Aske Hall: Elegance with a Shadow

I am not often drawn to country estates, where the visitor is welcome only if he keeps to the designated path and obeys the “do not step on the grass” signs. Yet Aske Hall is a striking exception. This Georgian house, framed by parkland complete with lake and shaped by Capability Brown, wears its history well. Its story begins in the twelfth century with the Aske family. In 1582 it passed to Roger de Aske’s daughter and her husband, the first of three successive Sir Robert Bowes to take possession. The Conyers family followed, before Sir Lawrence Dundas brought it in 1720. The Dundas name has since spread its influence across North Yorkshire, and the family still resides here. From the public footpath, only the briefest glimpse of the hall is possible, the ha-ha keeping all but the tallest walkers out of sight. The former stable block, however, is close enough to admire and has a grandeur of its own.

The scale of such an estate invites questions. How did one afford to buy and maintain something of this size, let alone build it? The answer, in the case of Sir Lawrence Dundas of Kerse, lies in a career that began with wine, moved through army contracting, and ended with vast holdings across Scotland, Orkney, Shetland, Yorkshire, Hertfordshire and London. His wealth brought political influence and a place among the most powerful landowners in Britain. It also came, in part, from less palatable sources: he held two slave plantations in Dominica and Grenada, part of the darker ledger behind the splendour¹Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. Sir Lawrence Dundas 1st Bart. 1712 – 1781. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146656113.

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  Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. Sir Lawrence Dundas 1st Bart. 1712 – 1781. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146656113