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Watnall Hall in 1955, tucked into the hillside, viewed from
near the Rolleston graves in the parkland above. |
Anyone walking on the grassy fields above Watnall could be forgiven for thinking they are in the spacious grounds of a country house and that is because they are. The fields, now usually grazed by cows, used to be called Watnall Park, a name that's sadly fallen out of use. It was the parkland of Watnall Hall, the home of the Rolleston family. We can still find a few clues to its former parkland status including a curious feature called a "ha-ha".Watnall Hall used to stand where the houses on Rolleston Crescent now are, partly hidden in a dip on the east side of the hill sheltered from the prevailing winds. Its roof top had an envious hill top view towards Derbyshire, Leicestershire and over to the hills of Annesley and Mapperley as today's walkers can appreciate.
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1901 OS map - Watnall Park is shaded in grey.
The ha ha is shown in red. |
Watnall Park
The old Ordnance Survey maps show the area between Watnall Woods and Watnall Hall shaded in grey as all country house parkland once was. Old references to "Watnall Park" can be found in various sources. The Nottingham Guardian newspaper from May 13th 1887 reports...
- "Jubilee Celebration - Arrangements are being made under the auspices of a committee of the Southern Division Conservative Club to hold a combined Unionist, Conservative, and Primrose League picnic and demonstration in July next... Mr. L. Rolleston has given his consent for the use of Watnall Park, and Mr. Smith Wright [local MP], is using his influence to secure the attendance of the leaders of both the Unionist and Conservative parties to speak at a political meeting."
Local author DH Lawrence in a letter of 1925 recalls his boyhood walks in Watnall Park...
- "My father used to sing in the Newstead Abbey choir, as a boy. But I’ve gone many times down Hucknall Long Lane to Watnall - and I like Watnall Park - it’s a great Sunday morning walk. Some of my happiest days I’ve spent haymaking in the fields just opposite the S side of Greasley church - bottom of Watnall Hill - adjoining the vicarage. Miriam’s father hired those fields."
In the 1891 Kelly's Directory (an early type of Yellow Pages) Watnall Hall is listed as...
- "Ancient brick building, in mixed Elizabethan and Jacobean styles, the property of Lancelot Rolleston... stands in a park of about 6o acres."
Ha-ha
On the southern boundary of the parkland, and shown on the map above, can be found another clue. It appears to be the remains of an old "ha-ha", a fortified ditch acting as an invisible barrier to prevent livestock (or people) from getting in while not spoiling the view. They were a favourite feature of country houses as they give the
illusion of sweeping unbroken parkland and distant vistas. Another example is at Wollaton Hall where the ha-ha stops deer from getting into the ornamental gardens.
The name "ha-ha" supposedly is due to the exclamation of surprise when the hidden ditch is first encountered. Hopefully without falling in! Typically for our day and age,
ha-ha health and safety became an issue in 2016 at a distant family estate in Scotland when the local council had "concerns" about whether a collapsed ha-ha should be rebuilt¹. It's understandable when you hear about the £8750 compensation awarded to a night-time bat hunter who fell into a ha-ha and broke his ankle!²
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| The remains of the ha-ha |
The National Trust has examples of better maintained historic ha-ha's here..
Aerial laser surveys (LiDAR) of the parkland clearly show the ha-ha and also reveal what appears to be the subtle echoes of older field patterns from before the parkland was enclosed. Could that be Watnall's medieval "ridge and furrow" strip farming system? LiDAR has been used elsewhere to reveal previously hidden Saxon, Viking and even Roman and Iron Age field systems⁴.
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LiDAR survey of the parkland clearly shows the ha-ha
and the old ridge and furrow field pattern |
The Rolleston Graves
The park is also the final resting place of the last generation of the Rolleston family to live at Watnall Hall. Colonel Sir Lancelot Rolleston and his wife Lady Maud are buried there along with his brother and sister and their spouses. The graveyard was established in the 1880s after Sir Lancelot and Lady Maud married and moved back to the old family seat which had been leased out for several years. Around the graveyard are further reminders of the old parkland, the eroded stumps of several very old beech trees which were felled when the hall was demolished in 1962.
On August 19th 2022 a ceremony was held at the newly-renovated graves to celebrate Sir Lancelot's 175th birthday. Members of his old regiment, the South Notts Hussars attended and paid tribute with a bugler, two lance-men and the regimental brass band. It was also attended by his family, Greasley church officials and a group of local well-wishers.
There can be no more fitting final resting place for the old soldier, the end of the Watnall Rolleston line, than to be buried beside his siblings in the parkland above his family seat with glorious views to the far horizons.
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The Rolleston graves in 2024.
The line of the ha ha follows the trees in the background. |
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| Sir Lancelot (aged 89) and Lady Maud in the garden - 1936 |
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19th August 2022 - The graves were refurbished for
Sir Lancelot's 175th birthday anniversary |
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The open grassy fields of the old Watnall Park
are now enjoyed by younger generations of kids and cows... |
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The ha-ha embankment can be seen here looking back
towards the graves and the site of the hall |
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| c.1940 - Watnall Hall's ornamental gardens were sheltered in a dip below Watnall Park |
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One of Lady Maud's watercolours
"From my window at Watnall, August 9th 1887" |
Sources - Rolleston family archives; local old boys network (Pete Charity and pals); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha; National Library of Scotland old maps https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.4&lat=53.00995&lon=-1.25600&layers=6&b=1
Notes
1 - Ha-ha health and safety! - The Watnall ha-ha was not the only one in the family. Sir Lancelot's wife Lady Maud was born Maud Dalzell into the old Scottish family from Dalzell House in Motherwell. In 2016, the ha-ha wall at the Dalzell House estate was repaired after it became unsafe due to a collapse of the stonework. The council's Environmental Services Committee were concerned about potential liability and personal injury claims and enlisted the help of volunteers and staff from a local charity to repair the ha-ha wall within the estate. The repair project received funding from the environmental key fund and the heritage lottery fund via the Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership.
2 - The Herald, Scotland - Bat walk man wins damages after ditch fall - 18th January 2013
"A man who tripped and fell into a historic boundary ditch within the grounds of a stately home while taking his grandson on a guided bat walk has been awarded £8750 damages. John Cowan badly fractured his right ankle after falling into a ha-ha ditch at Hopetoun House on the outskirts of Edinburgh on September 5, 2008, as he and his grandson returned to a car park in the dark. Mr Cowan, a former water quality manager who was 61 at the time, raised an action seeking compensation at the Court of Session in Edinburgh against the Hopetoun House Preservation Trust and trustees, including the Marquess of Linlithgow. Damages were agreed at £35,000, but liability was contested and a hearing of evidence was subsequently heard. A judge has now ruled the trust was liable for the injury suffered by Mr Cowan of Livingston, West Lothian, but the amount should be reduced by 75%. Mr Cowan's five-year-old grandson, Ross, also fell, biting his lip in the incident. Mr Cowan, who was recovering from an operation for thyroid cancer, had gone on the organised walk to search for bats armed with a torch as instructed. He had never been to the historic house, nor was he familiar with the layout of the grounds. "I didn't know what a ha-ha was beforehand. It was a [ditch] to keep animals from leaving an area in country parks," he said. The walk ended at a ranger's centre and Mr Cowan said he immediately took his grandson to the toilet. He did not hear any instructions how to get back to the car park. Countryside ranger Peter Stevens told the court he had gathered the group inside the centre and given directions to the car park. He did not notice Mr Cowan and his grandson going to the toilet. Had he done so, he said, he would have given individual instruction on returning to the car park. Lord Bracadale said in his judgment: "I find the pursuer [Mr Cowan] did not hear these directions, no doubt because he was engaged in attending to the needs of Ross. I consider that Mr Stevens must be mistaken in thinking he had checked everyone was present when he gave the directions." Mr Cowan ended up walking in the dark on a route that took him to a point in the ha-ha where there was a 5ft drop. Lord Bracadale said he considered the ha-ha was outside the scope of the law over obvious dangers such as cliffs or canals where an occupier was not required to take precautions against a person being injured. "It is an unusual feature of a concealed nature, particularly in the dark. While the ha-ha was a permanent feature of the landscape at Hopetoun House, it is an unusual feature about which someone crossing the lawn in the dark would be likely to be unaware," he said. He added: "It seems to me it was reasonably foreseeable a member of the group might, albeit carelessly, take a short cut across the grass to the car park." The judge said it would have involved no sacrifice to take the group to the front of the house and clearly point out the route. But he said: "Leaving the path in the dark to walk across open ground was a careless thing to do. "The pursuer could not have been keeping a proper lookout; if he had, he would have been likely to have spotted the ha-ha when he came across it. "The top of the ha-ha was edged with stone.""
3 - 1891 Kelly’s Directory Lancelot’s residence is in Edwinstowe “Edwinstowe house, Lancelot Rolleston esq. J.P.” Watnall Hall “ancient brick building, in mixed Elizabethan and Jacobean styles, the property of Lancelot Rolleston esq J.P. is now occupied by Robert Goodall Hanson esq. and stands in a park of about 6o acres.”
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