Thoroton Hall

Thoroton Hall in 1951

Now Grade II listed, Thoroton Hall was built around 1720 on the site of an earlier building.  The kitchen and service wings (right) were a later Georgian addition.

Abandoned to neglect in the 1980s a major refurbishment took place in the 1990s in an attempt to restore the building to as near its original appearance as possible.

Of double range plan, Thoroton Hall has two storeys plus garrets, two valley chimney stacks and graduated slate roofs, with ashlar coped gables and original sashed windows.

Original features remain in the interior, fine panelling in several rooms, mellow stone paving in the entrance hall, an original early 18th century staircase with banisters with alternate barley twist and plain turning, many original doors with brass fitments and fine late 18th Century firegrates. Fine oak beams in one room are believed to have been first used in a timber frame house on the site.

The stables, outbuildings and adjoining boundary wall are also grade II listed, brick built with pantile roofs in the late 18th, mid and late 19th Centuries. In the wall of the barn and stable range on the roadside can be found the village 19th Century wall post box.

The village gave its name to the family of Thoroton, ancestors of Robert Thoroton the county historian, but it is clear that the family had moved to live in Car Colston before his time. Famous residents of Thoroton Hall, however, do include Ethel Bedford Fenwick, the first state registered nurse. Born Ethel Gordon Manson in January 1857, she was brought up at Thoroton Hall by her mother and stepfather George Storer, MP., starting her nursing career in 1878 at Nottingham Children's hospital and at the age of 24 becoming Matron of St Bartholomew's hospital in London. She worked for the establishment of proper training for nurses and for government recognition of their professional status, becoming the first S.R.N. when the register of nurses was opened in 1921. She married Dr Bedford Fenwick in 1887 and went on to found the British Nurses Association, the British College of Nurses and later the International Council of Nurses. She died at the age of ninety in 1947, and at her wish, her ashes were interred in Thoroton churchyard near the east end of the church.

The Ransom family of Thoroton Hall also played a prominent role in Nottinghamshire, particularly Mrs Edith Mary Ethel Ransom as a magistrate, company director, President of Bromley House Library Nottingham from 1935 -38, and member of the Thoroton Society from 1937 -49. She lived in Thoroton Hall from the 1920's and was a benefactress to the church and parish until her death in 1950.

(Information kindly supplied by Rosemary Ruck)