The Fitzwilliam Hounds at Malton, Yorkshire

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)
The Fitzwilliam Hounds at Malton, Yorkshire

Signed lower right: Rowlandson 1803
Pen and brown and grey ink and watercolour on original washline mount
24.4 by 36.8cm., 9 ½ by 14 ½ inches

The house visible to the left in the present watercolour is Malton Lodge built in 1604 as the gatehouse to a large Jacobean mansion built on the site of the old Malton Castle. The mansion was pulled down in 1674 as the result of a squabble over ownership between two sisters Margaret and Mary Eure - the local Sheriff threatened to demolish the property and give them each a pile of stones unless they came to an agreement. They failed to do so until after the main house was knocked down but before the lodge was destroyed so that the lodge and the original wall to the street are all that are left. The lodge is now The Old Lodge Hotel. To the right is the parish church of St Leonard's. Pevsner describes it as follows:

`...... (the) wall to the street has three arch-ways, though the right one has lost its arch. The middle one has coupled pilasters, but is much decayed. The lodge is a substantial embattled block of five bays and two storeys. The centre bay is wider than the others and flanked by coupled Tuscan columns on the ground and first floor.'

Sir Thomas Wentworth bought the manors of Old and New Malton in 1712 and in 1728 his successor, the Hon. Thomas Wentworth, was made a peer as Lord Malton. Six years later he was created Marquis of Rockingham. His son died without issue in 1782 and the manor of Malton with its other estates passed to his nephew, Earl Fitzwilliam and the estates remain in the same family today. `

Provenance:
Miss Fitzwilliam of Slingsby, Yorkshire;
Sir William Worsley 4th Bart., (1890-1973), Hovingham Hall

Exhibited:
Scarborough, Scarborough Art Gallery, English Watercolours from Yorkshire Houses, June - July 1950, no.18