Dobroyd Castle

Dobroyd Castle

Country house built 1866-9 by architect John Gibson for the cotton manufacturer John Fielden and his wife Ruth. There have been minor alterations in the late 20th century.

Exterior

The building is constructed of pitch-faced local stone with ashlar dressings, now with a bitumen roof (originally lead). The design is in the castle style, with two storeys plus a four-storey entrance tower, embellished throughout with numerous turrets and bay windows. Many of the ground floor projections and the four corner towers have battered walls, creating a rugged, fortified appearance. However, the windows are uniformly large and practical, mostly having two lights with basket-arched heads, all fitted with sashes. The building features a plinth and string courses, along with a prominent tower containing a battered two-storey porch and a corner turret that rises from parapet level.

The entrance front is composed of nine irregular bays, while the garden front to the south is symmetrical, with three bays and corner turrets. To the north, the main house extends into service accommodation, which terminates in a glazed courtyard.

Interior

The most impressive features are the central two-storey hall and staircase hall, both square in plan and open to each other. The hall has triple arcades on three sides, with the grand staircase opening to the left and a linking first-floor corridor above. The architectural style is a florid mixture of Romanesque forms with Gothic detail.

The hall is richly decorated with Devonshire marble columns and pilasters in three colours, including two large columns framing the staircase. The carved work is executed in Caen stone, and there is a continuous hoodmould with billet moulding. A heavy string course with corbel table separates the two storeys and supports an open gallery. The gallery bays, corresponding to the arcades below, each have two round-headed lights and are separated by engaged columns. These columns carry a continuous octagonal arcade, with the spandrels forming the squinches of a shallow glazed dome. From the centre of this dome hangs a massive pendant with delicate panelling resembling a fan vault.

All the capitals are heavily foliated and carry minute scenes depicting hunting, fruit and vegetables, and country life. Four of the tympana depict the cotton industry in a progressive sequence. To the right of the stair is a scene showing enslaved Africans picking cotton in the Americas, followed by the loading of cotton bales at port. Opposite the stair, flanking the main chimneypiece, is Richard Arkwright at his desk, and women working in the mills with line shafting visible in the background. The initials of John and Ruth Fielden appear below the corbel table and on the fireplace of red marble, which incorporates a clock.

The staircase hall has the same architectural details above the corbel table but is largely occupied by an imperial staircase with an elaborate cast-iron balustrade incorporating star details. Mirrors set into the openings of the blind wall produce a startling effect of depth. The only alterations to this ensemble appear to be the removal of decorated glass from the hall and staircase domes, the addition of grills to the upper openings, and a heightened staircase balustrade.

The vestibule is lined with Bath stone and has an oak-panelled ceiling and dado of Riga and pollard oak, also featuring crenellations; this dado continues into the main hall. Other rooms have undergone intensive decoration in later years, although partial paint removal in 2007 revealed inlaid panels of walnut and other woods. There are plaster cornices with passion flower detail, including in the main first-floor room known as 'Mrs Fielden's boudoir'. When built, the house contained sixty-six rooms. The service rooms to the north have not been inspected.

History

Dobroyd Castle was the home of John Fielden (1822-1893) and his wife Ruth (1826-1877). Fielden was part of a dynasty of cotton manufacturers based in Todmorden. Under the direction of Fielden's father, also John Fielden (1784-1849), the firm had grown into one of the largest concerns of its kind in the country. John Fielden Senior's three brothers were also involved in the business, owning numerous mills in Todmorden, the largest of which was named Waterside. The family was also closely involved with the development of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company.

The family was deeply concerned with politics and social issues, both locally in Todmorden and nationally. In 1832, John Fielden Senior became Member of Parliament for Oldham, jointly with William Cobbett. Much of his political career was spent trying to improve conditions for factory workers, campaigning for a minimum wage and a shorter working day. The argument that reduced working hours would increase productivity gained credibility when expressed by a leading textile manufacturer. In 1847, Fielden was instrumental in securing the Ten Hours Act. He was fiercely opposed to the Draconian 1834 amendment of the Poor Law, and he and his descendants resisted the establishment of a workhouse in Todmorden, though one was eventually built in 1878.

John Fielden and two of his brothers died within a few years of each other, and throughout the 1850s the next generation—John's sons Samuel, John, and Joshua—worked to expand the business. The American Civil War of 1861-5 led to the principal supply of cotton being stopped, but the foresightful Fieldens managed to lay in stocks and profited hugely from what became known as the Cotton Famine.

From 1865 onwards, Samuel, John and Joshua, now very rich indeed, were able to enhance their position in Todmorden through ambitious building projects. They were assisted in this by the architect John Gibson, who showed flexibility of style in building first the Gothic Unitarian Church (1865-9), listed Grade I, and then the Classical town hall (1870-5), also listed Grade I, as well as houses for workers. In addition, Gibson was employed to enlarge Stansfield Hall for Joshua. For John, he built Dobroyd Castle on a hill overlooking Todmorden, intended to be 'the most commanding object in the neighbourhood'.

Ruth Stansfield, who worked in one of Todmorden's mills, agreed to marry John Fielden in 1857, and the initials of the couple are incorporated in an inventive carved scheme. Ruth died in 1877 and John soon married Ellen Mallinson, the daughter of a Lancashire clergyman. Appointed High Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1885, Fielden increasingly lived at Grimston Castle, a country estate that he bought in 1872, establishing himself as a country gentleman. He died at Dobroyd Castle in 1893.

The Cotton Industry Carvings

The most significant carved feature of Dobroyd Castle's imposing hall is the series of relief sculptures which fill the tympana above four doors. A celebration of the industry on which the Fielden family's position was built, these depict various stages of cotton manufacture. The first shows slaves picking cotton, overseen by a slave-master with a whip. In the second, cotton is packaged in bales to be dispatched by sea. The third shows Richard Arkwright at his desk, in the process of inventing his water-powered spinning frame. The fourth represents women working at a loom and displaying the finished cloth.

The depiction of slavery as a necessary part of cotton manufacture addressed a debate which vexed the industry for much of the 19th century. Parliament had abolished the slave trade in 1807 and the institution of slavery in 1833, but from early in the 18th century the cotton which formed the basis of Britain's most profitable industry was largely produced by slave labour in the American south. However, the Fieldens had managed to profit from the war which resulted in American abolition, and this may have a bearing on the interpretation of the carvings.

In the second half of the 1860s, John Fielden was in the happy situation of being able to distance himself from his former dependence on slavery, confident that he could continue to prosper without it. Seen in this context, the sculptures appear to represent a progressive improvement within the cotton industry, running alongside the refinement of the cotton itself. According to this narrative, the slave scene can be read as embodying the barbaric past of cotton production; the raw product is then transported to England's more enlightened shores. Here, intellect-based developments on the part of Arkwright and others have led to the civilised conditions enjoyed by the factory workers, who take pride in the refined product of their industry. The upright stance of the woman who gestures towards the draped cloth provides a marked contrast with the stooping slaves. The respect with which these women are depicted would have been of special significance in this house, where the mistress was a former mill girl.

John Fielden Senior had campaigned against the payment of compensation to former slave owners following the 1833 emancipation act, but otherwise there is little evidence regarding the family's attitudes towards slavery. Interestingly though, in 1883 a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, based on the anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was performed at the Theatre Royal, Todmorden, 'under the distinguished patronage and presence' of John Fielden of Dobroyd Castle. Fielden's enjoyment of the play was probably less mixed than it would have been twenty-five years earlier.

Later History

John Fielden's widow, Ellen, continued to live at Dobroyd Castle until 1909. From that time the house was let, with difficulty, until it was sold in 1942. It served as a Home Office approved school until 1979, after which it became a privately-run school for boys with emotional and behavioural problems. In 1995 the house was bought by monks from the New Kadampa Buddhist Tradition and became a residential Buddhist college and meditation centre, known as the Losang Dragpa Centre.

The former stables, lodge and attached gate piers are listed separately at Grade II.