Alexander Anne

The Anne family were prominent in the Doncaster area from at least the early 14th century, when Sir William de Anne was Constable of Tickhill Castle, and they are first recorded as lords of Frickley in 1379. The estate evidently passed from father to son through several generations, but a convincing continuous descent can only be traced from John Anne (d. 1520). Such information as is known about the earlier generations is summarised in Burke's Landed Gentry.

At the Reformation, the Anne family retained their Catholic faith and in the late 16th and 17th centuries they were amongst the most ardent Recusants in Yorkshire, consistently intermarrying with other Catholic families and fairly openly adhering to the Catholic faith and harbouring Catholic priests. Martin Anne (d. 1589) seems to have been reasonably discreet about his adherence to the old religion, but his younger brother William may have been the Catholic priest known as Fr. John Amyas who was martyred at York in 1588/89, and his nephew Fr. William Anlaby certainly suffered the same fate in 1597; both men have been beatified by the Roman Catholic church. Martin's son, George Anne (d. 1620) was known to the authorities as a Recusant and his estate was seized in 1591 and had to be redeemed by a rental payment. Through his marriage he acquired the Burghwallis estate in addition to Frickley, although the latter remained the family's principal seat until it was sold in 1750. Despite the acquisition of Burghwallis, he fell into arrears with his redemption payments and in 1604 he was obliged to sell the manor of Roall near Goole to clear his debts. He and his son, Philip Anne (1591-1647), who also compounded for his recusancy, continued to accumulate debts, and Philip owed £2,400 at his death.

After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 the financial penalties facing Recusant families were less severe, and under King James II Michael Anne (1626-1709) was briefly a JP for the West Riding. He was also able to arrange a good marriage for his son and heir, Michael Anne (1653-1717) with Jane, the daughter of Lord Langdale. The younger Michael's son, Marmaduke Anne, died aged about 30 in 1722, and left a young family. Two of his three daughters became nuns on the Continent, and he left Frickley to his elder son and Burghwallis to the younger. Michael Anne (fl. 1750), who inherited Frickley, sold it in 1750, and thereafter Burghwallis became the principal family seat. It was extensively remodelled for George Anne (1775-1802), presumably after he came of age in 1796, but the identity of the architect involved is not known. When George died unexpectedly of scarlet fever in 1802, leaving no son, the estate passed to his younger brother, Michael Anne (1777-1853), who continued to improve the estate. In 1810 he married Maria (1792-1844), the daughter of George Crathorne, and under the complicated provisions of her mother's first husband's will, inherited the Bodney estate in Norfolk on condition that he took the name of Tasburgh.

Michael Tasburgh, as he became, undertook a further remodelling of Burghwallis Hall in the 1820s, and took his family to live on the continent while the works were in progress. He seems to have enjoyed life in Paris where there were many Catholic ex-patriot families and he was able to mix in the best society, and in the end the family stayed there almost continuously until 1828. In 1833 his wife inherited the Crathorne estate under trusts which secured her control of the property, and her husband's attempts to persuade her to settle it upon their son seems to have led in 1835 to a permanent breach between husband and wife: at her death, Maria left the estate between her surviving daughters. We know a lot about Michael and his family because his youngest daughter Barbara's memoir of her life was published in 1950. Michael does not emerge as a sympathetic character from its pages: selfish in his own pleasures, he denied his children toys; found lodgings in Paris in damp and gloomy houses which made his wife ill; and appears to have tried to use undue influence on her in the matter of the disposition of the Crathorne estate. His son George (1813-82), who resumed the surname Anne, seems to have been made of rather similar cloth, and perhaps fortunately never married. When he died in Italy in 1882, the male line of the Annes expired, and Burghwallis passed to his nephew, Ernest Lambert Swinburne Charlton (1852-1939), who took the surname Anne in 1883. Ernest was in effect the last of the Annes of Burghwallis; when he died the estate passed to his son, George Charlton Anne (1886-1960), who put the estate up for sale in lots in 1942 and sold the Hall itself to the Sisters of Charity in 1946 for use as a retirement home for elderly ladies, a role it has fulfilled under several different Catholic owners down to 2014.