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Hoar Cross Hall - Life below stairs #18

...uld bring across masses of palms and pot plants to decorate the rooms. Home Farm supplied the estate with as much produce as was needed. In addition to the farm workers, the estate employed bricklayers, a stone mason, foresters and thatchers, carpenters, a joiner, a plumber and an electrician. They looked after the Hall and the workers’ cottages and all tenanted properties. The head gardener had a lot of authority outside the house and even the mistress would have to seek his permission first before entering the nursery gardens! Around Christmas time, all the staff and local trades’ people who supplied the house, were invited to a party held in the Long Gal...

More Tea Vicar? #13

...all went across the road to the vicarage for tea and biscuits.  There was always plenty of other food too so we were happy to go on special occasions.  However, the people that attended the church were all incredibly old (or so it seemed to us) and very posh and well spoken so for some reason this would set our minds to impish thoughts!  We decided to swap all the sandwiches round one time, putting different tops to different bottoms; we also licked all the ‘cream’ out of the custard creams and other similar type biscuits then put them back together on the plates.  We would watch with great delight from a short distance away while old men and ladies in...

More Tea Vicar? #12

...all went across the road to the vicarage for tea and biscuits. There was always plenty of other food too so we were happy to go on special occasions. However, the people that attended the church were all incredibly old (or so it seemed to us) and very posh and well spoken so for some reason this would set our minds to impish thoughts! We decided to swap all the sandwiches round one time, putting different tops to different bottoms; we also licked all the ‘cream’ out of the custard creams and other similar type biscuits then put them back together on the plates. We would watch with great delight from a short distance away while old men and ladies in fancy ha...

Gardeners' World at Hoar Cross #36

...e brought across to decorate the main rooms when an important function was on. The ‘bothy’ house was in one corner of the kitchen garden.  (A bothy is a simple dwelling on an estate, usually used for gardeners and other workmen).  Here lived the ‘bothy boys’ who were young under-gardeners.  Their job was simply to sweep the pathways all day and keep the leaves at bay! There were two elderly chaps, Mr Knight and Mr Dukes, who were solely responsible for the south garden – however, their task was complicated by the fact that they couldn’t get on with one another!  Grass was cut by a horse drawn mower, a task carried out by the chauffeur of all pe...

Rags to Riches #15

...who lived across the road from the church and next door to the vicarage. Mum soon became friends with Marjorie, the verger’s wife, and as they had no children of their own they loved to have us over for tea. This was the one time we didn’t misbehave! But even they left after a few years to retire to Weston-super-Mare, although we kept in touch and often went to see them. On one trip there Tony Blackburn, the Radio One DJ, was doing a show and me and a crowd of other girls ran across the road to mob him and get his autograph – it was the highlight of our trip! The bearskin rug enjoyed by our cat!   As the Mediaeval Banquets became ever more popular...

Rags to Riches #14

...who lived across the road from the church and next door to the vicarage. Mum soon became friends with Marjorie, the verger’s wife, and as they had no children of their own they loved to have us over for tea. This was the one time we didn’t misbehave! But even they left after a few years to retire to Weston-super-Mare, although we kept in touch and often went to see them. On one trip there Tony Blackburn, the Radio One DJ, was doing a show and me and a crowd of other girls ran across the road to mob him and get his autograph – it was the highlight of our trip! As the Mediaeval Banquets became ever more popular and successful, life at the Hall became more d...