The Stables, High Melton: Tenants sought for bar and restaurant in 18th-century stable block on Yorkshire country estate

Doncaster Council is advertising the lease of The Stables at Melton Park in High Melton, either as a whole or two separate lets.

The listed building, believed to date from the 1750s though part of it was demolished in the 1920s, was once the stable block for High Melton Hall, which was a Doncaster College campus until they moved out in 2017. The college also ran the restaurant.

The building has a function room on the first floor, courtyard and is close to the entrance to the 90-acre park.

A developer has since acquired the hall and parkland for a major housing and leisure development.

The council have stated that The Stables also has potential for a hotel, spa or wedding venue conversion.

Newsholme Developments’ scheme is for over 100 homes plus leisure and retail facilities on the estate near Sprotbrough, to the north of Doncaster.

The house and grounds were owned by Doncaster College and used for teacher training and then general education until the campus closed.

High Melton was a manor from Norman times, but in the 18th century the parkland was landscaped by the wealthy Fountayne family, whose descendants lived there until the 1920s, when they sold most of the estate. It was occupied by the army and used as a prisoner of war camp during World War Two and in 1948 it was purchased by the corporation and became a college.

Melton Park is part of the High Melton Conservation Area and home to several listed buildings and even the remains of a medieval village. Both the hall and St James’s Church are Grade II-listed and the icehouse, medieval settlement of Wildthorpe, stables and other structures in the grounds have legal protection.

The outline proposal is for the hall to be converted into 14 homes with a further 108 properties built in the grounds – some of which would be classed as ‘off-grid’ - along with a ‘retail gateway’, business units, sports hub, artisan craft units, ‘woodland education’ and village centre.

The estate was actually earmarked for housing in the 1920s, when a building contractor bought some of the land, but only a few properties were built before war broke out.