Hesslewood Hall was built as a summer villa of the Pease family, leading merchants and bankers of the area.

Hesslewood Hall was the place to be on 1 December 1840.

Joseph Robinson Pease II, the owner, was giving a house party for a very select group of friends, and when Henry Broadley, the wealthy MP for the East Riding, drove over from Norwood House, Beverley, with his sister, Sophia, they found a distinguished company already assembled: Henry, Arthur and Mary Maister, Mr nnd Mrs Edward Smith of Routh and Fanny Broadley, all members of leading local families.

The house was large but few rooms were unoccupied. Pease and his wife, Harriet (daughter of James Walker, of The Hall, Lairgate, Beverley), had two sons and two daughters, and a census taken a few months later showed that Hesslewood Hall was staffed by an army of living-in servants, eight female and five male, all no doubt fully occupied in a labour-intensive household where jugs of hot water had to be carried upstairs and 20 acres of parkland kept in perfect trim as an agreeable ambience for the master and his guests.

Pease was critical of a host who served inferior wine, and the cuisine of Hesslewood Hall would be everything that his well-heeled friends could desire, but he was not accustomed to idling away his time. Even while the party was in progress he was ready to combine business with pleasure and, as a director of the Hull and Selby Railway, left Hesslewood on three occasions to deal with railway affairs. The most serious incident was a near accident at Hessle which resulted in the employee responsible being fined 7s. for negligence.

Hesslewood Hall was described in a directory of the time as 'a handsome mansion', commanding 'a fine view of the Humber', the reason for its existence, J R Pease's father, of identical name, had pulled down his grandfather's old house in the 1780s and rebuilt it as his summer villa with lawns sloping down to the broad river and with the sash windows of its spacious, well-proportioned rooms offering an agreeable prospect of the shipping passing by.

Unlike other affluent residents who were tending to move out of Hull, Pease senior was building a new town house at the same time as his country residence. Charles Mountain, an eminent Hull architect, designed both Hesslewood Hall and No 12 Charlotte Street, the finest house in a fine terrace in the most exclusive street in Hull, part of a project financed by Pease to the tune of £20,000. He was a man of discriminating taste, prepared and able to spend a total of £5,000 on the furnishing of his two houses, and it was fortunate that the family resources were adequate to implement such ambitious schemes.

The Peases were long established in Hull but the one who should probably be regarded as the founding father was Joseph Pease (1688-1778), merchant, whaling magnate, ship-owner, underwriter and a pioneer in the oil crushing industry. Having amassed considerable wealth, he established Hull's first bank in 1754 (known locally as the Old Bank), which had the distinction of being one of the earliest provincial banks in the entire country.

When he died in 1778 he left no male heir to carry on his vast enterprises, but his daughter, Mary, had married a Manchester merchant, Robert Robinson, and it was their son, Joseph Robinson_, who added 'Pease^’ to his name and, as the sonorous Joseph Robinson Pease (1752-1807), succeeded to his grandfather's business empire and built the grand houses at Hesslewood and Hull.

The heir to all this wealth and property was his son, Joseph Robinson Pease Jr (1789-1866), the host at Hesslewood in 1840. Apart from his business activities, he had a relish for public life, with himself as a leading participant_, and he was an influential figure in the local Conservative Party. In parliamentary elections the power he exercised behind the scenes was at least as great as that of the candidates themselves. He entertained Sir Walter James, a young Tory MP for Hull, at Hesslewood, and, when Henry Broadley MP was under attack from his most important supporters, Pease was always the trusted confidant to whom he turned.

The Peases are no longer a power in the business and political life of the area but there are many reminders, particularly in Hull, of the prominent position they once held, though No 12 Charlotte Street (renamed George Street) was demolished in 1969. Their surname survives in Pease Street, Emily Jane Pease is commemorated in Emily Street, and the maiden name of J R Pease's wife, Harriet, is in Walker Street. The monogram, "J.R.P.^” is visible high up on the wall of a former warehouse in Princes Dock Street, now part of the Waterfront Hotel and Club, and the two fine warehouses of 1745 and 1760 still overlook the River Hull, though now converted into apartments. Graves of the family are in the cemetery at Hessle.

J R Pease Jr. died in 1866 but later generations lived on at Hesslewood Hall.

In 1921, however, it became Hull Seamen's and General Orphanage and, as John Hicks has explained in his book, 'Our Orphans', beautiful doors and fireplaces scheduled for removal survived only by the skin of their teeth. It was a lucky escape. The house, which began as a summer villa is now the Hesslewood Hall Business Centre and many more can enjoy what was once the preserve of the Peases and their friends: a beautiful house with elegant rooms and, above all, the view of the river which made the site so attractive to them.