3
The Estate In The Twentieth Century
Perhaps the most significant change in the nature of the Owston estate came with the opening of the Doncaster coal field in the 1860s. Encouraged by reports from the mining companies and in the local press, P.B. Davies-Cooke decided to investigate the possibility of coal mining on his land. Initial trial shafts were unpromising; the ‘Owston No. 2 Bore Hole’ cost £167 and showed that at a depth of 262 feet, there was very hard limestone but no coal. However, on his succession to the estate in 1903, Philip Tatton Davies-Cooke was determined to investigate the possibilities further, and new borings revealed the presence of workable coal seams under Owston Park. The major obstacle was the area’s liability to flooding, which was apparently circumvented by using a new German method of refrigerating the top of the shaft area.
Bullcroft Colliery was sunk in 1908 and was in full production two years later. In 1913, the colliery company leased the mineral rights to the family, and from this point to the nationalisation of the industry in 1947, the mining royalties constituted a major part of the estate income. It was also from this time that Owston took on the quality of a rural island in the midst of an industrial area, which it still evokes despite the recent closure of the majority of the working pits of the Doncaster coalfield. At the peak of production in 1929, Bullcroft Colliery employed 2,600 men, and there were still over 1,000 working there in the early 1960s. The income generated by the mining activity initially allowed the family to pay off its debts and undertake maintenance and improvement of the estate (Usher, 1964: 235).
However, this reversal in the family’s fortunes was to be short-lived. The death of Philip Tatton Davies-Cooke in 1946 incurred substantial death duties, which required that large parts of the Owston and Gwysaney estates be sold off. At Owston, the sale of large tracts of low-lying farmland meant that the estate was reduced from its 19th-century extent of over 3,000 acres to under 1,000. The house, too, had changed as the family left in the late 1880s. From 1883 to 1889, the hall and grounds were left, and between 1910 and 1914, the house was completely vacant. In 1914, the front portion was let, which in 1928 became the clubhouse of a newly opened golf course. In 1940, the hall was requisitioned by the army until the end of the war when it was converted into several self-contained flats, one of which was retained for the family during their occasional visits to Owston (Usher, 1964: 247-50).
In 1964, when Philip Ralph Davies-Cooke commissioned the writing of family history, the estate consisted of the house and its associated outbuildings, five farms and eighty acres of woodland, among a total of just under 1,000 acres. By this time, the walled garden was being used as a commercial market garden, and the grounds were being cut for hay. In 1951, the stables were moved to a local Mainer (Usher, 1964: 254). The garden area around the house was re-landscaped when the late Colonel and Mrs. Cooke returned from Gwysaney to take up residence at Owston upon their retirement in 1969; a survey of the grounds undertaken at around this time revealed that the soil was not very deep since the limestone belt lay just below the surface, and the landscaping involved the import of large quantities of top-soil from the surrounding area (Doncaster Archives: DD.DC/E7/1-19).
The death of Colonel Davies-Cooke in 1976 once again left the family facing sizeable death duties, which, on this occasion, necessitated the sale of the remaining parts of the estate. The property was purchased in September 1979 by Mr. Peter Edwards. Mrs. Kathleen Davies-Cooke retained the lease of the family’s flat in the hall for about two years, at which time she returned to take up residence in North Wales (P. Edwards, pers. Comm.).
