Story Search Results

Summer Balls and Garden Parties #97

...t month's blog:  "Skool's Out for Summer"   If you would like to follow my story from the beginning, please click here and feel free to share with your friends.Follow me on a personal tour of my childhood home on YouTube.  Click here to view and subscribe to my channel.OUT NOW!!  'My Dad Bought a Mansion'  - my book available on Amazon.  Would make a great summer read!...

THE GRAND OPENING #5

...hair (see blog header pic!).  Display cabinets bought at auction showed off smaller items. The biggest excitement though was seeing our house advertised on the local TV channel!  The Ball Room The Damask Room was turned into Lady Dorothy’s Boudoir complete with an 18th century four poster bed, an original bed complete with canopy and hanging curtains slept in by aristocrats throughout the centuries.  I used to love lying on the bed with the curtains closed imagining myself in another era – once I lay down on the bed and fell asleep.  When I awoke and climbed out from behind the drapes it was to a roomful of visitors staring open mouthed at me! In...

MOTOR RACING DAYS #9

...MOTOR RACING DAYS: Although my blogs are about living at Hoar Cross Hall, I would just like to give a bit of background about my dad’s racing career in the years leading up to moving to the Hall as this will set the scene for later instalments of my story.  As mentioned in my first blog my dad used to be a racing driver but he actually started off racing motor cycles.  He had been a despatch rider in World War 2 in North Africa and after the war ended and he’d recovered from TB he decided to take up racing his bike as a hobby.  As he lived in Derby the nearest track was Donington Park and he raced there at the beginning of the 1950s.  After that he move...

Hoar Cross Hall - a bit of history! #14

...HOAR CROSS HALL - A BIT OF HISTORY:  Due to many requests asking about the history of the house, this week I'm taking a break from my family's story to look back a few hundred years of what happened before we lived there!     Hoar Cross was part of Needwood Forest, the 11th century lands of Henry de Ferrers.  The land was passed down to Henry’s son and subsequent various people over the course of 500 years ending with the Webb family, around the 1730s, who bought the land and house known as the Manor of the Cross.  This was quite a large house built on a hill near Yoxall (which is the village next to Hoar Cross).  In 1740 the manor house was demolished...

"He's Behind You" #22

...“HE’S BEHIND YOU!” During the 1970s the Hall was used from time to time for local community activities and one such event was the production in 1978 of a traditional pantomime, ‘Midnight and a Journey back to Happiness’.   It was written by local people, Robert Leighton from Yoxall and the Hon. Alexandra Meynell, daughter-in-law of Mrs Jean Meynell whom we had purchased the Hall from.  The words and music were written by local songwriter, David Matthews, who had written songs for quite a few pop artists during the 1960s, his most famous being Matt Munro’s ‘We’re gonna change the world’.  So off to a good start there! For those of you who d...

Suits You Sir! #23

...SUITS YOU SIR! When we moved to the Hall in 1970 the organ in the private chapel wasn’t working as the house had been empty for 20 years.  It was such a shame as it had been designed by Bodley, the famous organ maker of the 19th century.  The chapel itself had been added about 25 years after the house was built at the staggering cost of just under £1000!  When one of the visitors to the house said he could fix the organ, my dad readily agreed.  This chap really loved organs and volunteered his services free of charge just for the love of mending this musical work of art; my dad was over the moon!  Alas, after removing all the pipes and laying them out in...