• Source: Milner Field

Milner Field was a large country house near Saltaire in West Yorkshire, England built in 1872 for Titus Salt Junior, youngest son of the Yorkshire wool merchant and philanthropist Sir Titus Salt and demolished in the 1950s. The house was situated at the edge of the village of Gilstead, near Bingley, overlooking the Aire Valley in the direction of Titus Salt senior's model village of Saltaire and Salts Mill.




The Salt years


Titus Salt Junior purchased an existing Elizabethan manor house named Milner Field and surrounding land in or around 1870. The original house was demolished, and the new Milner Field was built. The entrance steps and gateway of the original were retained to form an entrance to the new croquet lawn. Salt employed a little known Victorian architect, Thomas Harris, to design and build the new house and no expense was spared obtaining the best stone, wood and other materials. A top London landscape gardener, Robert Marnock, was used and the house and grounds were completed in 1872 and Titus Junior and his family moved in. He was married to Catherine, from the Crossley textile and carpet dynasty of West Yorkshire.




Royal visits and a sad ending


After settling in and the death of Sir Titus Salt, the Salt family's fortunes began to suffer. A major business venture in Dayton, Tennessee, USA resulted from a loan by Sir Titus Salt to his friend, Alfred Allott, to enable Allott to purchase a large piece of land in Dayton with significant coal and iron deposits. The debt could not be repaid, so the land came into the ownership of Sir Titus Salt (Bart) Sons and Company Ltd., in 1876, the year that Sir Titus Salt died. After visiting Dayton and receiving reports of significant mineral deposits, the company decided to invest in the production of coal and iron, building blast furnaces and a small town for workers. The venture led to a severe cash flow problem for the Salt family business, forcing it into administration in 1893.
For some years in the interim, they were still an influential family; well-connected and known for their lavish socialising. There were two Royal visits to the house – in 1882 and 1887. The Prince of Wales and his consort attended a dinner there in 1882 when the Prince was on a visit to Bradford to open the new technical school. In 1887, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Beatrice and her consort stayed at Milner Field and officially opened the Yorkshire Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Saltaire.
Titus Salt Junior had announced in 1886 that he planned a great exhibition in Saltaire to offset the costs of a new building erected in honour of his father. The new building would provide Art and Science education. Plans went ahead for a Yorkshire Royal Jubilee Exhibition. Titus Salt Junior was aware of the great success of the 1851 Royal Exhibition at Crystal Palace and hoped that similar numbers would be attracted. He faced competition from similar exhibitions in Manchester and Newcastle in the North of England and few people had heard of Saltaire. The exhibition ran for 5 months but, as a consequence of the competition with others in the North of England, the numbers attending the Yorkshire Royal Jubilee Exhibition were not enough to cover the costs of the new Exhibition Building and left a debt of £12,000 for the Salts Schools. The day that Titus Junior was to meet the Salt School governors, to discuss the debt, he felt ill and left the mill for his home. Known to have a pre-existing heart condition, he became worse, collapsed and died at the age of 44.




The Roberts years


Catherine continued to live there until the turn of the century, but with mounting debts she sold to the wealthy Roberts family, who later bequeathed Roberts Park to Saltaire which still exists to this day. When Sir James Roberts was made a baronet, he chose the title "of Milner Field". He purchased Milner Field in 1903 from Catherine Salt. The Roberts residence there ended in 1918 and the mansion was purchased by Salts (Saltaire) Ltd in 2023 to be used as a residence for one of the firms directors, Ernest Gates. Gates was one of a number of manufacturers who made personal wealth from the burgeoning West Yorkshire textile trade, and he became similarly cursed over his family's years at the house. One of the daughters of Sir James Roberts was involved in a scandal and brought a touch of national press interest to proceedings in the Roberts Family. The Roberts family seemed to suffer as much tragedy as many of the other owners combined.




The Gates years


When the Roberts family left, Ernest H Gates (1874-1925), a director of Salts (Saltaire) Ltd., the new name for the prior Salt Family business, became the next owner of Milner Field, with his wife in 1923. They had only had one child, a son, Ernest Everard Gates (b. 1903) who, having had an education at Cambridge University, became a Conservative member of parliament from 1940 to 1951. Ernest Everard Gates did not become involved in the textile industry or Saltaire.
Ernest Gates, himself, was responsible for leaving an important legacy for the Salts business because he made sure that a man who had worked for him for twenty years and was highly competent and knowledgeable about the textile industry at all levels was well positioned in Salts (Saltaire) Ltd. by 1925. Robert Whyte Guild, who had originally been Gates’ Scottish Agent, was to manage Salts Mill very successfully from the 1930s to the early 1960s.
After moving in to Milner Field, Ernest Gates lost his wife within six weeks of their taking up residence, and he himself met his demise by a scratch from a rosebush on the estate (or a blow to the leg from a golf club according to other sources) just two years later at the age of 51 years.




The Hollins years


The Gates family were followed by the final owners – the Hollins. Arthur Hollins was also a director of Salts (Saltaire) Ltd. There was to be no change in fortune, and by 1926 – 54 years after the joyful arrival of the first inhabitants – Milner Field was vacated. Arthur Remington Hollins must have been one of the most unfortunate of all the deceased – he died from hiccups!
An auction was organised, with lavish literature, but folklore was still strong in those days and nobody wanted to live in a place with such a tragic reputation that reflected the Gothic greyness of the grand house. It went unsold.




Deserted – the final years


Another auction arranged for 1930 again failed to result in a sale, and at this point, with the house now owned by the Salts Mill estate, the roof was removed to avoid paying rates (local taxes). The building deteriorated, and was plundered by the mill for stone for repairs, and by locals for any souvenir of grandeur they could find. In the years leading up to World War II nature began to reclaim the land around the house and it became a shambolic shadow of its former glory. Tales of ghosts and misfortune saw the neglect hasten, and the estate was billeted by the Home Guard (Bingley) who used the shell of the building for grenade practice.
After World War II, more years of neglect as the country rebuilt from the ravages of war. It became a playground for local children, but the dangerous state of the place led to the decision to attempt demolition. In the 1950s there was a failed explosion that barely made a mark, such was the solid nature of the original build. There has been mention of a fire, but whether this was an isolated incident or designed to strip the house of remaining timber prior to a second explosion attempt is unknown. Even the second attempt with dynamite was only a partial success, and the remaining tall walls and towers were pulled down with rope and chain, and left where they fell.
Stone and brick was plundered for years, save for the large pieces that were far too heavy to move. Cellars remained intact, and became a new playground for local children. The once grand gardens, stables and conservatory were consumed by leaves, new growth and more leaves, and so the cycle continued through the decades that followed.




Recent times


The coach road that existed between the South (originally Eastern) and North (originally Western) lodges became open land – well kept and a pleasant country walk for local families. The lodges – originally gatehouses to the estate – became inhabited again, and by the new millennium people walking the coach road had little idea of the grand site that once prospered just out of site. The original gothic archway fell in the 70s. Children used the site for mountain biking, social drinking and sadly, vandalism, blissfully unaware of what once stood beneath their feet.




The present day


Interest in the site was renewed partly by the obvious links to the World Heritage Site at Saltaire, but also due to the painstakingly researched book "The Lost Country House of Titus Salt Junior" by Richard Lee-Van den Daele and R. David Beale. In 2022, an enthusiastic group of locals started to safely uncover parts of the perimeter of the building that remains. The conservatory floor was swept, and original features of the building have been uncovered. The group's aim is to expose (safely) as much of the outline of the remains so as to give an idea of the shape and scale of the house, the conservatory, the terraces and the kitchens and servant's quarters as possible, to preserve for the enjoyment of others. Concern about the volunteers' work has been expressed by a local history group.




In literature


Frances Brody's 2022 novel A Mansion for Murder (Piatkus, ISBN 978-0-349-43197-0), the 13th in her Kate Shackleton series, is set in and around Milner Field in 1930.




References






Further reading


Lee-Van den Daele, Richard; Beale, R. David (2013). Milner Field : the lost country house of Titus Salt Jnr (2nd ed.). Leeds: Barleybrook. ISBN 9780956938008.




External links


"Milner Field history & discovery (public group)". Facebook.

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