Milner Field, The Lost Country House Of Titus Salt Jnr
by Richard Lee-Van den Daele and R David Beale Barleybrook, £12.99

Few of those taking an old pathway from the end of Baildon’s Coach Road, past a solitary gatehouse, darkened by a canopy of trees, would know that they are approaching Milner Field, described as “one of the great Yorkshire houses”.

And few would realise that the property was built by the son of one of the Bradford district’s greatest industrialists.

Now no longer standing, Milner Field came to symbolise the wealth and social position of the Salt family.

While much has been written about Sir Titus Salt’s model village, now the World Heritage Site of Saltaire, little mention has been made of the houses occupied by his family.

This charming book, beautifully written by Richard Lee-Van den Daele and R David Beale, asks why so many notable buildings came to be lost over the past century, and looks at the story of Milner Field, overlooking the Aire Valley.

Built by Titus Salt Jnr in the mid-19th century, its “des res” description reveals a “large conservatory, winter gardens, greenhouses, well-stocked gardens, commodious stables and garages, two entrances, lodges, woodlands, grass lands and lake”, with “extensive bracing moorlands” minutes away.

The book’s introduction reveals that: “In 1946 at least 2,000 once-magnificent country houses dotted the English countryside; neglected, riddled with damp and dry rot, and awaiting the inescapable arrival of sledgehammer and pickaxe.

“The author and historian John Harris calculated that by 1955 a country house was being demolished, somewhere in England, every two-and-a-half days. He likens the loss in architectural terms to be ‘probably as great as that from the destructions following the Dissolution of the Monasteries’.”

Even had there been any awareness that a valuable historic property was being destroyed, there were few means of rescue, such as grants.

By the 1920s, Milner House had become “decidedly unfashionable” and was damp and difficult to heat but, as the book reveals, its demise was also down to a “grim reputation” and a series of misfortunes.

This is one of those books that, once you start turning the pages, becomes hard to put down.

Extensively researched, the book is richly illustrated with old photographs of generations of the Salt family, and other notable local families connected with the property, as well as exterior and interior images of it.

The striking photographs include young members of the Salt family posing in fancy dress, a royal tree-planting in the grounds of Milner Field, attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales in June 1882 – one of two Royal visits to the house – and aerial photographs of the roofless property.

In his foreword, Denys Salt, grandson of Titus Jnr, writes fondly of the house where his father, uncles and aunt spent their childhood.

He concludes: “When one considers how many fine country houses have been lost... it is indeed refreshing and rewarding to be presented with such an authentic chronicle of one such house and its successive occupants over the years.”