Nunnington Hall, like National Trust, Powis Castle and National Trust, Sizergh Castle, was once a Jacobean house, but retains little from that period, having passed out of the hands of the Graham family in 1839. It also came to the National Trust with very few pictures, despite having once been the home of a well known collector of watercolours, prints and musical instruments, John Rutson (1829–1906), who instead settled at Newby Wiske. It was only when Margaret Rutson (1890–1952) inherited in 1920, that it was modernised by the fashionable York architect, Walter Brierley. She bequeathed it to the National Trust with an endowment, and with the wish that her elder adoptive daughter Susan (1917–2001), who was married to the Duke of Devonshire’s agent at Chatsworth, Peter Clive, should be the tenant, which she was, with her family, until 1978. Recent acquisitions have included portraits of members of the Graham and Rutson families.