Oulton Hall

Oulton Hall was originally a "modest eighteenth-century house" owned by the Blayds family. In 1807 the house was left to John Calverley, who was a partner in Beckett's Bank and Mayor of Leeds in 1798. He changed his name to Blayds in order to inherit the property, but his descendants reverted to Calverley. He enclosed the surrounding common in 1809, and it was landscaped to designs by Humphrey Repton soon afterwards. In around 1822, he commissioned Sir Robert Smirke to remodel the house, and it was enlarged by Smirke's brother, Sydney, in 1839. In 1850 a fire destroyed much of the property, including most of the Smirkes' work. Fifty officers were admitted in 1918, with seventy-one beds…