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Becoming a rock chick #16

BECOMING A ROCK CHICK:     My schooldays were coming to an end now and I absolutely couldn’t wait to leave. The school itself was an old Victorian grammar school in Uttoxeter which still had wooden desks with inkwells in them! Even the teachers wore their mortar boards and gowns just like the ones at Eton and Harrow – or the Beano! However, in the last two years there I had made a few good friends and we would go into town every lunch time to meet up with a group of guys that worked at the local J. C. Bamford firm. They were all into motor bikes and one of the first films I watched was ‘Easy Rider’. They also went to a lot of concerts to see live musi...

Like Father, Like Sons #19

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SONS:    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, Shardlow Motor Racing, 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 the...

Race Day Parties #25

RACE DAY PARTIES:    My dad used to be a racing driver so he was often invited to parties and open days at various racing circuits. He naturally knew lots of racing people and on this particular occasion he was invited to an Open Day at Donington Park. Tom Wheatcroft, a local entrepreneur, had bought Donington Park in the 1970s as he owned the largest collection of Grand Prix cars in the world at that time. In 1973 he opened a museum there to house them all and called it the Donington Grand Prix Exhibition. Donington became the favoured Home of the British round of the MotoGP motorcycling championships but he was really hoping to bring Formula 1 racing back to...

Alice - the ghost in the mirror #28

ALICE – THE GHOST IN THE MIRROR:     (Based on true events)    In 1865 Lewis Carroll wrote another story about Alice following on from ‘Alice in Wonderland’. It was called ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’. In this story Alice climbs onto the mantlepiece over the fireplace in her lounge and finds that she can climb through the mirror into another world which is reversed, just like a reflection. Once again, she encounters strange figures in a world dominated by a chess set and nursery rhyme characters, among others. But what inspired Lewis Carroll to write about a little girl having lots of adventures? In the 1850s Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s rea...

Here Comes the Bride (Part 2) #33

HERE COMES THE BRIDE (Part 2):    And so our wedding day at Hoar Cross Hall arrived bright and clear, all thoughts of solicitors, legals, fights and arrests behind us! Myself and my bridesmaids went to get our hair done in the morning and Kev slapped a piece of steak on his jaw to bring the swelling down after the rather unfortunate fight at his stag do. Fortunately, the bruise didn’t show up too much on the photos! Gavin drove my dad’s Mercedes Benz car all the way down the drive and back up the road to the church – this was one of the drawbacks of having a church in the grounds; you don’t get to drive all through the town with everyone looking at you...

The Schoolroom Maid's Story #36

THE SCHOOLROOM MAID’S STORY:    For the first 75 years of Hoar Cross Hall’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 Hoar Cross 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 Hall during its construction in the 1860s. Inez’s aunt, Constance Madeley, was the wife of the landlord at the Buffalo Inn, in nearby...