bateson (1903-64), 5th Baron Deramore, who sold 1956 to Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust Ltd, which sold 1962 to University of York.

Bateson, later De Yarburgh-Bateson, family, baronets and Barons Deramore

Bateson, Robert (1648-1719). Son of Robert Bateson (d. 1664) of Catterall, Garstang (Lancs), baptised at Garstang, 2 April 1648. Yeoman. He married, 20 May 1680 at Garstang, Mary Caton, and had issue:

(1) James Bateson (b. 1681), baptised at Garstang, 3 May 1681; died in infancy;

(2) Robert Bateson (b. 1683) (q.v.);

(3) James Bateson (b. 1684), baptised at Garstang, 27 May 1684;

(4) Margaret Bateson (1685-93), baptised at Garstang, 21 April 1685; died young and was buried at Garstang, 13 December 1693;

(5) Richard Bateson (1689-91), baptised at Garstang, 23 June 1689; died in infancy and was buried at Garstang, 10 January 1690/1.

He lived at Catterall, Garstang, Lancs.

He was buried at Garstang, 26 December 1719. His wife's date of death is unknown.

Bateson, Robert (b. 1683). Son of Robert Bateson (1648-1719) of Catterall, Garstang (Lancs), baptised at Garstang, 4 May 1683. He married 21 May 1702 at Garstang, Isabel Parker, and had issue:

(1) Elizabeth Bateson (b. 1704), baptised at Garstang, 12 March 1703/4;

(2) Thomas Bateson (1706-91) (q.v.);

(3) Richard Bateson (d. 1766), as a young man moved to Londonderry (Co. Derry) and purchased farming estates at Killoquin (Co. Antrim), Castruse (Co. Donegal) and in Co. Tyrone; High Sheriff of Co. Donegal, 1761; married 1st, Sarah, daughter of John McClintock and had issue one son (from whom descend the Bateson-Harvey family of Langley Park (Bucks), who will be the subject of a separate post); married 2nd, 16 October 1740/2, Elizabeth (d. 1789), daughter of Robert Harvey of Londonderry, and had further issue two sons (the elder of whom was raised to a baronetcy in 1789 as Sir Robert Bateson-Harvey, 1st bt.) and one daughter; died November 1766;

(4) Robert Bateson (d. 1716), buried at Garstang, 1716;

(5) A daughter; married [fu] Clarkson; living in 1785.

He lived at Catterall, Garstang (Lancs).

His date of death is unknown. His wife's date of death is unknown.

Bateson, Thomas (1706-91). Probably the eldest son of Robert Bateson (b. 1683) of Catterall, Garstang (Lancs) and his wife Isabel Parker, baptised at Garstang, 21 February 1705/6. He became a partner in Mussenden, Bigger & Co. (later Mussenden, Bateson and Co., and from 1766, Thomas Bateson & Co.), wine merchants, who imported rum from the West Indies as well as wines from Europe; he retired from the firm in 1786. In 1752 he became one of the three founding partners in Belfast's first bank, Mussenden, Adair and Bateson, which operated until 1757. He was also one of the founders of the Belfast Charitable Society in 1752. He married, 1747 (licence 8 September), probably at St John, Dublin, Margaret (d. 1783?), daughter of Rev. James White of Whitehall (Co. Antrim) and widow of William Hartley of Dublin, and had issue:

(1) Thomas Bateson (1752-1811) (q.v.);

(2) Richard Bateson (d. 1783); died unmarried, 1783;

(3) William Bateson (fl. 1814), of Bellmount, Belfast; living in 1814;

(4) Jane Bateson; married, 1782, John Dunne KC;

(5) Frances Bateson; married, 1805, Hans Mark Hamill of Co. Down.

He inherited his father's estate at Catterall but sold it. In 1744 he also bought a lease of the Salters' Company estate at Magherafelt, which he held jointly with Robert Stewart, Lord Londonderry, from 1786. In about 1760 he bought Orangefield House (Co. Down). 

He died in 1791; his will was proved in Dublin in 1791. His wife is said to have died in August 1783.

Bateson, Thomas (1752-1811). Eldest son of Thomas Bateson (1706-91) and his wife Margaret, daughter of Rev. James White of Whitehall (Co. Antrim) and widow of William Hartley of Dublin, born 5 November 1752. Educated at Glasgow University (matriculated 1770). He married, 22 May 1779 at St Saviour, York, Elizabeth (1752-1840), youngest daughter of George Lloyd FRS of Hulme Hall, Manchester (Lancs) and later Barrowby (Yorks WR), and had issue:

(1) Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt. (q.v.).

He inherited Orangefield House and the lease of the Salters' Company estate from his father in 1791.

He died 15 May 1811 and was buried at Knockbreda. His widow died at her home in Donegall Place, Belfast, 2 January 1840.

Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt. 

Bateson, Sir Robert (1780*-1863), 1st bt. Only son of Thomas Bateson (1752-1811) of Orangefield House (Co. Down) and his wife Elizabeth, youngest daughter of George Lloyd FRS of Hulme Hall (Lancs), born 13 March 1780*. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculated 1800). High Sheriff of County Down, 1809. He was created a baronet, 18 December 1818. He was Conservative MP for Co. Londonderry, 1830-42, and his obituarist noted that "so devoted was the deceased baronet to old Toryism that could hardly make speech without introducing the name of George the Third, and so ardent an admirer was he of Orangeism, that, at the banquets of the confederacy, he descanted largely on the 'glorious victories of William III'". He was also a JP and DL for Co. Down. He was regarded as a good landlord, and 'by the judicious supervision' of his estates, ensured they were tenanted 'by some of the wealthiest and most intelligent farmers in Ireland'. In 1857 he laid the foundation stone of the Londonderry Monument (Scrabo Tower) near Newtownards, at the request of the 4th Marquess of Londonderry. He married, 27 April 1811 at St. Marylebone (Middx), Catherine (c.1787-1874), daughter of Samuel Dickson of Ballynaguille (Co. Limerick), and had issue:

(1) Louisa Bateson (c.1812-23), born about 1812; died young, 18 July 1823;

(2) Maria Catherine Bateson (c.1813-76), born about 1813; married, 4 January 1838 at Knockbreda (Co. Down), Capt. Sir Beresford Burston MacMahon (1808-73), 2nd bt., and had issue four sons and two daughters; died at Spa (Belgium), 6 August 1876;

(3) Elizabeth Bateson (1815-16), born March 1815; died at Limerick, 27 February 1816 and was buried at Knockbreda Cemetery (Co. Down);

(4) Robert Bateson (1816-43), born 29 March 1816; educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculated 1835; BA 1839; MA 1842); Conservative MP for Co. Londonderry, 1842-43; died unmarried of typhus while visiting Jerusalem, 23 December 1843, and was the first person buried in the Jerusalem Protestant Cemetery;

(5) Elizabeth Honoria Bateson (1817-62), born 10 November 1817; married, 7 February 1839 at Knockbreda, Capt. John Neilson Gladstone RN MP (1807-63), of Bowden Park (Wilts), fourth child of Sir John Gladstone, kt. and brother of W.E. Gladstone, the Prime Minister, and had issue one son and seven daughters; died 11 February 1862;

(6) Sir Thomas Bateson (1819-90), 2nd bt. and 1st Baron Deramore (q.v.);

(7) Samuel Stephen Bateson (1821-79), born 13 October 1821; educated at Rugby, Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculated 1840; BA 1844; MA 1847) and Inner Temple (admitted 1842; called 1847); barrister-at-law; lived at Cambusmere, nr Dornoch (Sutherland) and was well-known as a sportsman and scientific agriculturalist; JP and DL (from 1863) for Sutherland; married, 25 July 1854 at St Anne, Dublin, Florinda (1823-1908), daughter of Richard Handcock, 3rd Baron Castlemaine, but had no issue; died 9 March 1879; will proved 26 June 1879 (effects under £14,000);

(8) George William Bateson (later De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1823-93), 2nd Baron Deramore (q.v.);

(9) Catherine Anne Bateson (1825-33), born 2 February 1825; died young at Cheltenham (Glos), 6 April 1833;

(10) Stephen Bateson (1827-39), born 20 January 1827; died young, 27 June 1839;

(11) Lt-Gen. Richard Bateson (1828-1905), born 18 December 1828; educated at Rugby, Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculated 1847); an officer in the 1st Life Guards (Cornet, 1849; Lt., 1851; Capt. 1855; Lt-Col., 1868; Col., 1873; Maj-Gen., 1884; retired as Lt-Gen 1887); equerry to HRH Duke of Cambridge, 1881-1904; deputy ranger of Hyde Park, 1886-1905; died unmarried, 11 September 1905; will proved 7 October 1905 (estate £43,155);

(12) John Bateson (1831-1900), born 8 July 1831; lived latterly in Paris (France); married, 27 June 1868, Edith Elizabeth (d. 1886), fourth daughter of Charles John Pearse, and had issue one son and one daughter, who both died young; died in Genoa (Italy), 26 March 1900; will proved 18 April 1900 (estate £34,535).

He inherited Orangefield House and the lease of the Salters' Company estate from his father in 1811. He purchased part of Belvoir Park in the same year and the rest in 1818. He sold Orangefield in 1812. The lease of the Salters' Company estate expired in 1843. He seems also to have rented Castruse near Londonderry and later Bellaghy (Co. Londonderry), presumably as constituency residences.

He died 21 April 1863; his will was proved 7 May 1863 (effects under £35,000). His widow died 21 January 1874; administration of her goods was granted 3 February 1874 (effects under £5,000).

* Some sources give 1782, but on balance 1780 seems more likely.

Sir Thomas Bateson, 2nd bt. 
and 1st Baron Deramore

Bateson, Thomas (1819-90), 2nd bt. and 1st Baron Deramore. Second but eldest surviving son of Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt., and his wife Catherine, daughter of Samuel Dickson of Ballynaguille (Co. Limerick), born 4 June 1819. Admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1837, but did not matriculate or reside. An officer in the 13th Light Dragoons (Cornet, 1837; Lt., 1840; Capt., 1845; retired 1846). Conservative MP for County Londonderry, 1844-57 (when he resigned on grounds of health) and for Devizes, 1864-85 (a seat formerly held by his brother-in-law); a Lord of the Treasury, Feb-Dec, 1852. DL for Co. Down. He succeeded his father as 2nd baronet, 21 April 1863, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Deramore, 18 November 1885, with a special remainder to his brother George and his descendants. He was regarded as a good landlord, and Michael O'Sullivan, the Land League leader, said in 1882 "If all the landlords in the south treated their tenants like Bateson and his brother, there would be no cause for agitation in this country". In the spring of 1890, suffering from anaemia and gout, he went abroad for his health but deriving no benefit from the waters at Spa, he returned to England and tried the bracing air of Folkestone, also without avail. He married, 24 February 1849 at St James, Paddington (Middx), the Hon. Caroline Elizabeth Anne (1827-87), second daughter and co-heir of George Rice (later Rice-Trevor) of Dinefwr Hall (Glam) and Bromham Hall (Beds), 4th Baron Dynevor, and had issue:

(1) The Hon. Eva Frances Caroline Bateson (1850-1940), born 3 February 1850; married, 4 March 1871 at St Peter, Eaton Square, Westminster (Middx), Alfred David Ker (1843-77) of Montalto (Co. Down) and had issue four daughters; lived latterly at Milborne Port (Som.); died aged 90 on 18 May 1940; will proved 31 August 1940 (estate £31,969);

(2) The Hon. Kathleen Mary Bateson (1852-1935), born 15 August and baptised at St Peter, Eaton Square, 16 September 1952; married, 29 May 1877, Walter Randolph Farquhar (1842-1901), second son of Sir Walter Rockcliff Farquhar, 3rd bt., and had issue one son; bought Shaw House (Berks) in 1905 and remodelled it c.1906-10; died at Shaw House, 20 July 1935; will proved 17 September 1935 (estate £299,860).

He inherited Belvoir Park from his father in 1863 and made alterations to it in 1865. He was also 'an extensive landowner in Co. Londonderry and Co. Limerick'.

He died at Folkestone (Kent), 1 December 1890 and was buried at Bromham (Beds); his will was proved 20 February 1891 (estate £67,013). His wife died 12 August 1887 and was buried at Bromham.

George William de Yarburgh-Bateson, 
2nd Baron Deramore
Image: National Portrait Gallery

Bateson (later Bateson-De Yarburgh and then De Yarburgh-Bateson), George William (1823-93), 2nd Baron Deramore. Fourth son of Sir Robert Bateson (1780-1863), 1st bt., and his wife Catherine, daughter of Samuel Dickson of Ballynaguille (Co. Limerick), born 2 April 1823. He was JP and DL for East Riding of Yorkshire, but otherwise took little part in public life, preferring to devote his time to country pursuits, the management of his estates, and the welfare of his Yorkshire tenantry. In 1876, when he and his wife inherited the Yarburgh family estates, he had royal licence to take the additional name and arms of De Yarburgh. He succeeded his elder brother as 3rd baronet and 2nd Baron Deramore on 1 December 1890, and in 1892, he had further royal licence to reverse the order of his surnames. He suffered from poor health and generally spent the winter in the Mediterranean. He married, 8 May 1862, Mary Elizabeth (1842-84), eldest daughter and co-heir of George John Yarburgh of Heslington Hall (Yorks), and had issue:

(1) The Hon. Mary Lilla Bateson (later Bateson-De Yarburgh and then De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1863-1939), born 12 November 1863 and baptised at St Mark, North Audley St., Westminster (Middx), 1 January 1864; lived at The Lodge, Heslington, with her sister, and devoted her time to charitable works; died unmarried, 12 February and was buried at Heslington, 16 February 1939; will proved 17 March 1939 (estate £21,816)

(2) Robert Wilfred Bateson (later Bateson-De Yarburgh and then De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1865-1936), 3rd Baron Deramore (q.v.);

(3) The Hon. Katherine Hylda Bateson (later Bateson-De Yarburgh and then De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1869-1955), born 21 January and baptised at St Mark, North Audley St., 4 March 1869; lived at The Lodge, Heslington, with her sister, and devoted her time to charitable works; died unmarried, 27 November 1955; will proved 26 January 1956 (estate £16,854);

(4) George Nicholas Bateson (later Bateson-De Yarburgh and then De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1870-1943), 4th Baron Deramore (q.v.);

(5) The Hon. Eustace Bateson-De Yarburgh (later De Yarburgh-Bateson) (1884-1958), born 13 October 1884; educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (BA); served in First World War as an officer in the Royal Army Service Corps (Lt., 1914; Capt., 1916); lived at St Ann's House, King's Lynn (Norfk), The Manor House, Great Ryburgh (Norfk) and latterly at Woodhall Spa (Lincs); married 1 June 1927 at St Margaret, Kings Lynn, Elsie Florence (1893-1981), daughter of Henry Josiah Julius Jones of St. Anne's House, Kings Lynn (Norfk) and widow of Capt. Horace Charles Bowman Cottam MC (1891-1918), but had no issue; died 5 March 1958; will proved 2 June 1958 (estate £21,694).

He inherited Heslington Hall in right of his wife and Belvoir Park from his elder brother in 1890. He maintained a town house at 76 Eaton Square, London.

He died in Paris (France), 29 April, and was buried at Heslington, 4 May 1893; his will was proved in Belfast, 28 June 1893 (effects £53,615). His wife died following childbirth, 22 October 1884 and was buried at Heslington; administration of her effects was granted to her husband, 5 January 1885 (effects £4,727).

Robert Wilfred De Yarburgh-Bateson, 
3rd Baron Deramore
Image: National Portrait Gallery 

De Yarburgh-Bateson, Robert Wilfred (1865-1936), 3rd Baron Deramore. Eldest son of George William De Yarburgh-Bateson (1823-93), 2nd Baron Deramore and his wife Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter and co-heir of George John Yarburgh of Heslington Hall (Yorks), born 5 August 1865. Educated at Eton. An officer in the Yorkshire Hussars (2nd Lt., 1893; Capt. 1897; Maj., 1904; Lt-Col., 1915; retired 1921). He succeeded his father as 4th baronet and 3rd Baron Deramore, 29 April 1893 and was one of hard core of peers who continued to vote against the Parliament Bill of 1911, which limited the power of the House of Lords, at all stages of its progress through Parliament. He served as Chairman of the East Riding County Council, 1912-36 and as Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire and the City of Kingston-upon-Hull, 1925-36, and was a JP for the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire and JP and DL for Co. Down.  He was Chairman of the Aire & Calder Navigation Co., 1928-36, Chairman of the Howdenshire Conservative Association, 1915-36, a member of the York Diocesan Conference, President of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, 1925, and a trustee of York County Hospital. He was awarded an honorary degree (LLD, 1934) by the University of Leeds, and was an Hon. Elder Brother of Trinity House.  He was a man of settled views, but possessed considerable charm, a grave and dignified courtesy and a genial disposition, and was widely respected in the county community. He married 1st, 15 July 1897 at St Michael-le-Belfry, York, Lucy Caroline (1867-1901), eldest daughter of William Henry Fife of Lee Hall (Northbld), and 2nd, 26 June 1907 at St Clement, York, Violet Blanche (1884-1972), eldest daughter of Col. Philip Saltmarshe of Saltmarshe Hall (Yorks ER), and had issue:

(1.1) The Hon. Moira Faith Lilian De Yarburgh-Bateson (1898-1982), born 9 June 1898; married 1st, 24 October 1919 at St Margaret, Westminster (Middx) (annulled 1923), John Robert Rankin Fullerton (1894-1966) (who m2, 15 March 1924, Evelyn May Palmer (1891-1960)), eldest son of John Skipworth Herbert Fullerton of Thrybergh Park (Yorks NR) and 2nd, 5 June 1924 at the Strand Register Office, London (div. 1935 on the grounds of his adultery), Sir Edward George Chichester (1883-1940), 10th bt., and had issue one son; died 21 December 1982.

He inherited Belvoir Park and Heslington Hall from his father in 1893. He lived primarily at Belvoir until about 1904 when plans to build a fever hospital nearby led him to let the house and move to Heslington. The Snaith Hall estate was sold in 1919 and most of the Belvoir Park estate was sold in 1934.

He died 1 April 1936; his will was proved 17 June and 8 July 1936 (estate £248,321). His first wife died 26 October 1901; administration of her goods was granted 29 November 1901 (estate £672). His widow died 30 December 1972.

De Yarburgh-Bateson, George Nicholas (1870-1943), 4th Baron Deramore. Second son of George William De Yarburgh-Bateson (1823-93), 2nd Baron Deramore and his wife Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter and co-heir of George John Yarburgh of Heslington Hall (Yorks), born 20 November 1870. He succeeded his elder brother as 5th baronet and 4th Baron Deramore, 1 April 1936. He married, 12 December 1900, Muriel Katherine (1880-1960), daughter of Arthur Duncombe (later Grey) of Sutton Hall, Easingwold (Yorks ER), and had issue:

(1) Stephen Nicholas De Yarburgh-Bateson (1903-64), 5th Baron Deramore (q.v.);

(2) The Hon. Judith Katharine De Yarburgh-Bateson (1909-88), born 22 March 1909; lived latterly in Edinburgh; died unmarried, 23 May 1988; will proved 5 October 1988 (estate £25,874);

(3) Richard Arthur De Yarburgh-Bateson (1911-2006), 6th Baron Deramore (q.v.).

He lived at Deighton Grove, Crockey Hill, York.

He died 4 November 1943; his will was proved 24 January 1944 (estate £25,285). His widow died 21 March 1960; her will was proved 12 July 1960 (estate £24,017).

Stephen Nicholas de Yarburgh-Bateson, 
5th Baron Deramore.
Image: National Portrait Gallery 

De Yarburgh-Bateson, Stephen Nicholas (1903-64), 5th Baron Deramore. Elder son of George Nicholas De Yarburgh-Bateson (1870-1943), 4th Baron Deramore and his wife Muriel Katherine, daughter of Arthur Duncombe (later Grey) of Sutton Hall, Easingwold (Yorks ER), born 18 May 1903. Educated at Harrow and St. John's College, Cambridge. In the 1920s he was one of 'the bright young people', and although later he was  'shy and constrained in unfamiliar company', he was 'often hilariously entertaining  when with those he knew well". He served in the Second World War as an officer in the RAF Volunteer Reserve (P/Offr, 1940; Fl/Offr, 1941; Fl/Lt. 1943; Sq/Ldr. 1944) and was actually stationed for most of the war at Heslington Hall; he was mentioned in despatches. He married, 14 November 1929, Nina Marion OBE CStJ* (1905-79), eldest daughter of Alastair Macpherson-Grant, and had issue:

(1) The Hon. Jane Faith De Yarburgh-Bateson (1933-98), born 20 March 1933; married, 28 June 1952, Charles Edward Stourton (1923-2006), 26th Baron Mowbray, 27th Baron Segrave and 23rd Baron Stourton (who married 2nd, February 1999, Joan Marianne (c.1922-2006), only surviving child of Capt. Herbert Edmund Street and widow of Sir Guy Hope Holland (1918-97), 3rd bt.), and had issue two sons; died 2 April 1998; will proved 7 August 1998.

He inherited Heslington Hall from his father in 1943, but sold it to the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust Ltd. in 1956; it was subsequently sold on to the new University of York in 1962. After the sale he lived at Heslington Manor House.

He died 23 December 1964; his will was proved 19 July and 25 October 1965 (estate £173,463).  His widow died 2 November 1979; her will was proved 22 January 1980 (estate £122,430).

* Lady Deramore was the author of The art of preserving and arranging dried flowers (1973).

De Yarburgh-Bateson, Richard Arthur (1911-2006), 6th Baron Deramore. Younger son of George Nicholas De Yarburgh-Bateson (1870-1943), 4th Baron Deramore and his wife Muriel Katherine, daughter of Arthur Duncombe (later Grey) of Sutton Hall, Easingwold (Yorks ER), born 9 April 1911. Educated at Harrow, St. John's College, Cambridge (BA 1932; MA 1938) and the Architectural Association. A qualified architect (AADip, ARIBA), in practice, 1938-39 and 1946-80. He served in the Second World War as an officer in the RAF Volunteer Reserve (F/Lt.), and contributed to Winged Promises: a history of No. 14 Squadron, RAF, 1915-45 (1996). As a young man he was a competitive cyclist and motorist, and later he became an amateur watercolourist and a prolific, if largely unpublished, author of erotic fiction, including Still Waters (1997). He married, 28 August 1948, Janet Mary (1916-2013), eldest daughter of Dr John Ware MD of Askham-in-Furness (Lancs), and had issue:

(1) The Hon. Ann Katherine De Yarburgh-Bateson (b. 1950), born 10 August 1950; married, 15 May 1982, Jonathan Henry Maconachy Peel (b. 1954), public affairs consultant, elder son of Walter Peel of Knockdromin, Lusk (Co. Dublin) and Rathmore, Raheny (Co. Dublin), and had issue one son and one daughter; now living.

He lived latterly at Heslington House, Aislaby (Yorks NR), which he built for himself.

He died aged 95 on 20 August 2006; his will was proved 22 August 2008. His widow died aged 97 on 4 July 2013; her will was proved 20 November 2014.

Principal sources

Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 2003, pp. 1098-99; W. Harris & C. Smith, The Antient and Present State of the County of Down, 1744; J. Debrett & W. Courthope, The baronetage of England, 1839, p. 400; P. Harbison (ed.), Beranger's Views of Ireland, 1991, p. 102; Sir N. Pevsner & D. Neave, The buildings of England: Yorkshire - York and the East Riding, 2nd edn., 1995, p. 463; A. Casement, 'The Irish world of Lord Mark Kerr: consort of a countess, and admiral artist', Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. IX, 2006, pp. 64-68; F. O'Dwyer, 'In search of Christopher Myers', in M. McCarthy & K. O'Neill (eds), Studies in the Gothic Revival, 2008, pp. 61, 76-80; F. O'Dwyer, 'Robert West, Christopher Myers and St James's church, Whitehaven', Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. XII, 2009, pp. 15-23; https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/belvoir-park/; 

Location of archives

Yarburgh and De Yarburgh-Bateson families, of Heslington and Snaith (Yorks): deeds, family, estate and household papers, 1312-20th cent. [Borthwick Institute for Archives, YM]

Coat of arms

Bateson of Belvoir Park: Argent, three bat's wings sable, two and one; on a chief gules a lion passant or.

De Yarburgh-Bateson, Barons Deramore, of Heslington Hall: Quarterly, 1st and 4th grand quarters, 1st and 4th three bat's wings erect sable, on a chief gules a lion passant or; 2nd and 3rd, per pale argent and azure a chevron between three chaplets counterchanged; 2nd and 3rd grand quarters, argent, three lions dormant in pale sable between two flaunches of the last, each charged with three mullets palewise of the first.

Can you help?

• I should be most grateful if anyone can provide photographs or portraits of people whose names appear in bold above, and who are not already illustrated. 
• Any additions or corrections to the text above will be gratefully received and incorporated. I am always particularly pleased to hear from descendants of the family who can supply information from their own research for inclusion.

Revision and acknowledgements

This post was first published 28 February 2021.

(447) Bates of Gyrn Castle, Manydown Park and Hinderton Hall, baronets

Bates of Gyrn Castle &
Manydown Park, baronets 

The Bates family, who became one of Liverpool's leading commercial dynasties in the late 19th and 20th centuries, trace their origins to a family of middle-class wool merchants in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the mid 18th century. Their rise to great wealth and gentry status began with Joseph Bates (1769-1846), who began trading with India under the auspices of the East India Company. In 1830, he sent his son Joseph junior (b. 1809) out to Calcutta to operate as an agent who found markets for Joseph's cloth and the increasing range of other goods which the firm exported; and also sourced Indian goods and raw materials to flow in the opposite direction, which could be sold at a profit in Britain. As the business grew and became established, Joseph junior took a partner, John Elliott, creating the firm of Bates & Elliott, and in 1835 Joseph returned to England, leaving Elliot in charge in Calcutta, and set up in business as an import-export merchant in Liverpool. Two of Joseph junior's brothers, Edward Bates (1816-96) and Benjamin Hopkinson Bates (1817-54), were sent out to Calcutta to work in the firm (in 1833 and 1836 respectively). Both young men seem to have been a little wild and ungovernable, and they were probably sent abroad to knock off some of their rough edges, as well as to gain business experience. Both men caused their father and John Elliott a good deal of angst, but after Edward married in 1836, he seems gradually to have become calmer and more business focused. Benjamin remained wild and after returning to England and setting up as a cloth merchant on his own account, he was bankrupted in 1850 and emigrated to Australia, where he died in 1854.

Edward returned to England in 1838, but in 1840 he went out to India again, this time to Bombay, where he established the same sort of mercantile house that his brother had founded in Calcutta. He was apparently obliged by his wife's health to return to England in 1843, but unfortunately she died on the voyage. Back in England, he married the daughter of a Hull merchant and shipowner and then went back to Bombay, where he remained until 1848. His return to England then may have been prompted by the death of his father in 1846 followed by the bankruptcy of his brother Joseph in 1847. He settled in Liverpool and began chartering ships to trade with Bombay, buying his first second-hand ship a year or two later. Over time he gradually built up his fleet of vessels and expanded his trading area to include other Indian ports, China and Australia. Within a decade he was more of a shipowner than a merchant, and in 1866 he bought a shipbuilding yard in Hull. By 1870, when he began handing the business over to his sons, he owned a fleet of 51 vessels and had made a great deal of money by importing cotton from India during the shortages caused by the American Civil War, and from Government supply contracts during the Abyssinian war of 1867. After 1870, when his sons Edward Percy Bates (1845-99) and Gilbert Thompson Bates (1847-1917) became the managing partners, Edward's focus turned increasingly to politics, and in 1871, he became the Conservative MP for Plymouth. He was popular with the electors and was repeatedly returned until he retired in 1890, but in 1880, Parliament set aside his election because of an irregularity in his election expenses which seems to have been due to an over-enthusiastic agent. Disraeli compensated him for this disappointment with a baronetcy, and he became Sir Edward Bates, 1st bt.

From 1870 Edward Bates & Sons began adding steamers to their fleet and in 1886 they had a steel-screw steamer built to their own design, which heralded a change of direction to a smaller number of large modern steamships engaged in general tramping. The Bombay office was closed in 1898 and the business there amalgamated with Killick Nixon & Co who continued to act as their agents for more than half a century. When Sir Edward Percy Bates, the 2nd baronet, died unexpectedly in 1899, his son, Sir Edward Bertram Bates (1877-1903), 3rd bt., succeeded to the title and the management of the family business, although he was very reliant on the advice of his uncle, Gilbert Thompson Bates, who had retired shortly before, in 1898. Over the next few years, three more of the 2nd baronet's sons - Percy, Frederic and Denis - joined the business, as they became old enough to do so. In all, the 2nd baronet had seven sons (and no daughters), who seem to have been unusually close, often holidaying together and forming few close friendships outside the kin group.

Sir Edward Bertram Bates went out to India in 1902 to see how the Indian end of the business was run and to have a holiday, but unfortunately he caught enteric fever and died there. He was succeeded as chairman and baronet by his next brother, Sir Percy Elly Bates (1879-1946), 4th bt., who was perhaps more in the mould of his grandfather as an astute and focused businessman. In 1911 the firm bought most of the shares of Brocklebanks, the oldest shipping company in Liverpool, and in 1913 a further merger brought the firm into an association with the Cunard Shipping Co., where Sir Percy had been on the board since 1910. By 1916 Sir Percy was running the Commercial Services branch of the Ministry of Shipping and his two brothers had gone to the war; as there was no one in the office to manage their ships they sold them to Brocklebanks. This was the end of their shipowning activities, but Edward Bates and Sons continued in business as merchants and private bankers. In 1919 Cunard bought a controlling stake in Brocklebanks from the Brocklebank and Bates families, and Sir Percy Bates went on to become deputy chairman of the Cunard Shipping Co in 1922 and chairman from 1930 until his death in 1946. His brothers Frederick (1884-1957) and Denis (1886-1959) succeeded him as chairman of Cunard, which thus remained under the family's control until Denis' death in 1959.

The first Sir Edward Bates (1816-96) had a reputation as a scrupulous but hard-nosed businessman, and when he died he left a fortune of over £800,000 (well over £100m today). In 1856 he bought Gyrn Castle in north Wales as a country retreat, and when he became an MP he also acquired a town house in London and Manydown Park in Hampshire, which lay conveniently between London and his constituency. Despite the close personal relations which are evident in the family over several generations, these properties have rather seldom passed by inheritance since. In 1894 Sir Edward sold Gyrn Castle to his eldest son, Sir Edward Percy Bates (1845-99), whose widow lived there until her death in 1930, although ownership seems to have passed in turn to his sons Sir Edward Bertram Bates (1877-1903), 3rd bt. and Sir Percy Elly Bates (1879-1946), 4th bt., neither of whom lived there. In 1907, at the time of his marriage, Sir Percy bought Hinderton Hall, Neston (Ches.), where he lived until his death, and which his widow retained until 1971. In 1922 Sir Percy sold Gyrn to his younger brother, Frederic Alan Bates (1884-1957), who moved there after his marriage in 1932. 

Wootton House, Wootton St. Lawrence

When he died in 1957 the estate passed to his nephew, Sir Geoffrey Voltelin Bates (1921-2005), 5th bt. It is now - once more as the result of a sale - the property of a daughter of Sir Geoffrey's third wife by a previous marriage. Manydown was leased by Sir Edward Bates' executors to his younger son, Sydney Eggers Bates (1851-1924), who eventually bought the freehold in 1902. After this, Manydown did pass by inheritance until it was demolished in 1965-66, when the family moved to smaller houses on the estate, including Wootton House, which was only recently sold. The Manydown Estate Co. was formed in 1960 to manage the estate, and in the 1980s was involved in important conservation work which had a significant impact on European Union farming policy. However, plans for the urban expansion of Basingstoke led to the sale of the estate to the local authorities in 1996.

Gyrn Castle, Llanasa, Flintshire

The present house was built between 1817 and 1824 for John Douglas, a partner in Douglas, Smalley & Co. of Holywell (Flints), cotton manufacturers, and incorporates elements of the previous, reputedly 17th century, house, of which no visual record seems to be known. 

Gyrn Castle: engraving of the entrance front by J.P. Neale, 1824

Gyrn Castle: engraving of the side and rear of the house by J.P. Neale, 1824, showing the view over the Dee estuary.

The engravings published by J.P. Neale in 1824, which were copied from paintings in the possession of the owner by a Mr. Welshman, show the castle immediately after it had been recast in a pasteboard Gothic style in 1817-24. They suggest that the older part of the house lay at the northern end, and that Douglas both recast the existing buildings with angle-turrets and crenellations, and extended it to the south, where he housed an important collection of pictures in a top-lit gallery some sixty by thirty feet, the large glazed skylight of which is visible in both Neale's views. In front of this he built the charming spindly tower with a staircase turret at one corner which remains the principal accent of the house today. 

Gyrn Castle: the house today. Image: The Douglas Archive.

Gyrn Castle: the picture gallery in the mid 20th century.
Image: RCAHMW/Crown Copyright. Some rights reserved.

Later changes to the fabric include the addition of a second tower at the north-west angle of the house, and the replacement of the original roof of the picture gallery by a more muscular coved ceiling. The latter change was perhaps made by Edward Bates at the same time as he built the castellated gateway to the park and the adjoining octagonal lodge to the designs of Culshaw & Sumners of Liverpool in 1866-68. The interior of the house was perhaps more generally refitted in the early 20th century, as the hall has panelling from Beechenhurst, a Bates family house in Liverpool (where the Culshaw practice was also employed) which was sold at this time. The main reception rooms have a plain and unfussy finish which is also suggestive of the early 20th century rather than the Victorian age.

The grounds were ornamented for John Douglas at the same time as the house was remodelled. There is not really a park, but the wooded valley below the house is filled with a chain of lakes made by damming the Afon-y-garth stream. The steep slope below the house was terraced in the 1890s for the second Lady Bates, and descends through four broad and five narrow terraces, each revetted with dry-stone walling, and planted with holly, araucaria and Scots pines. A rock garden was created in the 1920s at the end of the bank to the north of the ponds, and has rustic stone steps and artificial waterfalls. A summerhouse once stood at the south-west angle of the grounds, but has now disappeared.

Gyrn Castle: plan of the house and landscaped grounds in 1871, from 1st edition 6" Ordnance Survey map.

Descent: Roger Mostyn of Cilcain; given c.1749 to daughter, Charlotte, wife of Rev. Samuel Edwards of Pentre Hall (Montgomerys.); sold 1750 to Thomas Hughes of Halkyn; to son, Robert Hughes (d. 1806); to James Ewer of Holywell; sold 1817 to John Douglas (1770-1839), who rebuilt the house; to son, John Hargreave Douglas (1808-41)... sold 1853 to James Spence; sold 1856 to Sir Edward Bates (1816-96), 1st bt.; sold 1894 to son, Sir Edward Percy Bates (1845-99), 2nd bt.; to son, Sir Edward Bertram Bates (1877-1903), 3rd bt.; to brother, Sir Percy Elly Bates (1879-1946), 4th bt.; sold 1922 to brother, Frederic Alan Bates (1884-1957); to nephew, Sir Geoffrey Voltelin Bates (1921-2005), 5th bt... sold 2012 to his third wife's daughter by a previous marriage, Charlotte (b. 1959), wife of David Howard.

Manydown Park, Wootton St. Lawrence, Hampshire

A complex house built around a courtyard known as Cheyney Court, which developed through several phases from the medieval period to the early 20th century. Although the house was unusually well recorded prior to demolition in 1965 (plans, sections and further images can be found here), it is not now possible to reconstruct its development in detail, though the broad outlines can be given with some confidence.

Manydown Park: Prosser's engraving of 1833 seems to be the earliest visual record of the house.

Apart from a brief interlude during the Civil War and Commonwealth, the estate belonged from the early medieval period until 1863 to the monks of Winchester Cathedral Priory and their successors, the Dean and Chapter. The monks were granted a licence to impark the wood of Wootton St. Lawrence in 1332 and received parties of royal huntsmen in 1361 and 1363. In 1377 the parkland was fenced and the trees within the park were felled in the 1390s to provide timber for William Wykeham’s reconstruction of the Cathedral nave. In 1449, the manor and manor house were leased for the first time to William Wither, whose family had been farming the estate since at least the early 15th century and subsequently held it for over four hundred years. It seems likely that the manor house was rebuilt soon after 1449 to create a suitable home for the Wither family, and that the general form of a house arranged around a courtyard dated from that time. A room on the east side of the courtyard continued to be used for meetings of the manorial court until 1863, and was known as the Court Room. At the time of demolition, it was considered that most of the fabric of the house was late 16th and early 17th century, suggesting a period of reconstruction by John Wither (d. 1620) or William Wither (d. 1653), and two bedrooms had surviving panelling of this period. Later generations probably made few major changes, although a third bedroom was given bolection-moulded panelling in the early 18th century. 

Manydown Park: the house in about 1890, when some of the windows had external shutters.
Image; Historic England.

On the death of the fifth William Wither in 1789 without close heirs, and the estate passed through the female line to his kinsman, the Rev. Lovelace Bigg, who took the additional name Wither. As soon as he gained possession of the property, he refronted it, creating a new seven bay, three-storey south front with a central porch on the ground floor. He also built a large dining room with a new drawing room above it, which projected on the east side of the house, and inserted an elegant new staircase within the existing fabric of the house which provided ready access to the new drawing room. Bigg-Wither's daughters were friends of the novelist, Jane Austen, and his son Harris Bigg-Wither proposed marriage to her at Manydown in 1802. After at first accepting him, she changed her mind overnight, and fled the house the following day. 

Manydown Park: the entrance front in the 20th century

Manydown Park: the late 18th century staircase hall in 1965.
Image: Historic England.

The first visual record of the house seems to be Prosser's engraving of 1833, and it changed little afterwards, apart from the building of a large conservatory at the south-east corner of the house, which was in place by 1890, and the addition of a broad bow of Arts and Crafts character to the billiard room in the west range by Rowland Plumbe in 1903.

By the 1950s, wartime neglect had left the house in poor condition, and the family had little use for such a large house. A sale of the contents was held in 1962 and dismantling began in 1965. On 3 May 1966, sparks from a bonfire set the house alight and although efforts were made to halt the spread of the blaze to other buildings, the fire in the house seems to have been allowed to burn itself out. The stables, coach house and outbuildings were not affected by the fire and were retained and integrated into farming operations. In the early 1970s the estate was broken up and Tangier House and other parts of the estate sold. In 1996 the family agreed to sell much of the estate to the borough and county councils with a view to the future expansion of the Basingstoke new town, while leasing the land back until it was needed. Plans for the development are now (2021) at an advanced stage.

Descent: the leasehold was held from Winchester Cathedral Priory and its successors by Thomas Wither (d. 1506); to son, John Wither (d. 1536); Richard Wither (d. 1577); John Wither (d. 1620); William Wither I (d. 1653); William Wither II (d. 1671); William Wither III (d. 1679); William Wither IV (d. 1733); William Wither V (d. 1789); to kinsman, Rev. Lovelace Bigg-Wither (d. 1813); to son, Harris Bigg-Wither (1781-1833); to son, Rev. Lovelace Francis Bigg-Wither (1805-74), who acquired the freehold in 1863; sold 1871 to Sir Edward Bates (1816-96), 1st bt.; to son, Sydney Eggers Bates (1851-1924); to son, Arthur Sydney Bates (1879-1958); to daughter Anne Mary (1915-2006), wife of Lt-Col. John Oliver-Bellasis (1904-79); transferred 1960 to Manydown Estate Co., which demolished the house in 1965-66.

Hinderton Hall, Neston, Cheshire

Hinderton Hall: entrance front.
Image: Historic England.

One of the earliest significant works of Alfred Waterhouse, built in 1856 for Christopher Bushell, a Liverpool wine merchant. It is a High Victorian Gothic design, built in rock-faced red sandstone with a steeply pitched roof of patterned slate and tall gables. The plan is conventional, with a roughly square main block and lower service range, and a tower at one end of the entrance front. The elevations are irregular, without any lingering tendency to the picturesque but handled without much confidence. The thin tower in particular, with proportions more appropriate to an Italianate villa, seems rather hesitant and uncertain. There are, however, a few hints of the architect's later manner in the gables of the entrance front, the timber canopy over the doorway, and the oriel rising out of a buttress on the end elevation. There were alterations, presumably by Waterhouse, in 1868 and 1875, and further additions for Sir Percy Bates in the 20th century. In the 1970s the house became offices, but it was returned to domestic use in the 1980s, when the so-called 'Chapter House' was built in the grounds, reusing bricks and stonework from a demolished church in Ellesmere Port. More recently the outbuildings have been turned into separate dwellings, while the main house remains a single residence.

Hinderton Hall: garden front in 2017.

Hinderton Hall: drawing room in 2017.

Inside the house, the entrance hall has a stone fireplace with Tudor-style arched opening and a crenellated cresting. The drawing room has a marble mantelpiece on consoles and fern pilasters; plaster panelled walls with niches flanking the window opening, and a ceiling divided into three by moulded plaster beams and patterned ribs. The galleried staircase hall has an open well staircase with carved newels and handrails and a metalwork balustrade. 

Descent: built for Christopher Bushell (d. 1887); to widow, Margaret Smith Bushell (d. 1907); sold 1906 to Sir Alfred L. Jones; sold 1907 to Sir Percy Elly Bates (1879-1946), 4th bt.; to widow, Mary Anne, Lady Bates (1880-1973); sold 1972... sold 1980s to Rees family... sold 2004... sold 2017.

Bates family of Gyrn Castle, Manydown Park and Hinderton Hall, baronets

Sir Edward Bates, 1st bt. 

Bates, Sir Edward (1816-96), 1st bt. Fourth son of Joseph Bates (1769-1846) of Spring Hall, Skircoat (Yorks WR), clothdresser and woollen merchant, and his wife Rebecca, daughter of Joseph Walker of Ardsley (Yorks WR), born 17 March 1816. He went to India in 1833 where his brother Joseph was a partner in Bates & Elliott of Calcutta, a merchant house importing his father's cloth to India and exporting leather and other goods to England, but proved 'violent, headstrong and quarrelsome'. His conduct continued to cause concern at least until his marriage in 1836. After returning to England in 1838, he moved in 1840 to Bombay, where he opened a similar merchant house to Bates & Elliott. Over the next few years he shuttled back and forth between Liverpool and Bombay, until in 1848 he left his Indian business in charge of an agent, returned to England and formed Edward Bates & Co. in Liverpool. With this move he for the first time added shipping to the mercantile business. He began a regular service to Bombay with chartered vessels, and in 1850 he started building up a fleet of sailing ships. Trading was soon extended to include first Calcutta and then the Far East and, when the gold rush began, passenger ships sailed direct to Australia and returned via India or South America. He made a fortune by importing Indian cotton at a time when American supplies were disrupted by the American Civil War (1861-65), and he took on highly lucrative Government supply contracts at the time of the Abyssinian war (1867). He was regarded as a hard businessman and respected but not much liked by other Liverpool shipowners, who referred to him as 'Bully' Bates. After his sons grew up, he increasingly retired from business to concentrate on his political career. In 1870 the firm was renamed Edward Bates and Sons, and the eldest of his four sons, took over the management of the Liverpool office. Sir Edward went to live in Hampshire and was Conservative MP for Plymouth, 1871-80, 1885-92, being created a baronet, 13 May 1880 after being ejected from the Commons for an election expenses offence for which an over-enthusiastic agent was probably responsible. He was also JP and DL for Lancashire and Hampshire. He married 1st, 14 July 1836 at Fort William, Bengal (India), Charlotte Elizabeth (1812-43), eldest daughter of Cornelius Umfraville-Smith; and 2nd, 25 June 1844 at Holy Trinity, Hull (Yorks ER), Ellen (1822-1905), daughter of Thomas Thompson of Hessle (Yorks ER), merchant and shipowner, and had issue:

(1.1) Rebecca Amelia Bates (1837-56), born 16 October and was baptised at Calcutta, 12 November 1837; educated at Cotescue Park, Coverham (Yorks NR); died unmarried, 19 November 1856 and was buried at St John, Knotty Ash, Liverpool;

(1.2) Gertrude Elizabeth Bates (1839-1919), born 4 March and baptised at St Andrew Hubbard, London, 16 April 1839; educated at Cotescue Park, Coverham (Yorks NR); married, 16 May 1860 at West Derby (Lancs), Thomas Priestley Bilbrough (1831-1909) of West Derby, wool broker and later manager of an insurance company, son of James Bilbrough of Gildersome (Yorks), merchant, and had issue two sons and one daughter, but she was separated from her husband at some point between 1871 and 1881; from 1899 she lived at Wonsan (Korea) with her son Charles, who seems to have set up in business as a merchant after they settled there (according to the diary of the Korean provincial governor, Yun Chi-ho, he may have been smuggling arms); she kept aloof from both the small Western community and their Korean, Japanese and Chinese neighbours; about 1918 she moved to Hong Kong, where she died 11 March 1919 and was buried in Happy Valley Cemetery; will proved 24 July 1919 (effects £1,249);

(1.3) Alice Helena Bates (1840-41), born in Bombay, 7 September 1840; died in infancy at Bycullah (India), 1 August 1841;

(2.1) Sir Edward Percy Bates (1845-99), 2nd bt. (q.v.);

(2.2) Gilbert Thompson Bates (1847-1917), born in Bombay, 22 April and baptised at Colalah (India), 10 June 1847; partner in Edward Bates & Sons, 1870-98, but he remained an important source of advice to his nephews after his brother the 2nd baronet died the following year; lived at Maryton Grange, Allerton, Liverpool (Lancs) and later at Whitfield House, Allensmore (Herefs) and Mells Park (Som.), which he rented from 1908-17; he also had a shooting lodge at Muirshiel, Lochwinnoch (Renfrews.); JP for Renfrewshire; married, 13 July 1876 at All Saints, Childwall, Liverpool, Charlotte Thaxter (k/a Lotty) (1854-1936), daughter of George Warren of Woolton, Liverpool, and had issue one son and one daughter; died 30 March 1917 and was buried at Mells (Som.), where he is commemorated by a monument; will proved 14 August 1917 (estate £550,973);

(2.3) Anne Millicent Bates (1849-1946), born 28 March 1849; married, 26 November 1874 at Wootton St. Lawrence, Donald Ninian Nicol (1843-1903) of Ardmarnock (Argylls.), MP for Argyllshire, 1895-1903, and had issue one son and one daughter; as a widow occupied 14 Cavendish Square, London; died aged 96 on 7 March 1946; will proved 15 May 1946 (estate £739);

(2.4) Sydney Eggers Bates (1851-1924) (q.v.);

(2.5) Mabel Stenhouse Bates (1853-1931), born Jan-Mar 1853; married, 20 February 1873 at Wootton St. Lawrence, Frederick Bellairs Thompson (1843-82) of Bellefield, West Derby, Liverpool, and had issue four sons; as a widow, lived at Turvey House (Beds.); died suddenly, 25 April 1931; will proved 9 June 1931 (estate £38,232);

(2.6) Norah Greame Bates (1854-1939), born Oct-Dec 1854; married, 9 December 1880, Stanes Brocket Henry Chamberlayne (1843-1931), barrister-at-law, of Witherley Hall, (Leics), youngest son of Henry Thomas Chamberlayne of Stoney Thorpe (Warks), and had issue one son and three daughters; died 20 December 1939; will proved 6 February 1940 (estate £19,938);

(2.7) Wilfred Imrie Bates (1856-86), born 6 October and baptised at West Derby, 12 November 1856; married, Apr-June 1884, Eleanor Fleming (b. c.1861) (who m2, 25 September 1889 at Llangollen (Denbighs), John Hungerford Davies, solicitor, of Liverpool), but had no issue; died in a riding accident in Manydown Park, 13 May 1886, and was buried at Wootton St. Lawrence; administration of his goods granted 21 June 1886 (estate £39,867);

(2.8) Bertram Rigby Bates (1863-71), born 2 August and baptised at West Derby, 14 September 1863; died young, 25 January 1871.

He lived at Beechenhurst, Wavertree, Liverpool. He purchased Gyrn Castle in 1856 and Manydown Park in 1871. He sold Gyrn Castle to his eldest son in 1894. He also had a London residence at 14 Cavendish Square, which was left to his widow for life.

He died at his house in London, 17 October 1896, and was buried at Wootton St. Lawrence; his will was proved 26 November 1896 (effects £817,059). His first wife died at sea in February 1843 while returning from India to England. His widow died 20 April 1905 and was buried at Wootton St. Lawrence; her will was proved 7 June 1905 (estate £14,278).

Sir Edward Percy Bates, 2nd bt. 

Bates, Sir Edward Percy (1845-99), 2nd bt. Eldest son of Sir Edward Bates (1816-96), 1st bt., and his second wife, Ellen, daughter of Thomas Thompson of Hessle (Yorks ER), born 17 August 1845. He became a partner in the firm of Edward Bates & Sons in 1870 and later succeeded his father as chairman. He succeeded his father as 2nd baronet, 17 October 1896. JP and DL for Flintshire. High Sheriff of Flintshire, 1899. In 1898 he rescued a girl who fell through the ice while skating on a pond near his home, and was awarded the silver medal of the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society for his action, but it was said to have contributed to his death a year later. He married, 20 April 1876, Constance Elizabeth (1856-1930), an accomplished amateur artist, second daughter of Samuel Robert Graves, MP for Liverpool, and had issue:

(1) Sir Edward Bertram Bates (1877-1903), 3rd bt. (q.v.);

(2) Sir Percy Elly Bates (1879-1946), 4th bt. (q.v.);

(3) Cecil Robert Bates (1882-1935) (q.v.);

(4) Frederic Alan Bates (1884-1957) (q.v.);

(5) Col. Denis Haughton Bates (1886-1959), born 25 August 1886; educated at Winchester; joined Edward Bates & Sons about 1905 and became a partner from 1908; visited India in 1911-12; an officer in the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry (2nd Lt., 1908; Lt., 1912; Capt. 1917; Maj., 1921; Lt-Col. 1930; Br-Col., 1934; retired 1934), who served in First World War, 1914-19 (mentioned in despatches); eventually senior partner of Edward Bates & Sons; Chairman of Cunard Steam Ship Co. and Cunard White Star, 1953-59; bought Chorlton Hall, Malpas (Ches.) in 1924 (sold by his widow in 1972); married, 12 December 1922, Aline Mary MA (1893-1974), second daughter of Edward Tipping Crook of Woodlands Hall, Bridgnorth (Shrops.), and had issue one son and one daughter; died 13 September 1959; will proved 26 October 1959 (estate £131,471);

(6) Lt-Col. Austin Graves Bates (1891-1961), born 19 August 1891; educated at Clifton College and Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; an officer in the Royal Artillery (2nd Lt., 1911; Lt., 1914; Capt., 1916; Maj., 1929; Lt-Col.; retired 1930) and was wounded, mentioned in despatches three times and awarded the DSO, 1918, MC, 1916 and bar, 1918; also served in the Second World War, 1939-45; from 1930-39 he assisted his brother Denis in running Brocklebanks, and after the Second World War he was on the board of Cunards; married, 15 December 1920, Jean Christian Margeurite (d. 1982), daughter of Col. James Hunter of Anton's Hill (Berwicks.) and had issue two sons; died 11 September 1961; will proved 4 October 1961 (estate £107,028);

(7) Maurice Halifax Bates (1898-1925), born 9 August 1898; educated at Clifton College and Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; an officer in the Royal Artillery (2nd Lt., 1916; Lt., 1918); married, 21 March 1922 at Lucknow (India), Mary Frances (c.1902-69) (who m2, 24 October 1927, Brig. Ralph Emerson Pickering CBE (1898-1962), and had further issue one daughter), eldest daughter of Sir Edward Arthur Henry Blunt, kt., and had issue one daughter, born after his death; died as the result of a hunting accident, 23 September 1925; buried at Great Oxendon; will proved 17 March 1926 (estate £95,760).

He lived at Beechenhurst, Wavertree, Liverpool, and purchased Gyrn Castle from his father in 1894 as a country retreat; his widow occupied it until her death although she was not the owner.

He died 31 December 1899; his will was proved 15 March 1900 (estate £520,030). His widow died 18 April 1930; her will was proved 13 August 1930 (estate £69,565).

Bates, Sir Edward Bertram (1877-1903), 3rd bt. Eldest son of Sir Edward Percy Bates (1845-99), 2nd bt., and his wife Constance Elizabeth, second daughter of Samuel Robert Graves MP,  born 7 March 1877. He became a partner in Edward Bates & Sons after his father's death in 1899. At the end of 1902 he went out to India to visit the firm's Bombay office and see something of India, but he caught enteric fever and died there. He was unmarried and without issue.

He inherited Gyrn Castle from his father in 1899 but lived at Beechenhurst, Wavertree, Liverpool.

He died at Agra (India), 6 March 1903; his will was proved 6 May 1903 (£81,124).

Sir Percy Elly Bates, 4th bt.
Image: National Portrait Gallery 

Bates, Sir Percy Elly (1879-1946) GBE, 4th bt.  Second son of Sir Edward Percy Bates (1845-99), 2nd bt., and his wife Constance Elizabeth, second daughter of Samuel Robert Graves MP,  born 12 May 1879. Educated at Winchester, and then after a year in Germany, was apprenticed to William Johnston & Co. of Liverpool, shipowners. He joined the family firm of Edward Bates & Sons after his father's death in 1899 and took over as Chairman when he succeeded his elder brother as 4th baronet, 6 March 1903. In 1911 the firm bought most of the shares of Brocklebanks, the oldest shipping company in Liverpool, although it retained a separate corporate identity for another 70 years; in 1913 there was a further merger between Brocklebanks and the Anchor Line, which consolidated both companies trade with Calcutta, and brought the firm into an association with Cunard Steam Ship Co., of which he had been a director since 1910. During the First World War he joined the Transport Dept. of the Admiralty, and was later Director of Commercial Services at the Ministry of Shipping, service for which he was appointed GBE, 1920; in the Second World War he served on the Advisory and Liner Committees of the Ministry of War Transport. In 1922 he became Deputy Chairman of Cunard, and he was Chairman, 1930-46. He achieved a merger with the White Star Line in 1931, and he secured Government financial support to build two large transatlantic liners, the iconic Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, which entered service in 1936 and 1946 respectively (although both were used as troop ships during the Second World War). Between the wars he was also a director of The Morning Post from 1924 (Chairman, 1930-37), the Midland Bank Ltd. and the Great Western Railway. He was awarded the Freedom of the City of London, 1935; made an honorary Captain in the Royal Naval Reserve, 1935, and an officer of the Legion of Honour of the Crown of Italy.  He was a member of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board , 1908-10; chairman of the Liverpool Steamship Owners' Association, 1911, 1945; president of the Institute of Marine Engineers, 1939, and chairman of the General Council of British Shipping, 1945. He was a JP for Cheshire and High Sheriff of Cheshire, 1920-21. He was a friend of Rudyard Kipling (a fellow director of the Morning Post), and also an occasional participant in meetings of 'The Inklings', an informal literary discussion group around J.R.R. Tolkein, which met in Oxford from the early 1930s until 1949. He was terse and forthright in speech, open to the views of others but decisive in judgement; scrupulous in the exercise of power, and considerate and sensitive in personal relationships. He took pleasure in golf and shooting and was enthusiastic about curling and fishing, and took annual fishing holidays in Ireland, Scotland or Scandinavia with his brothers. He married, 20 June 1907, Mary Ann (k/a Pussie) (1880-1973), younger daughter of Very Rev. Dr. William Lefroy, Dean of Norwich, whose wife was a daughter of Charles MacIver, founder of the Cunard Line, and they had issue:

(1) Edward Percy Bates (1913-45), born 15 October 1913; educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge; served in Second World War as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force and was killed in action, 1 January 1945, in the lifetime of his father.

He inherited Gyrn Castle after the death of his elder brother in 1903, but it was occupied by his mother. He sold it in about 1922 to his younger brother Frederick. He lived from 1907 at Hinderton Hall, Neston (Cheshire), which was occupied by his widow until she moved into residential care; it was sold in 1972.

He had a heart attack in his office, on the eve of the maiden voyage of the Queen Elizabeth, 14 October 1946, and died at Hinderton Hall two days later, when his baronetcy passed to his nephew, Sir Geoffrey Voltelin Bates (1921-2005), 5th bt.; he was buried at Childwall, Liverpool, and his will was proved 4 February 1947 (estate £486,085). His widow died aged 93 on 30 July 1973; her will was proved 24 September 1973 (estate £36,760).

Frederic Alan Bates (1884-1957) 

Bates, Frederic Alan (1884-1957). Fourth son of Sir Edward Percy Bates (1845-99), 2nd bt., and his wife Constance Elizabeth, second daughter of Samuel Robert Graves MP,  born 16 August and baptised at St Andrew, Toxteth Park, Liverpool, 25 September 1884. Educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined Edward Bates & Sons in about 1905 and went to India in 1907-08. In 1910-12 he was much involved in the negotiations with the Brocklebank family for the acquisition of a stake in their firm, but he was away on war service as an officer in the Denbighshire Yeomanry (Capt.) and the Royal Air Force (Maj.) during the First World War (and was mentioned in despatches four times and awarded the Military Cross, 1918 and Air Force Cross, 1919). On his return to the firm in 1919 he assisted Sir Percy Bates with the merger of Brocklebanks into Cunard, of which he became a director from 1921 (and Chairman, 1946-53). He was also a director of Martin's Bank (Chairman, 1938-46),  the Royal Insurance Co. (Deputy Chairman) and the Liverpool, London and Globe Insurance Co. DL for Flintshire and High Sheriff of Denbighshire, 1935. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts from 1951. Author of Graves Memoirs of the Civil War (1927) and Dingle Stalk (posthumous, 1960). He married, 5 July 1932 at St. Asaph Cathedral (Flints), Elizabeth Barberie (1903-69), daughter of Thomas Fair of Clifton Hall, Preston (Lancs), land agent, but had no issue.

He bought Gyrn Castle from his brother Percy in about 1922, although his mother continued to live there until her death. He moved to Gyrn after his marriage.

He died in London, 24 June 1957; his will was proved 2 September 1957 (estate £63,330). His widow died 30 June 1969; her will was proved 6 August 1969 (estate £408,637).

Cecil Robert Bates (1882-1935) 

Bates, Cecil Robert (1882-1935). Third son of Sir Edward Percy Bates (1845-99), 2nd bt., and his wife Constance Elizabeth, second daughter of Samuel Robert Graves MP,  born 3 February 1882. Educated at Winchester and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. An officer in the army (2nd Lt., 1900; Lt., 1901; Capt., 1908; retired 1913 but returned to the colours, 1914; Maj. 1915; retired 1919), and was wounded, thrice mentioned in despatches and awarded the DSO, 1918 and the MC, 1916. He married, 27 June 1918 at St. Saviour, Upper Chelsea (Middx), Hylda Madeleine (1882-1960), daughter of Sir James Heath, 1st bt. and widow of Capt. George Millais James, and had issue:

(1) Audrey Cecil Bates (1919-94), born 15 July 1919; married, 28 March 1942 (div. 1956), Maj. the Hon. Thomas Heron Hazelrigg (1914-98) (who m2, 31 January 1957 (div. 1974), Doussa, daughter of Fahmy Bey Wissa, Minister of Civil Defence in Egypt, and formerly wife of Maj. Harold Stanley Cayzer (1910-99); and m3, 1979, Anne Frances Roden (1920-2007), daughter of Capt. Roden Henry Victor Buxton of Smallburgh Hall (Norfk) and formerly wife of Dr. Hans Henry Winterstein Gillespie (1910-94)), second son of Arthur Grey Hazelrigg, 1st Baron Hazlerigg, and had issue two sons; lived latterly at Langham (Rutland); killed in a car crash, 7 January 1994; will proved 16 March 1994 (estate £251,121);

(2) Sir Geoffrey Voltelin Bates (1921-2005), 5th bt. (q.v.).

He lived at Oxenden Hall, Great Oxenden (Northants).

He died of heart failure while salmon fishing in the River Dee, 5 March 1935; his will was proved 1 May 1935 (estate £133,245). His widow died 29 December 1960; will proved 31 January 1961 (estate £10,803).

Sir Geoffrey Bates
(1921-2005), 5th bt. 

Bates, Sir Geoffrey Voltelin (1921-2005), 5th bt. Only son of Cecil Robert Bates (1882-1935) and his wife Hylda Madeleine, daughter of Sir James Heath, 1st bt. and widow of Capt. George Millais James, born 2 October 1921. Educated at Radley College. He served in the Second World War as an officer in the army (2nd Lt., 1941; Lt., 1942), and was awarded the MC, 1942; from 1944-46 he was ADC to Lt-Gen. Sir Neil Ritchie. After the war he joined the Cheshire Yeomanry (Lt., 1950; Capt., 1953; Maj., 1956). He succeeded his uncle as 5th bt., 16 October 1946. A partner in the family firm of Edward Bates & Sons, 1945-66, and also a director of other companies, including the Globe Insurance Co. He was also a Lloyds name, and suffered a financial disaster with the crash of Lloyds syndicates in 1988-92. After the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine cured him of malaria, which he contracted on a business trip to Nigeria, he became chairman of its board, and for fun he bought the Tudor Cafe in Rhyl. He was High Sheriff of Flintshire, 1969-70. A keen hunting man, he served as treasurer and secretary to the Flintshire and Denbighshire Hunt, 1969-92, and was also President of the Denbighshire and Flintshire Agricultural Society. He married 1st, 12 July 1945, Kitty (d. 1956), daughter of Ernest Kemball-Lane of Saskatchewan (Canada); 2nd, 31 July 1957 at Bardwell (Suffk), the Hon. Olivia Gwyneth Zoe Fitzroy (1921-69), children's author, daughter of Robert Oliver Fitzroy, 2nd Viscount Daventry; and 3rd, Jan-Mar 1971, (Juliet Eleanor) Hugolyn Whitelocke-Winter (1929-2003), daughter of Cdr. G. Whitelocke RN of Corrigllingdion Hall, Denbigh, and widow of Edward Colin Winter (1934-65), and had issue:

(1.1) Sir Edward Robert Bates (1946-2007), 6th bt. (q.v.);

(1.2) Richard Geoffrey Bates  (1948-2002), born 13 March 1948; lived on Bowen Island, British Columbia (Canada); married, 1971, Diana Margaret Rankin (1945-90) and had issue one son (now Sir James Geoffrey Bates (b. 1985), 7th bt.) and two daughters; died in Canada, 3 August 2002;

(2.1) Celine Zoe Bates (b. 1958), born 7 October 1958; married, Apr-Jun 1992, Timothy M. Radcliffe, only son of R.J. Radcliffe of Bodedern (Anglesey), and had issue one daughter;

(2.2) Sarah Rose Bates (1960-77), born 4 January 1960; died as a result of a road accident, 6 March 1977.

He lived at Flint Hill Park, Winwick (Northants) in the 1940s and then at Mollington (Ches.) before he inherited Gyrn Castle from his uncle Frederick Alan Bates in 1957.

He died 13 February 2005; his will was proved 28 November 2005. His first wife died suddenly after a minor operation, 2 June 1956. His second wife died of cancer, 24 December 1969. His third wife died 21 April 2003.

Bates, Sir Edward Robert (1946-2007), 6th bt. Elder son of Sir Geoffrey Voltelin Bates (1921-2005), 5th bt., and his first wife, Kitty, daughter of Ernest Kemball-Lane of Saskatchewan (Canada), born 4 July 1946. Educated at Gordonstoun and Grenoble University (France). Director of North-West Names Ltd, insurance brokers. He succeeded his father as 6th baronet, 13 February 2005. He was unmarried and without issue.

He lived at Gwynllys (Denbighs.)

He died 25 March, and was buried at Llanasa, 30 March 2007; his will was proved 29 July 2008.

Sydney Eggers Bates (1851-1924) 

Bates, Sydney Eggers (1851-1924). Third son of Sir Edward Bates (1816-96), 1st bt., and his second wife, Ellen, daughter of Thomas Thompson of Hessle (Yorks ER), born 28 April 1851. Educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (matriculated 1870; BA 1874; MA 1877). He was a partner and shareholder in Edward Bates & Sons, shipowners, 1877-1919, but was not actively engaged in the running of the firm; he had mercantile interests in London, where he was a director of the London & St Katherine's Dock Co. Ltd (deputy chairman, 1899). He was admitted a freeman of the City of London, 1899, and was a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors in London (Warden, 1910, 1912, 1921 and Master, 1916) and the Carpenters Company. He was a member of the Thames Conservancy Board, 1894-97, 1907-08; and JP for London and Hampshire (from 1904). He built a new chapel at East Oakley (Hants) on the Manydown estate, consecrated in 1914. He married, 9 July 1878 at St John, Paddington (Middx), Elizabeth Jessie (1855-1940), third daughter of Col. George Grenville Malet, and had issue:

(1) Arthur Sydney Bates (1879-1958) (q.v.).

(2) Norah Ellen Bates (1881-1922), baptised at St James, Paddington, 31 May 1881; died unmarried, 28 November 1922;

(3) Edith Mary Bates (1885-1978), born 11 August and baptised at St James, Paddington, 7 September 1885; married, 27 September 1923, William Lamb (c.1874-1936) of Lincomb Hall, Stourport-on-Severn (Worcs), son of Rev. William Lamb of Ednam (Scotland), but had no issue; died aged 93 on 13 November 1978 and was buried at Hartlebury (Worcs); will proved 7 March 1979 (estate £43,121);

(4) A son (b. & d. 1888), born 30 April 1888; died in infancy;

(5) Evelyn Jessie Bates (b. & d. 1889), born 28 December 1889 and baptised at St James, Paddington on the same day; died in infancy;

(6) Dorothy Eileen Bates (1892-1982), of The Grey House, Chadlington (Oxon), born 19 May and baptised at St James, Paddington, 18 June 1892; married, 18 May 1948, as his second wife, Thomas More MBE (1885-1948), civil servant, son of Francis More of Edinburgh, chartered accountant; died aged 90 on 18 June 1982; will proved 3 September 1982 (estate £404,651).

He rented Manydown Park from his father's estate until he purchased the estate for £100,000 in 1902. He also had a London house at 29 Hyde Park Square and divided his time between the two. His widow lived latterly at The Grey House, Chadlington (Oxon).

He died 3 March 1924; his will was proved 27 May and 17 October 1924 (estate £814,798). His widow died 13 October 1940; her will was proved 15 January 1941 (estate £14,262).

Arthur Sydney Bates (1879-1958) 

Bates, Arthur Sydney (1879-1958). Only son of Sydney Eggers Bates (1851-1924) and his wife Elizabeth Jessie, third daughter of Col. George Grenville Malet, born 18 June and baptised at St James, Paddington, 17 July 1879.  Shipowner; partner in P. Wigham-Richardson & Co. from 1905. He was an officer in the 1st London Rifle Brigade (2nd Lt., 1900; Lt., 1901; Capt. 1905; Maj. 1915; Lt-Col., 1917; retired 1919) who served in the First World War and was mentioned in despatches four times and awarded the DSO, 1915, and the Croix de Guerre, 1918. He was an expert shot, who took part in international shooting competitions before the war and captained the British Empire Shooting Team in 1919. JP for Hampshire and a Liveryman of the Merchant Taylors Company. He was a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society, and in the 1930s and 1940s he was a prolific amateur film-maker, whose home movies are now in the Wessex Film & Sound Archive. He married, 26 April 1905 at Pirbright (Surrey), Mary da Costa OStJ (1877-1962), eldest daughter of Lt-Col. Charles Robert Crosse CMG MVO, and had issue:

(1) Anne Mary Bates (1915-2006) (q.v.).

He inherited Manydown Park from his father in 1924. 

He died 7 May 1958; his will was proved 7 July 1958 (estate £97,801). His widow died 18 January 1962; her will was proved 5 March 1962 (estate £18,415).

Bates, Anne Mary (1915-2006). Only child of Arthur Sydney Bates (1879-1958) and his wife Mary da Costa, eldest daughter of Lt-Col. Charles Robert Crosse CMG MVO, born 24 March 1915. She married, 29 July 1939, Lt-Col. John Oliver-Bellasis DSO (1904-79), younger son of Capt. Richard John Erskine Oliver-Bellasis of Shilton House, Coventry (Warks) and had issue:

(1) Charles Arthur John Oliver-Bellasis (b. 1940) of The Old Rectory, Boxford (Berks), born 1 October 1940; educated at Winchester and Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester; chartered surveyor (FRICS, 1975) and land agent; married, Apr-Jun 1972, Julia Elizabeth (b. 1945), daughter of Lt-Cdr. John Errol Manners DSC, RN, of Laurel House, Great Cheverell (Wilts) and had issue two sons and one daughter; now living;

(2) Maj. Hugh Richard Oliver-Bellasis (b. 1945) of Wootton House, Wootton St. Lawrence (Hants), born 11 April 1945; educated at Winchester and Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; an officer in the army (2nd Lt., 1964; Lt., 1966; Capt., 1970; retired as Maj., 1977); a freeman of the city of London, 1967 and liveryman of the Merchant Taylors and Gunmakers Companies; Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society; Vice-Chairman of Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust; married, 7 August 1971, Daphne Phoebe (b. 1951), younger daughter of Arthur Christopher Parsons of Hatchwood House, Odiham (Hants), and had issue two daughters; now living.

After the demolition of Manydown Park she lived at Beech House, Wootton St. Lawrence (Hants). In 1960 she established the Manydown Co. Ltd with her sons to manage the estate, which it continues to do, although no members of the family are now on the board.

She died aged 91 on 23 May 2006; her will was proved 10 November 2006. Her husband died 6 October 1979; his will was proved 15 January 1980 (estate £131,168).

Principal sources

Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 2003, pp. 286-87; G.F. Prosser, Select illustrations of Hampshire..., 1833, unpag.; E. Hubbard, The buildings of Wales: Clwyd, 1986, pp. 383-84; P.E. Bates, Bates of Bellefield, Gyrn Castle and Manydown, 1994; ODNB entry on Sir Percy Elly Bates, 4th bt.;  https://gyrncastle.com/; http://research.hgt.org.uk/item/manydown-park/;  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manydown; https://mapsmithblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/many-makes-me-down/; https://collections.rmg.co.uk/archive/objects/491988.html;

Location of archives

Bates of Gyrn Castle: deeds and estate papers, 1717-1939 [North East Wales Archives: Flintshire Record Office D/GY, D/KK] 

Bates of Manydown Park: deeds, family and estate records, 16th-20th cents. [Hampshire Archives 21M58]

Edward Bates & Sons Ltd: business records, 19th-20th cents. [Liverpool University, Special Collections & Archives D641/5]; daily letters, 1878-1902; records of ships; business records [National Maritime Museum, Manuscripts Section, BAT]

Coat of arms

Argent, on a fess azure a quatrefoil between two fleurs-de-lys of the field, in chief two quatrefoils and in base a fleur-de-lys, both azure.

Can you help?

• Does anyone know of a view of Manydown Park earlier than Prosser's engraving of 1833, and more particularly a view of it before the refronting of c.1790?
• I should be most grateful if anyone can provide photographs or portraits of people whose names appear in bold above, and who are not already illustrated. 
• Any additions or corrections to the text above will be gratefully received and incorporated. I am always particularly pleased to hear from descendants of the family who can supply information from their own research for inclusion.

Revision and acknowledgements

This post was first published 20 February 2021 and updated 28 March and 8 April 2021 and 4 August 2022.