Moreby Hall, York, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Moreby Hall was erected on the site of an earlier house (see illustration by Samuel Buck in his Yorkshire Sketchbook of around 1720), first owned by the Lawson family, and later bought by William Preston in the late 18th century. By 1772 the earlier house stood in a park near the River Ouse to the north of Stillingfleet (Victoria County History; Jefferys, 1772).

The present Moreby Hall was built for the Preston family, well-known merchants and bankers from Leeds, from 1828 to 1833 by the architect Anthony Salvin (1799-1881). Moreby Hall was Salvin's second country house, (the first one being Mamhead [see description of this site elsewhere in the Register] in Teignbridge, Devon), designed shortly after he had gone to live in London where he worked for many years with his brother-in-law, the landscape gardener William Andrews Nesfield, and the architects John L. Pearson and R. Norman Shaw.

As part of the early 19th-century rebuilding of Moreby Hall, the existing parkland was probably extended, and terraced gardens were laid out containing topiary, summerhouses, a rosary, a bowling green and a serpentine lake (OS 1st edition surveyed 1846). The layout of the gardens has been attributed to John Burr, head gardener at the time (The Ladies' Magazine of Gardening, 1841).

Moreby Hall was owned by the Preston family until the late 20th century, when the estate was sold and the Prestons moved to a new house built in the walled garden in 1985/6. At present (1999) the site is in multiple private ownership.