Month / July 2020

Where will you go on holiday this year?

Posted on by Lisa Homer
Staycations at Grassfield Hall
Around 18 months ago we launched our first house rental here at Grassfield Hall,  Renting the entire house and gardens to one group of people for a family get together.  It worked like a dream, in fact it seemed like the house was made for this purpose, people coming together to celebrate their Special occasion and filling the house with fun and laughter.
During the past year we have mixed our house rentals with bed and breakfast nights and small weddings which has worked perfectly.
The recent pandemic has changed how every business operates and also how we all live our lives, so going forward for the next few months we will be focusing on our house rentals. Getting families together after they have been apart for so many months feels like a perfect way to use the house.
We love helping our guests plan their perfect stay here at Grassfield, and to assist you we have written a guide, including information about private dining experiences in the house with some of the most talented chefs In in the region. We can also recommend suppliers to make your stay memorable, what about having a murder mystery night, or a magician to entertain you after dinner or splash the weekend away in a hot tub.
Locally the area has so much to offer, waking with llamas, trekking the Nidderdale Way or having an adventure at How Steam Gorge, one thing is for sure, you will have a fabulous time.
We have some incredible special offers for rentals which are more than 2 nights long, our brochure has all the information.

 

 

Your Wedding at Grassfield Hall

Posted on by Lisa Homer
Small is beautiful – Isn’t that what they say?
We agree and love hosting our intimate Weddings at Grassfield Hall
So many couples are now thinking about having a small wedding. The idea of an intimate ceremony with your loved ones with you as you say your vows is incredibly special.  At Grassfield Hall we help you plan every detail so that on the day you can just relax and enjoy every second knowing you are in the safest of hands.
We can offer a one or two night wedding weekend, hosting 38 daytime guests, with our team coordinating the day. 16 of your guests will stay with us and have a champagne breakfast to start the celebrations. Your beauty team will pamper your bridal party before the ceremony and reception begins. Extra evening guests may join you after the wedding breakfast and you can dance the night away with our fabulous resident DJ.
Our brochure has details of prices and what is included.
It’s so important to us that your wedding is unique and it’s exactly the way that you dreamed it would be.

the details are so important at Grassfield Hall

Posted on by Lisa Homer
The minute we walked into Grassfield Hall we fell in love with it!
It has now been ten years since that day and after spending a decade restoring the house we can think of nothing more wonderful than sharing it with you.
For so long the house looked so sad and unloved and now It’s just wonderful to see people in the house having fun, and using it as it should be used. All the hard work is made worthwhile when we hear the appreciation that people have for the decor, they understand that every detail has been added with love and a great deal of thought. Everything in the house is a reflection of how we feel about it. The small details make such a huge difference and the finishing touches make a house into a home.

Grassfield Hall in the 1900’s

Posted on by Lisa Homer

From Chapel to Military base to Country Hotel, Grassfield Hall has had many lives!

In 1928 Father Hammond moved into Grassfield House. Previous, he used to pass through the town on his push bike as he cycled to Scar every Sunday after taking the train from Harrogate to say Mass for the Dale’s people. While his church, The Lady Immaculate was being built, he needed a base in the area, so he moved in and converted a room as a place to worship in Grassfield House, and he lived in a room upstairs. The new church was completed in 1934.

From 1939 until 1945 during the war, the Grassfield estate was used by the Military. The 69th Field Artillery was based at Grassfield  to protect the reservoir and used the house for document storage.

In 1971 after being split into apartments, Fred and Gladys Bailey lived in the house with Gladys’s  sister and husband, and it is here that you can see them at the front door as they celebrated their Golden wedding anniversary.

 

Grassfield House was turned into a business in 1975 when it was bought by the Machellan family, who ran it successfully as a Bed and Breakfast. Then after ill health, they sold the house and business to the Garforth family in 1988, who changed its use to a hotel Country House Hotel. It was the hub of the local community for many years. However, after a run of bad luck it finally closed its doors in 2001.

 

The house after being unoccupied for a while then being a little run down, passed to two different owners with plans to renovate it. However, the plans were never to succeed, and the house was repossessed by the bank in 2009. Year after year the house fell into further disrepair.

After standing empty for nine years the Hall had suffered with wet and dry rot, it needed part of the roof replacing and needed to be underpinned. All the original features had now been stripped out by looters, staircases gone and some of the upstairs floorboards were no longer in place. Most of the windows and doors were missing and boarded up. Squatters had taken up residence, and the house was now just an empty shell. The once landscaped gardens had become completely overgrown and the Hall could no longer be seen from the roadside. The derelict building no longer stood proud as it once had. That is where our story begins!