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Meet the Neighbours - Blithfield Hall #78

This month I start a brand new series on stately homes local to Hoar Cross Hall and the first one is Blithfield Hall, which was probably the nearest stately home neighbour to Hoar Cross Hall and had been privately owned by the Bagot family since the 14th century.  The house, which is Grade I listed, is situated between Rugeley and Abbots Bromley and is about 6 miles from the Hall.  I remember calling round with my parents once to see Nancy, Lady Bagot, and admiring the goats they had roaming around the nearby fields.  Blithfield Hall is known as the home of a breed of goat, the Bagot goat, which for several hundred years have lived semi-wild on the estate....

Meet the Neighbours - Shugborough Hall #80

The next house in this series is a mere half hour from Hoar Cross Hall and we often visited it during the summer months and later, when my children were born, we’d take them for a visit too!  Seated on the edge of Cannock Chase this elegant house was once a manor house owned by the Bishops of Lichfield, until the dissolution of the monasteries around 1540.  Later it came into the hands of the Anson family, who were ancestors of the Earls of Lichfield, and stayed there for three centuries.  William Anson’s grandson, also called William, demolished the manor house in 1693 and built a three storey building in the Neo-Classical style which forms the central p...

Meet the Neighbours - Trentham Gardens #83

This neighbour was a little further afield to Hoar Cross Hall than the other houses, as it was in Stoke-on-Trent.  However, we often visited the gardens and I went to a few concerts there which were held in the Ballroom of the house. It was very similar to Alton Towers in that it had formal gardens with a large house and in later years was made into pleasure grounds, although not as grand as the rides at Alton towers! Originally the Trentham site was a priory but had been demolished during the dissolution of the monasteries in Henry XIII’s reign.  In 1599 the first hall on this estate was built on the priory ruins but later in 1633 a Richard Leveson replace...

Hoar Cross Hall - Life below stairs #18

...staff at Hoar Cross were well treated it seems. The family showed their concern towards the female members of staff if they wanted to leave the house to attend a local dance, and always made sure they were escorted to and from the event by the footman. Young maids were well protected in those times as the family were always worried about ‘undesirable’ friendships starting up, either within or outside the household. But it seems that there was generally a good atmosphere in the house for most of the time. The children mixed freely with the servants and Lady Mary forbid them to call the servants by their surname only, as was usual in those days. She said it w...

More Tea Vicar? #12

...Life at Hoar Cross Hall was always busy but during the long summer holidays it was easy to get bored. As there was no public transport from Hoar Cross and no other families living nearby, we three children had to make our own entertainment and we were always having adventures and getting up to mischief – a bit like the Famous Five but without a dog! We would roam around the village or explore the basement. My dad was a Hoarder and had kept all sorts of stuff over the years including gas masks and field phones from World War 2. The old Servants Hall was now my dad’s workshop and he spent a lot of time down there restoring antiques to sell. He had one of the f...

Skools out for summer #13

...When Hugo and Emily Meynell built Hoar Cross Hall it included a whole estate with it, namely kitchen gardens, greenhouses, stables, a farm and cottages. Old Hall (their original home) was also on the estate and was accessed via a private road, which ran from the main road. By the time the seventies came along the stable block and Old Hall were private houses and another part of Old Hall had been made into a children’s home. Emily Meynell had started this home in the Victorian days, calling it ‘The Home of the Good Shepherd’ but it was for boys only at that time. When we were there it was a mixed home and run by a husband and wife couple. They used to have...