Story Search Results

Mediaeval Mayhem! #12

...ng apples across the room, instead of eating them with their cheese. Then four ladies stood on the tables and started dancing and swinging their scarves around.  The silver armour, which was hanging on the Ballroom walls, was knocked off and people were trying it on for fun. Halfway through the evening I had my big acting moment when I ran from one end of the room to the other with a bear chasing after me while I screamed the house down (don’t worry, it was a man in costume!).  Eventually people calmed down a bit when the coffee was served and watched Dave the fire-eater do his performance.  By midnight it was all over and the guests moved to the bar to awa...

The Grand Opening #5

...ng stones across it. But even though we cleared a lot of weeds, the outskirts of the gardens were still very overgrown as well as the woods which had once had lovely pathways through them where Victorian ladies and gentlemen took their afternoon strolls. Man on horseback  cut into topiary We soon got used to having people wandering around our house, although they weren’t allowed upstairs. Gavin and I were quite the little monkeys and usually involved our little brother in our tricks too. We would hang over the balcony near the stairs and watch people walk by then drop things near them or make funny noises. Once Gavin was holding an ice cream and he held...

Ghostbusters! #7

...x running across the fields but nothing else! What a disappointment – our trick had failed even though they had all that fancy equipment to record any eerie sounds - perhaps they just fell asleep and forgot to switch it on. We still thought it was a good trick to play though and had fun doing it! Every now and then Mrs Meynell (who had sold us the house) would come around to see us and regale us with stories about the house and surprisingly, the ghosts! So it wasn’t just us who’d heard all those noises – apparently they heard them too. Banging doors, chilly atmospheres in certain parts of the house and a crying child. We would sit and listen on the edge...

Whodunit in the Library? #26

...vicarage across the road.  The vicar answered my knock and told me that my dad had collapsed on his doorstep earlier that day and was now in the local cottage hospital! So now it had come to this.  I later found out that my dad had gone into the Library to rip up and sabotage the mediaeval banquet costumes and my mum had found him there – an argument had ensued which became violent.  My dad had an awful temper and would sometimes attack my mum during these rows (I once found him in the kitchen with his hands round my mum’s throat) so she had grabbed the nearest thing to her, which was the truncheon, and hit him over the head.  She had then locked him i...

Here comes the Bride (Part 1) # 30

...vicarage across the road from my house and booked the date.  The vicar told us in no uncertain terms that he would expect us to be there when the banns were read.  However, as we never got up before lunch on a Sunday, try as we might, we never actually managed to hear our own banns being read! It was almost as bad at the wedding rehearsal.  I went to the church with my dad and the two bridesmaids but Kev never managed to get there as he was fitting a shower for someone!  I don’t think the vicar was very impressed with us! The nearer it got to our wedding date the more we worried about my mum turning up.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want her there but t...

Hoar Cross Hall - a bit of history #13

...sometimes across to the Netherlands and Germany. She loved painting and would spend much of her time doing water colours along with collecting beautiful objects to decorate the Hall and the Church of the Holy Angels. In 1890 she went on a painting trip up the River Nile on her yacht and filled 10 books of diaries and logs, all illustrated with her drawings and photographs. There were many more trips that the Meynells went on as you can see from the photographs which we found in the Library. Although I’m not sure where they were taken exactly, it looks as though they travelled around the British Empire quite a lot. The Meynells on one of their trips abroad...