Story Search Results

Motor Racing Days #8

MOTOR RACING DAYS:     Although my blogs are about living at Hoar Cross Hall, I would just like to give a bit of background about my dad’s racing career in the years leading up to moving to the Hall as this will set the scene for later instalments of my story. As mentioned in my first blog my dad used to be a racing driver but he actually started off racing motor cycles in the 1930s. Because of this he became a despatch rider during the Second World War and spent a lot of time in North Africa. After the war he started racing motor bikes at nearby Donington Park and he raced there up to the beginning of the 1950s. After that he moved onto cars and drove a C...

Skools out for summer! #12

SKOOLS OUT FOR SUMMER!    When Hugo and Emily Meynell built Hoar Cross Hall it stood within 50 acres of land.  their estate included kitchen gardens, greenhouses, stables, a farm and cottages. 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 seventies 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 was for boys only at that time. When we were there it was a mixed home and run by a...

Hoar Cross Hall - a bit of history #13

HOAR CROSS HALL - A BIT OF HISTORY:       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 and later the Hon. Charles Talbot bought the estate for £17,000. Eventually it was sold to Hugo Meynell, who already owned huge amounts of property all over the county. This branch of the...

Ghostbusters #8

GHOSTBUSTERS! Later on in the year of 1973 a couple of professional ghost hunters asked to stay over one night to try and source the noises we heard in the attic.  they brought cases full of recording equipment and set it all up in one of the attic rooms.  Rather them than me I thought!  then I had a brilliant idea and went off to tell Gavin all about it.  As mentioned in my first blog the attic and basement had a row of bells which the family used to summon the servants.  Before the men arrived we spent all day trying out all the bells to see which ones were which.  We found that one of the bell pulls in the Chase Dressing Room made one of the bells in th...

VENTURES NEW #10

VENTURES NEW: We were now in our third year at the Hall and our lives were always busy Keeping on top of the weeds and general upkeep of the house.  My dad expected us children to help as much as possible, which we hated, and much of our time was spent trying to hide from him to get out of doing the chores.  But sometimes we didn’t mind and we happily pulled an old trolley into the woods every now and then to collect wood for the fires and sometimes as a family we would spend a day clearing parts of the woods and grounds.  My mum had hired a lady from the village to help with the housework and we had also taken on a retired chap called Mr Hickman to do some...

Reburbishing our Mansion #4

REFURBISHING OUR MANSION :       We moved into the Hall during the summer holidays and my parents quickly realised that they had a lot of work on their hands to make the place habitable as well as to earn some money from it.  As previously mentioned, there was an East Wing and a West Wing to the house.  My dad decided to convert the first floor rooms of each wing into three separate apartments; he had done this at our previous house.  This would generate income from rents until we got the main house open to the public.  It wasn’t a big job to convert the rooms as the East Wing had four main rooms and two bathrooms already there, which would have been u...