Newby Hall is a country house beside the River Ure in the parish of Skelton-on-Ure in North Yorkshire, England. It is 3 miles south-east of Ripon and 6 miles south of Topcliffe Castle, by which the manor of Newby was originally held. A Grade I listed building, the hall contains a collection of furniture and paintings and is surrounded by extensive gardens. Newby Hall is open to the public. History and media appearances The manor of Newby was originally held by the lords of Topcliffe Castle. In St Columba's Church at Topcliffe are several monuments to the Robinson family of Newby and Rainton. After the death of Sir John Crosland in 1670, the Crosland family sold the manor of Newby in the 1690s to Sir Edward Blackett, an MP for the constituency of Ripon. He demolished the existing manor house and in 1697 built a new mansion, reputedly with the assistance of Sir Christopher Wren. In 1697, when visiting Newby, Celia Fiennes described it as "the finest house I saw in Yorkshire". Blackett was succeeded in 1718 by his son Edward, who, in turn, was succeeded by his nephew also called Edward, who in 1748 sold the estate to Richard Elcock (later Richard Elcock Weddell), to whose young son William Weddell it passed in 1762. William Weddell (1736–1792), an MP for the constituency of Malton, benefited from his great-uncle's South Sea Company fortune and improved and enlarged the house during the 1760s. The interior was remodelled, to the designs of several architects, including John Carr and Robert Adam. The building housed William Weddell's collection of Roman antiquities which he had brought back from Italy during 1764–5. Both Robert Adam and William died in 1792, leaving the estate to Thomas Philip Robinson, Lord Grantham, who later changed his name to Thomas Weddell and was subsequently also known as Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey. When he died in 1859, his titles passed to his nephew, George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon, 2nd Earl of Ripon, but Newby Hall went to his daughter, Lady Mary Gertrude Robinson, who married Henry Vyner (1805–1861). Lady Mary commissioned William Burges to build the Church of Christ the Consoler in the grounds in 1871–76 as a memorial to her son, who was killed by bandits in Greece in 1870. An equestrian statue brought to England by the Vyners and erected in London after the 1660