The history of Seaton Delaval Hall

Delaval and Vanbrugh

By the early 18th century, the Delaval financial situation was precarious. This gave a distant cousin, Admiral George Delaval (c. 1668–1723), the opportunity to purchase the house. George was a successful naval officer whose career had included diplomatic assignment in Morocco and time in Portugal. By his own account, renovating the house at Seaton Delaval and planting more trees there was to be his retirement project.

Whatever his initial intentions for the house, the Admiral decided to commission one of the country’s most exciting architects to imagine something new. Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), the playwright architect behind Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, was persuaded to Seaton Delaval. He designed the dramatic English Baroque house that still stands today, its massed towers dominating the skyline and commanding views across the North Sea.

Neither the Admiral nor Vanbrugh lived to see the hall completed. When George fell from his horse in 1723, the estate was inherited by his nephew, Captain Francis Blake Delaval (1692–1752), and his wife Rhoda, nee Apreece (d. 1759). The couple oversaw the completion of the house, and tradition holds that they took up residence with their children in 1728.

The ‘Gay Delavals’

It was those children who became known to Georgian society as the ‘Gay Delavals’. As young adults, they had a reputation for outrageous behaviour, spending lavishly on gambling, parties, and theatrical entertainments. Stories of their exploits abound; many of them attached to the eldest son, Francis (1727–71). He was said to have played elaborate tricks on his guests, hiding geese in the covers of their beds, or turning rooms upside down while they slept. On one occasion, it is said that baffled guests arrived to a darkened hall, only to find that Francis had laid the banquet in the stables.

The stories of practical jokes might be exaggerated, but Francis and his siblings certainly loved theatre. They hired a London playhouse for the evening to star in their own production of Othello, with a fashionable audience that included the Prince of Wales. They took lessons from the leading actors Charles Macklin and Samuel Foote and regularly staged amateur performances at home.

Francis and the next eldest son, John (1728–1808), wrote prologues and other dramatic material for performance, and there is an account of younger brother Robert (1733–59) staging a pantomime at Seaton Delaval Hall. The ‘Gay Delavals’ were creative in other ways too. The eldest of them was sister Rhoda (1725–57), who was a talented artist. Edward (1729–1814) was a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Family finances

Once Francis inherited the hall in 1752, it did not take long for the family to worry about his behaviour and mounting debts. Within three years they sought an Act of Parliament to take control of the estate, and brother John took over the day-to-day management. In 1763, another brother, Thomas (d. 1787), oversaw the creation of a large glass bottle manufactory and in 1764 improvements to the harbour at Seaton Sluice were completed.

The glass works and associated industries were the foundation of Delaval wealth, but in 1766 John explored investing in land in Florida. He sought advice on the cultivation of such an estate by enslaved people and made a purchase of 20,000 acres. However, by 1771 he was looking to sell the property, and it is not known whether he ever developed the land there.

1771 was the year that John inherited Seaton Delaval Hall from older brother Francis. John and his first wife, Susannah (1730–83), made substantial alterations, remodeling the South-East wing and commissioning the Mausoleum. By 1777, the bottle works had become the largest in the country, and John would have anticipated his only son, John “Jack” Delaval, inheriting one day.

However, 19-year-old Jack died in 1775. When John died the hall passed briefly to his only surviving brother, Edward. From this point the Delaval family had no more male heirs. When Edward died in 1814, Seaton Delaval Hall passed to his nephew, Jacob Astley (1756–1817). Jacob was the son of Rhoda, the eldest of all the ‘Gay Delavals’.

Fire and renewal

In January 1822, a fire broke out in the house, burning so intensely that the glass of the windows and the lead of the roof ran in liquid streams down the walls. Floors collapsed, and the iron rails on the staircases twisted in the heat. Although no lives were lost, much of the hall had become a roofless ruin. Only the East stable wing and West kitchen wing were unscathed.

Newcastle architect, John Dobson, undertook limited restoration works in the 1860s. He shored up the Saloon with iron columns and brick, and for the first time in four decades the whole building was protected by a roof. The South-East wing extension was so badly damaged that it had to be demolished.

During World War One the hall was taken over by the Northumberland Volunteers and there was an encampment of the Tyne Garrison in Hare Park. World War Two saw the hall requisitioned as a Prisoner of War camp. However, the 1950s and 1960s brought rejuvenation. Edward Astley, the 22nd Baron Hastings (1912–2007) and his wife, Lady Catherine, oversaw extensive restoration work. They re-roofed the East and West Wings and replaced the damaged stone of the South Portico. Outside, they asked the designer James Russell to create the Parterre garden.

National Trust

Seaton Delaval Hall, its landscape, and collections were acquired by the National Trust in 2009. From 2018 to 2022 the ‘Curtain Rises’ project tackled major conservation works to the hall, re-imagined the experience of the landscape, and sought to bring back the ‘Gay Delaval’ flamboyance, theatricality, and mischief.

Further reading

• Ralph Delaval, first improver of the harbour at Seaton Sluice: DELAVAL, Ralph (1622-91), of Seaton Delaval, Northumb. | History of Parliament Online

• A biography of Sir John Vanbrugh, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28059

• ‘Doddington and the Delavals’ by Martin Postle on Art and the Country House Doddington and the Delavals: collecting and display in the 1760s | Essays | Art & the Country House

• Seaton Sluice and Old Hartley Local History Society, Seaton Sluice and Old Hartley Local History Society

• National Trust, Seaton Delaval, 2019 (revised 2023)

• Green, Martin, The Delavals: a family history, Newcastle, 2014