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So to start with, before Heslington Hall was part of The University of York, it was used as an RAF base during the Second World War. Before that it was occupied for several generations by the Yarburgh family, the family down through which the title Baron Deramore is passed; after which the Deramore Arms is named.
Henrietta Yarburgh is the first in our set of six. She was one of the Yarburgh daughters, and lived in Heslington Hall… no doubt she used to sleep in one of the offices, and used to retire with the ladies after dinner to one of the conference rooms.
Miss Yarburgh was linked by marriage to the second on our list: Sir John Vanbrugh. This will surely be a name that rings familiarly in your mind; if not for your knowledge of the man himself, then at least because you’ve had the odd cup of coffee in his eponymous college, or maybe even lived there.
Sir Vanbrugh was an architect, and was the brain behind edifices far more note-worthy than Vanbrugh College (yes, even greater than New Vanbrugh), perhaps his most famous construction being North Yorkshire’s very own Castle Howard, famously one of the grandest country houses in the county, and equally famous for its alternative identity: Brideshead.
Vanbrugh was in a society called the Kit-Cat Club, a political, literary group of gentlemen with shared objectives on how England should be run. Vanbrugh was the figurehead of the group and through it became friends with the 3rd Earl of Burlington, a gentleman called Richard Boyle, who also happens to be the third person of the six.
Boyle was a fellow architect and has his own connections to York through this profession, having designed the Assembly Rooms, or ASK Pizza as they are now. He also has connections to London; as well as land that he inherited in Yorkshire, Burlington House on London’s Piccadilly was home for him.
It is through a combination of marriages and fraternity that the final three of the six come to be. Boyle’s daughter, Charlotte Boyle, married the 5th Duke of Devonshire, whose brother, Lord George Cavendish built the Burlington Arcade.
Less of a chain of six people, more of a web of influence. So what have we learnt? Hopping on the train departing from platform three is not the only way to get from York to London. Two Lords, An Earl, a Duke, and a pair of unassuming misses will get you there too.
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