Leighton Hall, Powys: Difference between revisions

Leighton Hall is an estate and farming complex, located outside Welshpool in Powys, Wales. A grade 1 listed building and Grade II* estate farming complex,^[1] it is located on the opposite side of the valley to Powis Castle. It is notable for being a precursor of the The Great Exhibition of 1851 in demonstrating the practical use of Victorian "industrial" farming methods; and the birthplace of the now much disparaged hybrid Cupressocyparis leylandii hedge tree. The Hall is now in private ownership and is not accessible to the public, although it can still be viewed from the road.

In 1845, the Leighton Hall estate was purchased from the Corbett family of Shropshire by Liverpool banker Christopher Leyland. In 1847, he gave it as a wedding present to his nephew John Naylor (1813–1889) who then proceeded to rebuild the house and estate at a reputed cost of £275,000, plus an additional £200,000 on the farm technology.^[2]

The house was rebuilt in a Gothic style, with the exterior and estate buildings designed by Liverpool architect W H Gee, and a Palace of Westminster interior style by Augustus Pugin. The buildings constructed at the time included the Church of the Holy Trinity, still in regular use today.^[2]

Naylor spent £200,000 between 1848 and 1856 on revamping the 4000-acre (1.620ha) farm on the same industrial principles as that of HRH Albert, the Prince Consort's farm in Windsor Great Park. The Nantcribba Hall Farm included:^[2][3]

• a water-powered turbine generating electricity for distribution over the estate
• a gasworks supplying heat and light
• Glan-Hafren Farm Barn
• a fowl house housing Pekin bantams and a dovecote. Restored by Cadw, it can be visited by the public today
• Cil-Cewydd Corn mill, to create flour and animal feed
• industrial support works including a saw mill, wheelwright's shop and smithy
• a funicular railway that carried manure slurry from the farm buildings up to a storage tank at the top of Moel y Mab
• Nantcribba Cottages, built for housing farm workers

Naylor commissioned Edward Kemp, a pupil of Sir Joseph Paxton, to lay out the gardens. Kemp laid out a decorative water cascade fed from a series of lakes, which sequenced down from the Moel y Mab.^[2] He then developed the estate's Park Wood, making use—like many Victorians of the time—of exotic species including monkey puzzle trees. The 1857 Charles Ackers Memorial Redwood grove - the largest and oldest grove of coast redwoods in Europe - and the historic Naylor pinetum are today listed Grade 1 locations,^[1] now managed by the Royal Forestry Society.^[4]

Kemp in his garden layout had placed two disparate Pacific coast North American species of conifers in close proximity to each other:

• Monterey Cypress, Cupressus macrocarpa (syn. Callitropsis macrocarpa) from California
• Nootka Cypress or Alaskan Cypress Cupressus nootkatensis (syn. Callitropsis nootkatensis), family Cupressaceae

The two parent species would never have met in the wild as their natural ranges are thousands of miles apart, but in 1888 the hybrid cross occurred when the female flowers or cones of Nootka Cypress were fertilised by pollen from Monterey Cypress, to create the first Cupressocyparis leylandii.^[5]

When John Naylor died in 1889, his eldest son Christopher John Naylor (1849–1926) inherited Leighton Hall from his father. He was a sea captain by trade who commanded a ship known as the I.S.S. Enterprise. In 1891, on inheriting the Leyland Entailed Estates established under the will of his great-great-uncle, which passed to him following the death of his uncle Thomas Leyland (née Naylor), Christopher John changed his surname to Leyland and moved to Haggerston Castle, Northumbria. He further developed the hybrid at his new home and hence named the first clone variant Haggerstown Grey.

His younger brother John Naylor (1856–1906) resultantly inherited Leighton Hall, and when in 1911 the reverse hybrid of the cones of the Monterey Cypress were fertilised with pollen from the Nootka, that hybrid was baptised Leighton Green.^[5]

His successor, Captain J.M. Naylor, sold the estate in 1931 to Montgomeryshire County Council from whom it was transferred to Powys County Council in 1974. In 2010 it was acquired by the Potter Group, paving the way for a restoration of the farm buildings. ^[6]

• Powis Castle - a grade 1 National Trust property located on the opposite side of the valley

• Victorian Welshpool article on Leighton Hall

52°38′01″N 3°07′22″W / 52.6336°N 3.1228°W / 52.6336; -3.1228