Fire
Bellmount Rebounds
On top of Belton’s world stands Bellmount Tower within its cathedral of trees. This final part on Bellmount’s history by Ian Ross covers fire, war and restoration.
The Red Lion Hotel, 23 High Street Grantham demolished 1963.
Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette November 1841
Tory Tyranny
Earl Brownlow has discharged [evicted] Mr Wakefield 80 years of age and for 40 years a tenant from his land, because his son who is landlord of the Red Lion, Grantham, had Sir Montague Cholmeley at his house during the election. Old Wakefield solicited an interview with the Noble Lord, to ascertain his reasons for discharging him, when the great man told him that the Red Lion being the resort of Radicals in Grantham and his son its landlord was sufficient reason for him being discharged from his land. His manner to the old man was most uncivil he having bullied him in the most offensive style!
That same month, fire gutted Bellmount Tower
Cholmeley of Easton Hall, former Whig MP for Grantham, opposed the 1st Earl’s Tory candidates in the 1841 general election. Charles Cust, the Earl’s second son, lost the Lindsey constituency to a Whig-Radical. Both Charles and Viscount Alford had fisticuffs with the locals during the ballot at Gainsborough. The 1841 poll book shows Wakefield’s son voting Whig. Public ballots allowed landlords to instruct tenants-at-will to vote for the landlord’s preferred candidate under threat of eviction. Earl Brownlow included his tenant’s family, old Mr Wakefield, within this dictum.
The Manners family of Belvoir Castle were Whigs and chose blue as their colour. They bought several pubs and inns in the constituency, and added "blue" to their names. People could drink "blue ale" in the "blue" pubs, like the Blue Pig or Blue Lion. This was an inducement to vote for Whig candidates in the parliamentary elections. The Brownlows supported the Reds, the Tory party.
Rebuild
The Tower was undergoing a £48,150 (RPI) renovation by architect Sir Anthony Salvin, when fire struck at night. Six labourers underwent interrogation, but arson remained unproven. The falling flagpole demolished the fabric. Walls needed internal shoring to prevent collapse. The rebuild from the round windows upwards is visible to this day. Bellmount’s cupola may have gone at this date.
Re-plastering in 1852 at a cost of £14,000 (RPI) provides the earliest year for the graffiti coating the stairwell. No further expenses are identified until the 3rd Earl replaced 79 balusters in 1882 and flag flying expenses reappear. A 40-foot well sunk in 1898 appears on OS maps 28 feet north of Bellmount, Capped in the 20th century, just below it is a brick-filled depression marking an access point.
Volunteer soldiers
The North Midlands Brigade ~4,000 men, encamped at Belton Park in July 1891. The Brigade Signaling department passed semaphore communications between Bellmount Tower and St Wulframs 3 miles distant. The signalers had difficulty seeing the church due to the smoke in the town that shrouded industrial Grantham even in summertime! Volunteers trained regularly on Bellmount’s slopes. Pitching their bell-tents below the Tower, 8 rows of 15, they held sports on the present-day deer sanctuary east of Old Wood. Lincolnshire volunteers attacked the Tower in 1903 commanded by Captain Adelbert Cokayne-Cust later 5th Baron Brownlow. Manoeuvres in the woods included 2 Maxim machine guns, a foretaste of the 1915 Machine Gun Corps.
Australian Machine Gun Corps lines water tank (Patterson 1918) above. The Tower, right has its venetian windows blocked up and round windows converted to gun slits. Note the furled Union Jack on the flag pole and soldiers sat in the arch far right.
20th Battalion Royal Liverpool Pals band c1914 with the Tower in the background. Hutment yet to be built on this site.
WWI
Corporal Cumberworth, an artist attached to the New Zealand Machine Gun Corps (MGC), painted Belton Camp from his lines at Bellmount’s foot. He documents it as a water tower. Water pressure problems are confirmed by the Australian MGC who built secondary towers. His painting looking west down Bellmount Avenue shows the two cast iron water tanks covered with tarpaulins. Their earthwork platform remains visible.
Zeppelins flying from Cuxhaven detected by Marconi Direction Finding stations 27th/28th November 1916. Note RI just south of Bellmount at 02:28 of L21 and this Zeppelin’s destruction, RIP, at 06:37 off Lowestoft shot down with loss of all crew by 3 Royal Naval Air Service planes (Bodleian Library, Oxford). Author’s annotations red. Castle provides details of L21's mission and demise.
Zeppelins
During 1916, 38% of Zeppelin raids either overflew or targeted Lincolnshire. The closest bombing occurred at Hougham railway station, 6 km from Belton. During raids, electric gongs sounded the alarm at Belton Camp and all lights would be extinguished.
Zeppelins needed wireless for navigation making them vulnerable to radio detection. The Germans used factory chimneys for their aerial masts, the French the Eiffel Tower. The British used garden architecture such as the 1814 Nore Folly, an arch on the National Trust Slindon estate 116m above sea level. Royal Flying Corps (RFC) Station Grantham had wireless. But, used for training, it would not offer continuous radio silence essential for intercepts. Figure 2 records a Zeppelin radio intercept (RI) a few miles south west of Bellmount. We know the RFC visited Bellmount from their graffiti. Could Bellmount’s 360 degree vista, 140 meters above sea level, have been in the secret network of high-masted Zeppelin detection aerials as with Nore Folly?
WWII
Graffiti attests to the presence of the RAF Regiment, RAF, and WAAF. An R. Nottingham 1945 from Hitchin is identifiable as a centre lathe turner for aircraft possibly from nearby RAF Spitalgate. Mr George Siddan’s inscriptions occur several times. A churchwarden from Londonthorpe, could he have fire watched from Bellmount? Probably used as an important observation post for the 1940 General Headquarters Line, a line of anti-tank traps and pillboxes against German invasion, ran through Barkston.
Plan 1: Venetian window removed with an aeroplane shaped cross surmounted by three helmeted airmen, heads bowed (Belton archives).
RAF memorials
Peregrine Brownlow became a Pilot Officer in the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1939. He served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook and attained the rank of Squadron Leader.
In 1946, Peregrine proposed Bellmount’s west elevation as a memorial to airmen killed in action, plan 1 left.
Plan 2, below, has a bronze catafalque with inlaid names within the arch. Perhaps the names of fallen airmen such as Squadron Leader Zakrzewski and his four crew who crashed their Wellington bomber near Belton from 2,000ft while practicing single engine flying in May 1943? Or the 3-man crew of the Airspeed Oxford that dived into Belton Park after a night take-off from Cranwell, December 1940?
Fire again
In May 1958, Peregrine returned from Roaring River, his holiday home in Jamaica. He found Bellmount a charred shell. Ex-Police Inspector Ledger, Belton’s security officer had spotted smoke rising from his office in the Steward’s room. Firemen spent 4 hours extinguishing the conflagration blamed on children (a burnt-out shell in 1972 left).
Bellmount Woods became an unofficial adventure playground for the local lads, in the 1960s. They would search for discarded ammunition, on one occasion finding a grenade. Although the fire had destroyed the lower part of the staircase, they would shinny up the stairwell to gain access (personal communication).
Scaffolding around the Tower, 1989.
Water poured through the roof and down the centre of the main structure
A 1980’s survey portrayed Bellmount in a parlous condition. The Brownlows had planned to extend the adventure playground railway into the gardens and construct a cable car to Bellmount, but the National Trust had other ideas.
In 1988, Belton secured an English Heritage grant of £85,000 towards the final renovation cost of £189,112.61 (~£450,000 CPI). The fourteen-month project unsealed both Venetian windows, but cash shortage led to infilling of the east window. The replacement wooden floor of the main room covered over an original stone subfloor complete with drains. Builders purloined bricks & stone from the ruined Bellmount Cottages adjacent to the Tower. Clumber’s stone-yard provided York flagstones. The architects designed the floors for 50 persons in the main chamber and 30 each on the second floor and roof. The roof was intended as a public viewing platform.
At 11:00, May 22nd 1990 Bellmount Tower reopened on summer Sundays from 1 pm to 4.30 pm using volunteer stewards. That year Bellmount welcomed 2,692 visitors on 40 days.
Bellmount today with its avenue of lime and chestnut.
Reconnecting Grantham to its historic landscape 2019
Belton and the Woodland Trust, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, are linking Bellmount with Londonthorpe Wood for the benefit of both people and wildlife. The Eastern Avenue of limes will be restored. Viscount Tyrconnel’s 272-year-old Bellmount Tower has awoken yet again and welcomes guided walks on a regular basis from 2022.
Proposed Works being applied for are:
- Stairwell windows
- East elevation venetian windows
- North elevation arched windows
- Render to east elevation
- Oak seating boards to stairwell
Interior views of the second floor. The wooden shutters facing north would have allowed views towards the remaining two spires of Lincoln Cathedral.
Views from the roof showing slipped slates. The four above images are from Bellmount Tower planning documents.