Story Search Results

Mediaeval Mayhem! #13

...here were lots of nibbles and quite a lot of champagne flowing and the newspapers and radio stations turned up to take lots of photos of us all in various poses and record interviews with the cast (see header picture).  It was a lovely, warm Autumn day and many of the photos were taken outdoors. I remember it turning out to be quite a party, even though it started at 9.30 in the morning; as the day wore on the organist started playing a few of the songs we would be doing at the banquets, and everyone started dancing and singing along – it was 4pm by the time we finished! And so arrived the day of the first banquet. All the furniture and costumes from the Chi...

The Kitchen Maid's Tale #41

...If you were young, free and single – oh, and very well-to-do – the 1920s were the decade to be a part of. The upper classes had lots of time on their hands and enjoyed post-First World War delights such as the theatre and jazz clubs.Not so for the lower classes, in particular a young girl who was to become the kitchen maid at Hoar Cross Hall in the 1920s. The ‘depression’ after the First World War brought stark poverty to her home and many like her. Her name was Jean Rennie, and she was extremely intelligent having won a scholarship to Glasgow University to study French and music. However, the £5 bursary she got (equivalent to around £250 in today's mo...

To the Manor Born #77

...Before we moved to Hoar Cross Hall my father had bought an old manor house in the village of Shardlow, near Derby, which had previously been a vicarage among other things.  I think my parents must have had a love of historic buildings and indeed were members of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings and Monuments.  My dad had a business in Derby at the time making alabaster items such as table lamps and candlestick holders and when he bought the manor house he moved his business there, as it had lots of outbuildings for all the alabaster equipment. Some of my father's alabaster pieces   The house itself had about 17 rooms and was built i...

Growing up in a stately home #1

...ouse with lots of rooms to play hide and seek in. The gardens were vast and we couldn’t wait to climb trees and make dens in the yew hedges. Pathways led to sunken gardens and ponds with stepping stones and a ha-ha wall bordered the grounds. When my dad bought the house it had been empty on and off for nearly 20 years as the Meynell family who owned it back then had moved out to a smaller manor house called Holly Bush Hall on a country estate. A doctor had rented it for about ten years and then a caretaker had been installed and he and his family lived in a few rooms on the first floor. Their daughter was the same age as me and we soon became firm friends as...

Alice - the ghost in the mirror #32

...rl having lots of adventures? In the 1850s Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s real name) studied at Christ Church in Oxford. A new dean, Henry Liddell, started around about that time and brought with him his wife and young family. One of his daughters was called Alice and this little girl was widely thought to be the inspiration behind his stories but Carroll always denied this. In 1852 he briefly became a tutor for the children of Charles Wood of Hickleton Hall in Yorkshire. One of his children was Emily Meynell (nee Wood) who later owned Hoar Cross Hall. During the summer a friend of Emily's, Mary Heath, stayed at their home and this is the little girl believed to...

Like Father, Like Sons #19

...As previously mentioned in earlier blogs my dad used to be a racing driver during the 1950s and ran his own team in the 1960s, travelling all over Europe in his trusty Volkswagon van with his two mechanics and driver. He didn’t have big sponsorship money behind him and most of it was done on a shoestring but he came back with lots of funny stories of their van breaking down or some rural ‘hotel’ that they had stayed in. From each country that he visited he always brought me back a doll dressed in the traditional costume of that country. There was quite a collection and I still have them; I used to put them on display in the Library when our house was open...