Story Search Results

Midnight Pool Parties #21

After leaving school I spent a year at Burton-on-Trent Technical College studying to be a secretary but my year at college had come to an end - now to find a job! It didn’t take too long as there was plenty of employment around in the seventies and I was soon offered a position with a small engineering firm in Burton. As I didn’t drive there was still the problem of me getting to work and dad managed to talk the residents of our apartments into taking me, as they were going to Burton every day as well, and it would save him coming out twice a day (no doubt he was thinking about the petrol he would save too!) Kev, my boyfriend, and the band were getting a fe...

Moving Out #32

And so the day arrived a month or so after our wedding when my dad had to leave <span class='highlight'>hoarspan> <span class='highlight'>crossspan> <span class='highlight'>hallspan>. Ten years after moving in he was now moving out, leaving his dream home for my mum to live in alone. Gavin moved with him and Piers was away at school most of the time. It was a mammoth task as he had so much stuff to move, especially from the basement. He had some heavy machinery too that he’d brought with him from his alabaster days, including a band saw which we used to saw up logs for the huge fireplaces in the main rooms. He had bought a house in nearby Burton-on-Trent which had some outbuildings for a workshop and there he moved to start afresh. He carried o...

Skools out for Summer! #58

When Hugo and Emily Meynell built <span class='highlight'>hoarspan> <span class='highlight'>crossspan> <span class='highlight'>hallspan> they also included on their estate kitchen gardens, greenhouses, stables, a farm and cottages. Old <span class='highlight'>hallspan> (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 <span class='highlight'>hallspan> were private houses and another part of Old <span class='highlight'>hallspan> 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 fetes t...

The Schoolroom Maid's Story

THE SCHOOLROOM MAID’S STORY:       For the first 75 years of the <span class='highlight'>hallspan>’s history about 50 servants were employed by the Meynell family in the house and grounds.  Among these was a young girl of fifteen who started work in 1920 as a Schoolroom Maid.  Her name was Miss Inez Sophia Large and she had connections to <span class='highlight'>hoarspan> <span class='highlight'>crossspan> through her grand-parents, William and Mary Tooth, who lived in the village where William was the blacksmith; his smithy was just along from the Meynell public house.  He had worked on the ironwork of the <span class='highlight'>hallspan> during its construction in the 1860s.  Inez’s aunt, Constance Madeley, was the wife of the landlord at the Buffalo Inn, in...

The Schoolroom Maid's Story #34

THE SCHOOLROOM MAID'S STORY:       For the first 75 years of the <span class='highlight'>hallspan>’s history about 50 servants were employed by the Meynell family in the house and grounds.  Among these was a young girl of fifteen who started work in 1920 as a Schoolroom Maid.  Her name was Miss Inez Sophia Large and she had connections to <span class='highlight'>hoarspan> <span class='highlight'>crossspan> through her grand-parents, William and Mary Tooth, who lived in the village where William was the blacksmith; his smithy was just along from the Meynell public house.  He had worked on the ironwork of the <span class='highlight'>hallspan> during its construction in the 1860s.  Inez’s aunt, Constance Madeley, was the wife of the landlord at the Buffalo Inn, in ne...

Temple Newsam and the Meynells

TEMPLE NEWSAM AND THE MEYNELLS:     On 11th August 1863, Hugo Francis Meynell Ingram married the Hon. Emily Charlotte, daughter of Sir Charles Wood, Bart, afterwards 1st Viscount Halifax.  The Woods were an old gentry family, for many centuries respectable York merchants.  They were to turn grand upon the discovery of coal beneath their ancestral estates.  This was the great Barnsley field, with several hundred acres of Britain's deepest and finest coal.  Sir Charles Wood had a distinguished political career and they owned family seats at Garrowby, Pocklington, near York and Hickleton, near Doncaster.  They also owned a London house in Belgrave Square....