Denton Hall, Denton Burn, Newcastle

Joanna Barker

Denton Hall in 800 West Road, East Denton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, became the property of Edward Montagu in 1758, when he inherited the northern estates of his cousin John Rogers. There was a house on the site from 1503, and many stones from nearby Hadrian’s Wall were incorporated into its walls. It was replaced in 1622 by a Jacobean manor (the date can be seen inscribed over the porch): this house still stands, and was the residence of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Newcastle until it was sold in 2020. The exterior of the house and much of the interior are largely unchanged since Montagu’s day.

Edward Montagu’s mother was Sarah Rogers (1661-1735), who came from a family of landowners in Newcastle, and it was here that he was baptised in 1692. In 1689, John Rogers, Montagu’s uncle, purchased the estate of East Denton, together with its coal mines, from the Errington family for the substantial sum of £10,900, and in 1705 he bought West Denton from his wife’s brother Sir James Clavering.

These properties, together with others in Northumberland, descended to Montagu’s cousin, also called John Rogers; he was said to have been a “lunatic” for the last forty years of his life, and his affairs fell into disorder, with the coal mines being much neglected. In 1746 Montagu was appointed his “committee” or legal guardian and attempted to improve the situation, making a full report on his findings to Rogers’ uncle, Sir James Clavering. Rogers died on 24th Jun 1758, and in his will (dated 20th September 1711 and amended by codicil on 10th October 1715) he left his property to five co-heirs: half to his Montagu cousins Edward, Crewe and Jemima, and half to William Archdeacon and Anthony Isaacson, the sons of his cousins Mary and Margaret Creagh. However, Edward Montagu’s brother Crewe had died in 1755 and his sister Jemima (the wife of Sir Stanley Meadows) died in 1759, so Edward inherited one-half of the estate, with Isaacson and Archdeacon receiving a quarter each. For a while, Edward Montagu retained Archdeacon to manage the coal mine on their behalf. Rogers’ legacy also included houses, lands, salt pans and shares in other coal mines all over Northumberland and County Durham.

In early 1761, Edward Montagu added to his inheritance by purchasing from Anthony Isaacson his quarter share of the property at East Denton and also his share of the Lemington and Sugley Collieries; he gave him in return his interest in the collieries of North Seaton. The following year he purchased from Ralph Carr for the sum of £2,000 the remaining one-third share of the collieries at Lemington and Sugley, as well as one-third of ‘all those collieries and coal mines opened and not opened within the perimeters and territories of West Denton’. Through these transactions they consolidated their ownership of the Denton colliery. In 1765 Edward Montagu noted in a codicil to his will that he owned ‘real estate at Denton, Hindley, Donnington, Throckley, Jarrow and Barnston, Chester-le-Street, Crossbank and Newcastle’ and elsewhere in the counties of Northumberland and Durham and the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. These were substantial properties, but the most lucrative were the coal mines at Denton.

Edward Montagu first visited Denton Hall in September 1751 with his steward, Mr Carter, and wrote to his wife to say the house was ‘a good deal worse than I thought, and indeed so bad that it would not be justifiable to lay out any money upon it’. He continued that ‘if ever I should be so happy as to have your company in these parts … I would hope it would be no difficult matter to find you some better accommodation’.

Elizabeth Montagu first visited Denton in August 1758, after John Rogers’ death. They stayed at Carville Hall on the banks of the Tyne at Wallsend, and when she viewed Denton Hall she discovered that the house, having been uninhabited for thirty years, was indeed in a dilapidated state, but she persuaded her husband to restore it, and they stayed there during all their regular visits to Newcastle.

The house was altered by closing up the Jacobean fire-places and building a wall across the large hall, which opened directly from the front porch and suffered from draughts since it was also open to the stair-well. The house was still not habitable at the time of the Montagus’ next visit to Newcastle in September 1760, and they did not occupy it until 1763.

The division of John Rogers’ estate between his heirs was not completed until 1765. Edward Montagu could not persuade William Archdeacon to sell him the remaining quarter of the Denton estate, but leased it from him for a period of 21 years. (After Archdeacon’s death in 1776, Elizabeth Montagu expressed her intention to purchase his share of the property.) In 1774 Archdeacon granted him a 25-year lease over a further 90 acres adjoining East Denton, to enable new mineshafts to be sunk.

The exploitation of the coal mines began almost immediately, with a new shaft being sunk at West Denton to access the high-quality Beaumont seam, thirty fathoms down. Mr Montagu spent a large part of 1765 on his Denton estate, while his wife returned to Sandleford. The following year she arrived in May and on 12th July gave a great feast for the pitmen and their families to celebrate the first mining of coal from the Beaumont seam, before leaving on 1st August for a two-week tour of Scotland; they did not return to London until 30th December. From this time on, Elizabeth Montagu visited Denton for several months almost every year until Matthew Montagu (who first visited Denton with her in 1783) was able to take over the responsibility. In the years when she did not make the journey north, her steward Edward Browne would visit her at Sandleford to present his accounts.

After her husband’s death on 20th May 1775, Elizabeth Montagu immediately took sole control of the properties he had left her in his will. She set out for the north only a month later, and reported to Mary Robinson, wife of her brother William, on the prosperous nature of her northern estates, including the busy mine which ‘has mightily the air of an ant-hill’ and the nine farms on the East Denton estate. In 1779 she made a further purchase of an estate adjoining Denton at West Kenton.

Elizabeth Montagu’s final visit to Denton was in 1786, and William Thomas, the viewer of East Denton Colliery, became the tenant of Denton Hall around this time. In 1807 Matthew Montagu, who had inherited Elizabeth Montagu’s entire estate in 1800, leased the Denton Main Colliery to Messrs Cookson Cuthberts & Co.

Denton passed successively to Matthew Montagu’s two sons Edward and Henry, the 5th and 6th Barons Rokeby. Henry left it to his daughter’s son Lord Henry Paulet, 16th Marquess of Winchester, and the estate finally passed out of the family when he sold it in 1886. A subsequent owner, William l’Anson, restored Denton Hall, removing what William Tomlinson described as “the incongruous additions made by Mrs Montagu”.

References:

Rogers Family Tree

Elizabeth Child, ‘Elizabeth Montagu, Bluestocking Businesswoman’, in Reconsidering the Bluestockings, ed. Nicole Pohl and Betty Schellenberg (Pasadena CA: Huntington Library, 2003), pp. 153-173.

Emily J Climenson, Elizabeth Montagu, the Queen of the Bluestockings (London: John Murray, 1906), vol. 1, pp. 144-147, 289-291; vol. 2, pp. 128-132, 137-139, 281-282.

Kristine Herron, https://edurnford.blogspot.com/2014/11/33-death-of-john-rogers-his-estates-and.html

William Weaver Tomlinson, Denton Hall and its Associations (London: Walter Scott, 1894)

Les Turnbull, Elizabeth Montagu: a “Critick, a Coal Owner, a Land Steward, a Sociable Creature”, in Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 4, 2018, pp. 657-686.

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1338212

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