Ledston Hall: Yorkshire country house that has been empty and decaying for over 60 years to be brought back to life as restoration work nears end

By the early 20th century, it was the Whelers’ winter seat, but it eventually fell out of favour as they preferred their other estate, Otterden in Kent. By the 1940s, they had left the house. The Country Life feature was to be the last time the stately home was in the public eye for decades.

Ledston Hall was empty until 1948, then spent 10 years as a school for ‘maladjusted children’ before another period of vacancy until the 1960s, when the south wing was converted into five flats. Yet the rest of the building deteriorated around the family’s tenants and the last of the line, Granville Wheler, born in 1929, could not afford the investment needed to restore the great house. It fell from prominence, despite the Whelers still being the main landowner in the area, with farms, cottages and even the village pub, The Chequers Inn at Ledsham, remaining in their hands.

Ledston was even added to Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register following Granville’s death without heirs in 2004. He had left the estate itself well-provided for, establishing a charity called the Wheler Foundation to run it in 1992, but the mansion continued to decay. The central and north wings were empty and the Foundation had to eventually end participation in Leeds Civic Trust open days and public access to the grounds because of its unsafe condition.

Eventually, the sale of some land on the Kent estate for development allowed the Wheler Foundation to commit to a full refurbishment and restoration of the hall, and to bring it back to life and into full residential occupation for the first time since the war. The mansion will now become four houses and six apartments, all let to tenants, with completion expected in February.

This new chapter will mean the hall becomes a thriving part of estate life once again, with plans to let out the dining and meeting rooms to the public and open up the grounds again. Crucially, it has been removed from the Heritage at Risk register in recognition of the recent preservation efforts.

The project has excited Mark Granger, one of the trustees who was appointed by Granville Wheler.

"It has cost us about £10million. All of the houses and apartments will be rented out by the Foundation; they vary from one-bedroom flats to four-bedroom vertical conversions with ground, first and second floors. Each house has its own lift and we have futureproofed them for all age groups.

"We think the tenancies will appeal to people who are fairly local – and who don’t want to do their own gardening any more! They will have access to the gardens, without having to do the weeding themselves. We are also creating imposing new gates at the North Park entrance for access. All the grounds will be accessible and they are quite extensive. It will be a really nice little community.”

The 12th-century chapel – part of Pontefract Priory, a property surrendered during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, after which the site became a private estate passing through several families – was traditionally the village of Ledston’s parish church, and though it has been closed during the building work, there are plans to re-open it and offer services again.

"We have refurbished the chapel as well and we are keen to open it. We had loads of issues during the work – Covid restrictions delayed us, there have been shortages of materials relating to the war in Ukraine, which has had an impact on supplies and cost, and a shortage of labour in the industry has affected us too. When you open up old buildings you always discover things, and though none of the finds have been particularly significant, we have had ecologists and archaeologists here recording them.”

Before the new residents move in, the Foundation hopes to invite the villagers of Ledston and Ledsham into the park to see inside the mansion – the first members of the public to do so for generations.

"We are really keen to have an open day once the contract is completed, and it will be the first time in many decades that people have been inside the hall; it just wasn’t safe before. We used to open the grounds in summer, but that hasn’t happened for some time now. We will have to balance the fact that people will be living there, but there will be some public access.

"Country Life featured the hall in 1938 and we are going to invite them back again – it seems like a neat thing to do.”

The Ledston Estate

The Whelers have not lived permanently at Ledston Hall since World War Two. The late Granville Hugh Hastings Wheler inherited at the age of just 19 in 1948 and immediately let the house to a school.

Yet they retained an income from the 3,000-acre estate – there are seven tenanted farms and 34 cottages and other residential properties in the nearby villages. The old stable block is leased to a livery yard and riding school, and The Chequers Inn in Ledsham is a quirky survivor, having been estate-owned for centuries.

The Chequers has been trading since 1540, and became famous for not opening on Sundays until 2012, thanks to a rule put in place 180 years before by the lady of the manor when she was verbally abused by a group of drunken farm labourers outside the pub on a Sunday. The estate refused the licensee’s request for Sunday opening back in the 1980s, but reconsidered their stance once the Foundation had entirely taken over its running.

After the monastery was dissolved, the estate was given to the Witham family, who became caught up in a bizarre series of events in the 16th century. In 1593, Sir William Witham and his five-year-old son died after reportedly taking a herbal remedy given to them by local wise woman Mary Pannell, and she was both accused of witchcraft and of having romantic relations with the married lord of the manor.

There was an unexplained gap between the allegation and her trial 10 years later, but she was eventually executed in Kippax. The male Witham line died out, and the estate passed into several families, mostly changing hands through the female line when daughters married. The Whelers were descended from Lady Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Hastings, who lived at Ledston Hall in the 18th century and was active in the field of women’s education. She inherited from her father and brother, and died without ever marrying. leaving the estate to her nephew. The charities she established still exist today, and her last descendants were Granville and his siblings Charles and Margaret.

One of the Wheler Foundation’s main roles is the education of children about the countryside, and there is a schoolroom on the Ledston Hall estate which is free to hire.