page_title: Scarborough Art Gallery
section_title: History of the Gallery
hierarchical_section_title: Scarborough Art Gallery / History of the Gallery
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque installed at the Scarborough Art Gallery as part of the Scarborough History Trail
context_page_description: Scarborough Art Gallery is an art gallery in the English town of Scarborough. It is housed in a Grade II* Italianate villa in Scarborough’s Crescent, designed by Richard Hey Sharp. The gallery is administered by the Scarborough Museums Trust and is open to the public. Its permanent collection has been developed over the past seventy years through gifts, bequests and purchases.
context_section_description: The history of the building which today houses Scarborough Art Gallery began in 1828, when local solicitor and Town Clerk, John Uppleby, in partnership with local builders John Barry and his brother William, bought the land on which The Crescent would be built from the wealthy local banker and shipowner, John Tindall. In 1830, the York architect Richard Hey Sharp (who also designed Scarborough's Rotunda Museum) and his brother Samuel were commissioned to draw up plans for the site. Building in what was to become The Crescent started in 1833 and the two terraces (The Crescent and Belvoir Terrace) were erected to the original design, although the plans for the site originally had seven villas to the south rather than the current four.
  Crescent Villa was the last of the villas to be built, erected in 1845 as a home for John Uppleby and his family. After John's death in 1856, his wife and family continued to live in the house until her death in 1881, at which time it was bought by Edward Chivers Bower, father of the sculptor Lady Ethel Alice Chivers Harris and the great grandfather of Katharine, Duchess of Kent. Bower renamed the house 'Broxholme' after his family seat near Doncaster. The house stayed in the Bower family until 1904 when it was sold to Miss Mary Evelyn Maud Crompton Stansfield, whose family claimed ancestral connections to the diarist John Evelyn. Miss Stansfield used the house as a summer residence and let it out for the rest of the year. In 1924 the house was sold to its last private owner, Henry Edward Donner, a solicitor and a member of one of Scarborough's oldest families, who renamed it ‘Crescent House’. A keen gardener, Donner made many improvements to the gardens including installing the stone gateway to the old Falsgrave Strawberry Gardens, which can still be seen today.
  Following Henry Donner's death, the house was purchased by Scarborough Corporation in 1942 for £3000 and for five years was used as a welfare clinic and children's nursery. The clinic moved out in February 1947 and the Corporation decided to turn the building into a public art gallery. The Scarborough Art Gallery opened to the public on 17 November 1947.
caption: Scarborough Art Gallery plaque
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