Whitworth Hall, County Durham
Whitworth Hall is a country house in the small town of Spennymoor in County Durham, England . The previous seat of the Shafto family is now a hotel. English Heritage has listed the house as a second-degree historic building.
Descendants of the Shafto family from Shafto Crag in Northumberland were Aldermen , mayors and sheriffs of Newcastle upon Tyne in the 16th and 17th centuries . 1652 bought Mark Shafto , Recorder of Newcastle upon Tyne, the basic rule Whitworth. His son Robert , who was knighted in 1670, held the same office from 1660 and his grandson was High Sheriff of Durham in 1709 .
Two sons of Mark Shafto jun. represented Durham in the House of Commons : Robert Shafto 1712-1713 and 1727-1730 and John Shafto 1729-1742. John Shafto was the father of Robert Shafto , better known as Bobby Shaftoe , who increased the family fortune significantly by marrying Anne Duncombe of Duncombe Park in 1774 . The son of the two, Robert Eden Duncombe Shafto , also MP for Durham City and High Sheriff of Durham in 1842 , who married Catherine Eden , daughter of Sir John Eden, Baronet , of Windlestone Hall , had the old manor replaced with a new country house in 1845. This house was fundamentally damaged by fire and so all that is left of this house today is the attached library wing. Today's two-story house with seven bays comes from the reconstruction of the burned-out house around 1900.
The Shafto family's subsidiary lines also reside at Bavington Hall , Beamish Hall and Windlestone Hall.
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- Whitworth Park . Images of England. English Heritage.
- A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland . Volume I. Burke and Burke, 1835. p. 47. Entry: Shafto of Whitworth .
Coordinates: 54 ° 42 '25.2 " N , 1 ° 37' 58.8" W.