GOLDSBOROUGH HALL.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17629, 5 December 1922, Page 2

GOLDSBOROUGH HALL.

THE YORKSHIRE HOME OP PRINCESS MARY.

It is fitting that Goldsborough Hall, the Yorkshire home of Princess Mary, Viscountess Laseelles, like Chesterfield House, her London residence, should have a romantic history; for the Princess is a lover of the past, and at Goldsborough she will be surrounded by memories of bygone centuries. Long before King Alfred put on' his crown it was the site of a Saxon stronghold around which battle raged generation after generation; and it was for many centuries the heart of a royal forest in which the Princess's ancestors, from the days of William Kufus, hunted the wild boar, the red and fallow deer, and other beasts of the chase.

It was not, however, until Stuart times that the Hall, which now lias a royal chatelaine, began to raise its walls at the bidding of Sir Richard Hutton, a Cavalier who gave his life for his King in 1665, after a gallant defence of York; and it provided a refuge for many a Royalist who fled to it from the disaster of Marston Moor.

For five generations Goldsborough; Hall had played a notable part in Yorkshire history before it was bought, with its lands, by Daniel Laseelles, brother of the first Ilarewood lord, who migrated to it from the neighbouring Ilall of Plumpton, and inaugurated a new and still more splendid era.

To-day, alter three centuries of history, the hall is a home of which the Princess may well be proud, with its strong encircling wall, its imposing and massive gateway, reminiscent of other days, its fine sixteenth-century staircase, its Stuart embellishments, its Adam ceilings, and its sumptuous nishing.And not" only is the Hall itself rich in romantic history, but also it has romance all around it. Within a short walk is Knaresborough, with the ruins of its ancient castle in which our second Richard was imprisoned, which was dismantled in 1648, and its old and picturesque buildings, and a history going back to Roman times. Close by is the cave-ehapel which was the hermitage of St. Robert, seven centuries aind more ago, with the altar which was the shrine of his daily devotions, and a rudely sculptured Knight Templar guarding its entrance. Here*- within a few minutes' motor ride, the Princess can see the carved stones and portions of columns which once formed part of the Priory founded by Richard Plantagenet, King John's son, about 1257; and the famous dropping well, the most remarkable petrifying spring in Britain, which, in a few months, converts anything immersed in it into stone.

It was from Knaresborough, too, that Dick Turpin took his wonderful mare Black Bess; and in the neighbouring village of Scotton Guy Fawkes had his cradling, and with his confederates planned his "Gunpowder Plot."