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Rags to Riches #14

...rrived in England from Jamaica. He was a weight lifter and turned the works into a gym and weight training centre. He went on to win medals in the 1960 and 1964 Olympics and also won four world titles, four European titles and broke four world records! In 2018 he was added to the Derby Walk of Fame and has a star on the pavement there which was unveiled by his son that year.  After the First World War the market places were full of tea chests with swords and guns from the Boer War and the First World War. My dad found all this stuff fascinating and started collecting it when he about 12 years old. It started a life-long interest in antiques, culminating in him...

Royal Visitors at Hoar Cross Hall #20

...tours of England including Yorkshire, Derbyshire and the West Midlands, visiting mines and factories. They also visited the wounded in hospitals during the First World War which were often makeshift ones in stately homes such as Clandon Park in Surrey and Belton House in Lincolnshire. Hundreds of Britain's stately homes were turned into military hospitals as the country fast ran out of hospital beds when hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers returned home. The Meynell family themselves offered their London home to be used during the First World War but it was not needed in the end. During the King and Queen's tours they would have stopped at nearby stately...

The Graveyard Shift #23

...in rural England! "Why the long face?" asks the Landlord    Don’t miss next week’s exciting instalment:    'Whodunit in the Library?'   If you would like to follow my story from the beginning, click here and please feel free to share with your friends. Follow me around my childhood home in my 'Tour of the Hall' – click here to view and subscribe to my YouTube channel. OUT NOW!!!  'My Dad Bought a Mansion' is out in book form on Amazon - all my memoirs packed with lots of photographs from the times.  Go check it out here and let me know what you think!...

The Graveyard Shift..... #24

...- only in England!   Don’t miss next week’s exciting instalment:  Whodunnit in the Library? To read my story from the beginning, please Click Here!Subscribe now and please share with any friends that might be interested in my story!...

Gardeners' World at Hoar Cross

...GARDENERS’  WORLD AT  HOAR CROSS:         In it’s heyday Hoar Cross Hall had around 28 people employed to keep the 20 acres of grounds tidy and weed free.  In Victorian England the most common of all male servants was the gardener.   At Hoar Cross the head gardener had numerous under-gardeners known affectionately as ‘digging slaves’!  They were responsible for producing fruit, vegetables and growing luxury items in and out of season, much of it under glass.  Adjacent to the house was the carp pool and greenhouse area along with a palm house; next to these was a walled kitchen garden.  This supplied the house with all its fruit, vegetables a...

The Tax Man Cometh #29

...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...