The estate first surfaces in the historical record as 'Cruketon pays four marks' in the Boldon Book, the Durham bishopric's answer to Domesday, compiled in 1183. Bishop Hatfield's survey of 1381 records a John de Kirkby holding 'the vill of Crokhogh and a hundred acres of arable and woodland.' For four hundred years the estate changed hands between minor gentry. Then in about 1635, Sir George Baker bought it. Sir George was the second son of Oswald Baker of Durham. He served as recorder of Newcastle-on-Tyne and defended the town for King Charles during the Civil War. His grandson, George Baker MP, member of parliament for Durham City, remodelled the house in 1716. The antiquarian Thomas Baker, the family's most distinguished member, came from the same line.

When the Douai seminary closed in 1793, professors and students fled across the Channel with whatever they could carry. The English Catholic hierarchy split the group in two. The Northern Vicariate students, the ones bound to serve the Catholic North, came to Crook Hall, which George Baker had vacated in favour of Elemore Hall. They studied under Thomas Eyre, formerly of Douai, alongside John Lingard, who would become one of the most influential Catholic historians of the 19th century, and John Daniel, the last president of Douai itself. For ten years the rooms of an empty Durham mansion echoed with seminary Latin. By 1804 the building had outgrown its purpose, and Bishop William Gibson began work on Ushaw College a few miles away at Ushaw Moor. The students transferred there in 1808.

Industry caught up with Crook Hall. The village of Crookhall grew as the surrounding coal and iron ore deposits were exploited, and in 1877 the Consett Iron Company bought the estate. By the 1890s the avenue of beech trees that had once led down Delves Lane to the house was reduced to a memory. A naturalist noted in 1890 that very few of the trees remained, with the last falling in 1885. A row still stood by the fishpond in front of the hall, which by then was described as ruined. The house was demolished around 1900. What had sheltered Catholic England's exiled future priesthood, what had hosted George Baker's recorders and remodellings, was levelled to make way for the industry the Consett works embodied.

Coordinates 54.851 N, 1.810 W, geohash gcy8n. Cruise at 2,000 to 3,000 ft AGL for the best read of the Derwent Valley. The hall stood roughly a mile northeast of the modern village of Crookhall, near Consett, in northwest County Durham. There is nothing of the house left to see. Look instead for the broad cleared zone that once held the Consett steelworks, just south, the most striking ground feature for miles. The A691 traces the rough line of the historic Delves Lane corridor. Newcastle International Airport (EGNT) lies 16 miles north-northeast and is the most practical field for IFR approaches. Durham itself sits 8 miles to the southeast, its Norman cathedral visible from cruising altitude on a clear day. The North Pennines rise in the distance to the west.