Sandrock House

The House

Sandrock House stands at Tickhill Spital on the north-east corner of Stripe Lane and Bawtry Road. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the site was originally a collection of farm buildings, cottages and a mill.  

In the early 20th century, an extensive 2 storey, large bay-windowed house was added to a small farm cottage - one of the original buildings and now a Grade ll listed building. The extended property incorporated an unusual first floor, south facing, glass-roofed verandah built into the rock face at its eastern end.

The house was set in the south-west corner of extensive grounds, which incorporated a dovecote, a disused windmill, a large wooded area known as Sandrock Plantation, partly surrounding a central, grassy area known as Sandrock Park.  

During the Second World War, officers of the Royal Artillery Corps were billeted in the house, whilst others ranks were accommodated in nissen huts in the grounds.

The Brooksbanks

The 1756 Tickhill Enclosure Map and the 1848 Tickhill Tithe Award shows that John Bilham and Robert Wrigglesworth, respectively, were the owners of the land and properties on the ‘Sandrock’ site in the 18th and 19th centuries.  However, it was Benjamin Heywood Brooksbank, JP, who lived there from c1870 to 1915, who was responsible for the building of the present Sandrock House in the early 20th century.

Benjamin Brooksbank was the son of the Rev. Edward Hawke Brooksbank, Vicar of Tickhill from 1821 to 1856. He was born in Tickhill in 1828 and lived at the Vicarage in Northgate until the mid-19th century; he is described in the 1851 census as a ‘gentleman farmer’. In 1861, he was living at 89 Northgate (this property was next door to the Vicarage and may have been St Leonard’s House) and was described as a ‘Landowner and proprietor’; ten years later, he was shown to be living at Spital Hill, by then he was also a Justice of the Peace for the West Riding of Yorkshire. A bachelor, Benjamin remained there until his death in 1915; the next occupant was his nephew, Hugh Lonsdale Brooksbank, also a Justice of the Peace.