Doncaster Ramblers: Sutton Scarsdale Circular – The Mystery Ruin

Yet within a couple of hours the downpour had become a mere drizzle and before long, the sun is blazing, and we were stripping off the wet weather layers.

Blessed or what? Anyway, to the walk, billed as an eleven mile leisurely stroll through scenery with great views taking in woodland, meadows, quiet lanes, lakes and an iconic ruin.

It’s fair to say it did not disappoint.

Equally iconic among walk leaders Bob Carlisle (partnered by Dave Binnington as back marker) led twenty four the way south through Pools Brook Country Park for about a mile before reaching the district of Duckmanton, an estate of housed

bordering fields.

Following the pavement south we soon left suburbia behind entering open country on a well defines public footpath.

A steady straight line one and a half miles followed by a right, then left a third of a mile later brought us to the ruins of Sutton Scarsdale Hall.

We’d travelled about five miles, climber 450ft, been going two hours and only now stopped for elevenses.

Our tummies were about as empty as the building before us.

Suitably refreshed yet gutted we could not explore more the ruined Sutton Scar, Bob led us on a heading west then north west again across open farmland and though the occasional areas of woodland, leaving some of us blind in the darkness till our eyes got accustomed.

All to soon we were back on the path heading north towards the Blacksmiths Arms about a mile away.

A long standing tradition with Donny Ramblers long walks, largely abandoned in the aftermath of Covid, so this pub stop was very welcome.

Shame they only served lager! Continuing in more or less the same direction along field edges, and through woods we hit almost inevitably the Trans-Pennine-

Trail, on which we remained for the final two and a quarter miles, back to base.

Great walk, thanks Bob.

Point of Interest: Sutton Scarsdale Hall was built in the Baroque style on the site of an existing house between 1724 and 1729 for the 4th Earl of Scarsdale. The architect for the new hall was Francis Smith of Warwick, who skilfully incorporated the earlier building of about 1469 within his design. John Arkwright, a descendant of the industrialist Richard Arkwright, bought the hall, but in 1919 the family sold it to a company of asset strippers. Many of its finely decorated rooms were sold off as architectural salvage and the house was reduced to a shell. The ruins of the hall were saved from demolition by the writer Sir Osbert Sitwell, who bought it in 1946. In 1970 descendants of the Sitwells persuaded the Department of the Environment to take the building into guardianship and preserve it for the nation.