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A Home fit for a King #21

In this week's blog I am focusing on the royal family again and the stately homes which they grew up in. The main residence for the Royal family is Buckingham Palace which is the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom and where many state occasions take place, but Buckingham Palace was originally known as Buckingham House. The building at the core of today's palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703 on a site that had been in private ownership for at least 150 years. It was acquired by King George III in 1761 as a private residence for Queen Charlotte and became known as The Queen's House. During the 19th ce...

Temple Newsam and the Meynells

TEMPLE NEWSAM AND THE MEYNELLS:     On 11th August 1863, Hugo Francis Meynell Ingram married the Hon. Emily Charlotte, daughter of Sir Charles Wood, Bart, afterwards 1st Viscount Halifax.  The Woods were an old gentry family, for many centuries respectable York merchants.  They were to turn grand upon the discovery of coal beneath their ancestral estates.  This was the great Barnsley field, with several hundred acres of Britain's deepest and finest coal.  Sir Charles Wood had a distinguished political career and they owned family seats at Garrowby, Pocklington, near York and Hickleton, near Doncaster.  They also owned a London house in Belgrave Square....

Alice - the ghost in the mirror #28

...ildren of Charles Wood of Hickleton Hall in Yorkshire. During the summer a friend of the children, Mary Heath, stayed at the hall and this is the little girl believed to be his inspiration for Alice. But also, the room in which he taught the children had a lovely mirror over the mantlepiece which is exactly the same as the picture of the mirror in his story ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’. So it seems that lots of things from that time inspired him! When Charles Wood’s daughter Emily got married in 1863 she took the mirror with her to her new home, Hoar Cross Hall, and there it hung over the fireplace in the Library for many decades until the Meynells l...

Alice - the ghost in the mirror

...ildren of Charles Wood of Hickleton Hall in Yorkshire.  During the summer a friend of the children, Mary Heath, stayed at the hall and this is the little girl believed to be his inspiration for Alice.  But also, the room in which he taught the children had a lovely mirror over the mantlepiece which is exactly the same as the picture of the mirror in his story ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’.  So it seems that lots of things from that time inspired him! When Charles Wood’s daughter Emily got married in 1863 she took the mirror with her to her new home, Hoar Cross Hall, and there it hung over the fireplace in the Library for many decades until the Meyn...

Home fit for a King #53

...With the Coronation of King Charles III almost upon us, this week's blog focuses on the Palace that he now calls home – or the 'Headquarters' of the Royal Family. This residence is Buckingham Palace which is the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom and where many state occasions take place, but Buckingham Palace was originally known as Buckingham House. The building at the core of today's palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703 on a site that had been in private ownership for at least 150 years. It was acquired by King George III in 1761 as a private residence for Queen Charlotte and became known as Th...

Hickleton Hall and the Meynells #38

...s father, Charles Wood, 3rd Baronet, inherited the house in 1846. He was MP for Grimsby, Wareham, Halifax and Ripon. He was also Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1846-52 and was created Viscount Halifax in 1866, three years after Emily was married. He died in 1885 at Hickleton Hall, which was then inherited by Emily's brother Charles Lindley Wood, the 2nd Viscount. His grandson, Edward became Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1929 and Foreign Secretary during the Second World War and created Earl of Halifax in 1944. So quite a lineage that she was born into! During the Second World War the house was actually the headquarters of I Corps after the Dunkirk evacuatio...