Image: Moxhull Hall, built in 1900. Reproduced with the permission of Sutton Coldfield Library.
Moxhull Hall is situated three miles from Sutton Coldfield. For six centuries the estate was in the possession of the de Lisle family. It is a story complicated by the absence of heirs, second marriages and imaginative new arrangements. When, at the end of the seventeenth century, the male line failed, Mary Lisle married Sir Andrew Hacket and gave her eldest son the name of Lisle. Her son, however, also left no heir and was succeeded by his nephew Andrew. The last Hacket of Moxhull died childless in 1815. His widow married again, and it was her husband’s son the splendidly-named Berkeley Plantagenet Noel who sold the estate in 1882.
During the nineteenth century Moxhull Hall was more than once enlarged. An engraving by John Preston Neale, the noted architectural draughtsman, from 1823 depicts Moxhull Hall as a large, stone-built mansion with two smaller wings. Photographs taken later in the century portray an imposing country house. In 1882 Moxhull Hall was being rented by Archibald Cameron Corbett, an aspiring Liberal politician. He came forward as the Liberal candidate in the North Warwickshire constituency – which included Sutton Coldfield – in a by election in July 1884. He held dinners for his supporters at Moxhull but was defeated. Subsequently he was returned for his home city of Glasgow. What happened at Moxhull in the years which followed cannot be established with complete certainty. Moxhull Hall cannot be found in the census of 1891 – suggesting it was not regularly occupied. About this time the estate was acquired by Howard Proctor Ryland, a farmer who also manufactured, on a large scale, a fertilizer in which manure and chemicals were combined. It seems he farmed the estate but did not live in the house. Somewhat confusingly he lived at another house called Moxhull Hall in Erdington. We find him there in 1901 with his wife, son and daughter, butler, cook, three housemaids and kitchen maid. He died in December 1905. By then the old house was gone, badly damaged by fire and pulled down.
Thomas Howard Ryland, the son, now enters the story. Born in Sutton in 1876, he was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1900 a new house on the Moxhull estate was ready for him to move into. It was called Moxhull Hall. Carpets, paintings, silverware and china saved from the old hall found a new home. The new Moxhull Hall was set in three fields of parkland, with gardens planned by Ryland. It was very much a modern house – it had a garage for motor cars and a telephone line was installed. In June 1914 Ryland sold the greater part of the estate at an auction at the Grand Hotel in Birmingham, securing £18,500 for 1,052 acres. Though a qualified solicitor, Ryland did not practice. His income came from farming, and he became a prominent spokesman for the agricultural interest, rising to become President of the National Farmers Union in 1924. In public life he was a magistrate and a member of Staffordshire County Council. When the town council in Sutton Coldfield sought to limit the speed of motor cars in its streets to 10 mph, Ryland spoke out in opposition. He declared that there were no such limits elsewhere in Warwickshire and that the regulation would be ignored. To some admirers he seemed an MP-in-the-making, but this was never realized. In 1926 Ryland sold Moxhull Hall and the remaining 453 acres. The house was put up for auction again in 1929. When it did not reach an acceptable price, it was withdrawn and sold privately.
Ryland married Beryl Strathenden Campbell in 1909. She was not to lead the life a lady of leisure. Beryl Ryland in fact became a determined campaigner for the involvement of women in public life. Though born in India, she went to school in England. At the age of eighteen she returned to India, but three years later had returned and married Ryland. During the First World War Beryl Ryland trained with the Sutton branch of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, becoming a Commandant-in-Chief. She was also involved in a Sutton organization called the Women’s War Aid League which sought to bring together women who wished to do something to help – such as organizing pantomimes for soldiers based in Sutton Park in 1915 and 1917.
When the war ended, Ryland became a prominent member of a national network called the Women’s Citizens Association. Unsurprisingly this remarkable woman became its president. The autonomous branch in Sutton recruited 300 members; the most active members regularly went to observe proceedings at county council meetings. In February 1921 Ryland stood as a candidate in the Sutton ward of Trinity for the county council. The point she wanted to make was that only one of the seventy county councillors was female. She was described as ‘an excellent speaker … she possesses a delightful speaking voice … (and) always grasps her subject.’ However, she was defeated, securing 419 votes against 710 for her male opponent. In 1923 Ryland became president of the Wishaw and Middleton Women’s Institute, which was formed in the garden of Moxhull Hall. It was, she said, ‘The greatest yet simplest of all women’s movements.’
T. H. Ryland spent his later years at Morton House in Leamington and died in October 1948. He left an estate of £63, 228. After the Rylands the house passed into the hands of Archibald James and then another owner before becoming a hotel in 1969.
I wish to thank Yvonne Moore for checking the census returns.
Stephen Roberts, November 2021
Stephen Roberts is an Hon. Associate Professor at the Australian National University