Although Crathorne Hall was built between 1903 and 1906, it sits in a much older designed landscape using the dramatic river Leven valley as its central feature. Designed by the noted architects, Ernest George and Alfred Yeates for Lionel Dugdale, Crathorne Hall was the largest country house of the Edwardian era to be built. George and Yeates also laid out the grounds around the hall but it was another leading garden designer, William Goldring, who provided the design for an intricate rose garden and the layout for the kitchen garden and neighbouring orchard.
Prior to the acquisition of the Crathorne estate by the Dugdale family in 1844, it had belonged to the Crathorne family since the early 14th century. By the mid-16th century, the Crathornes had a small manor house next to the church (south of the present hall) and had laid out a park of c. 300 acres on either side of the river. With their economic circumstances affected by their adherence to the Catholic faith and an interest in their other estate at East Ness in the East Riding, little altered at Crathorne until the turn of the 19th century. When the Dugdales acquired it, it served as a secondary residence mainly for sport until Lionel Dugdale decided to live there permanently in the 1890s and subsequently built a new residence.
Although the hall and immediate gardens were sold in 1977 and later became a hotel, the rest of the estate remains with the Dugdale family. The wider landscape, particularly the woodland, remain intact as do the pleasure grounds to the north of the hall. The rose garden has been grassed over and the sunken garden has been simplified but the designed landscape still provides the setting that George and Yeates envisioned for the hall.