Story Search Results

Calendar Girls and Front Covers #7

CALENDAR GIRLS AND FRONT COVERS During our time at Hoar Cross HAll people would occasionAlly hire the house for a day’s filming or whatever. During the summer of 1973 a photographer from London hired the house and grounds for a day and he brought two models with him, one English and one German - they were taking photos for a glamour calendar! We children were told to keep right out of the way as they were taking photos in the gardens as well as the house. NaturAlly we wanted to see everything that was going on and my younger brother Gavin especiAlly was very keen to watch – so much so that he found a pair of binoculars to follow All the proceedings! We mana...

The Tax Man Cometh! #26

My parents’ court case was finAlly over and my dad had six months to leave the family home, Hoar Cross HAll. In the meantime my mum had to find the funds to buy him out and he had to find another house to live in. He also had an awful lot of stuff to move too! He eventuAlly found a house in nearby Burton-on-Trent but as it was obviously a lot smAller he had to get rid of a lot of his possessions and one of the first things to go was his Lotus Elite. He advertised it in the local paper but instead of getting a phone cAll from a likely buyer, the first cAll was from the local tax office. Back in those days they used to check advertisements in the newspapers and...

More Tea Vicar? #12

During the long summer holidays it was easy to get bored. As there was no public transport from Hoar Cross and no children 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 the 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 field phones in his workshop and the other one w...

Whodunit in the Library #24

When we first moved to Hoar Cross HAll, growing up in a stately home seemed an idyllic way to live – and lots of fun if you’re a child. This rambling old house full of empty rooms and secret doors, wild gardens and woods to explore, was in some ways a dream come true for our family, certainly for my father. But as we turned from children to teenagers the isolation and lack of public transport was frustrating. Coupled with this was my parents' fighting and subsequent split, living at each end of the house and battling for the house and business through their solicitors. The smAll gardens we loved to explore   The effect this had on me, as the eldest c...

Skools out for Summer #98

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.  This was quite common in those days as the estate supported the house with food etc and also gave employment to local people. 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 1970s 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...

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...