Saturday,
May 31st TYSOE - BADDESLEY
CLINTON – WOOTTEN WAWEN – OXHILL
Robyn
writes: Another very busy day here in Warwickshire! We woke around 6.30/7, which is really very
satisfactory. After breakfast, we got ourselves organised and decided to go to
Baddesley Clinton, a moated Tudor (and many other eras) house to the northwest
not far from Birmingham. Carol volunteered to take her car and drive, so Lex
was able to actually watch some of the scenery for a change. It took us a bit
over half an hour to drive there, and we arrived around quarter past ten. We
signed up to be first into the house when it opened at 10.30, and had a bit of
a look around the shop first.
There was a
Saxon building on the site, apparently, though nothing remains of it. It was
probably James de Clinton who had the moat dug in the early 1300s, and the
Brome family built a lot of the house we can see now. Constance Brome married
Sir Edward Ferrers, and on the death of her father in 1517, it passed into the
Ferrers family and remained there for 500 years. Over the centuries there were
many changes (apparently a great hall was pulled down at one stage), but it
remained a family home until last century. As you can tell by the photos, it’s an
incredible building with so much history. The Ferrers were staunch Catholics,
and at one stage hid 4 priests in a priest hole for several hours in 1591 while
the search for them by the Queen’s men raged through the house. We saw where it
was located – hidden in the toilet pit! (Presumably a very uncomfortable few
hours for the poor priests.) We also could look into another one hidden behind
wooden panelling.
The house
was filled by paintings (nearly 90 of them) by Rebecca Dering Ferrers, who was
a prolific family artist in the 1800s. As well as painting many of her
contemporaries and direct ancestors, she also painted portraits of family members
from hundreds of years ago, using old etchings and pictures. Family lineage was
obviously very important, and the many family crests over the centuries are
featured on the windows and walls. We spent over an hour exploring the house
upstairs and down, before heading to the café for lunch.
So much history!
This is the chapel, built after Catholicism was decriminalised.
After lunch, we drove north towards the town of Wootton Wawen (wonderful place names in the UK!) This was a family history excursion, as my 4 X GGGrandparents, Thomas Speakman and Elizabeth Cole were married here in 1796, and the next year my 3 X GGGrandmother, their first child Mary Ann, was baptised here. Then they went back to Norfolk, where they’d both been born, stayed there for the rest of their long lives, and raised ten children. Norfolk is 130 miles away – it takes a good two and a half hours to drive there even today, so in those days before even train travel, it would have presumably taken days. I’d always wondered what brought them so far, for just a few years?We went to
St Peters there, which is apparently the oldest church in Warwickshire. It’s the strangest one
we’d ever been into, as it’s been built over 1300 years from its Saxon
beginnings. When you look at some of the photos from the outside, you can see
the different eras, but inside it was just confusing! There were two altars,
for example, and various chapels, also a very cool reclining knight
in armour. It was very hard to sort out which was the earliest part. The font,
where Mary Ann was baptised, dates back to the 1300s and has weird carved faces
around it. Altogether a very interesting place to visit!
Elizabeth were there.
From Wootton Wawen, we headed back to Carol's through Stratford on Avon, home of William Shakespeare. It was stuffed with tourists so we didn’t attempt to stop, but we did glimpse a lot of lovely Tudor buildings and the theatre.
We stopped just up the road in Oxhill, the little village where Carol grew up (so pretty!) and had a quick look around the church and churchyard there, and visited the grave of Carol’s parents. One item of note in the churchyard is the grave of a Negro slave, Myrtilla, who belonged to Thomas Beauchamp, and died in 1705. Carol says that despite a lot of research, they’ve been unable to find any real information about the poor lass. Yet, for her to be buried with a headstone, she was obviously important to Thomas. We wondered was she his mistress, or possibly even a daughter? One of those mysteries of history which will possibly never be solved.
After all of our historical ramblings, we came home for a rest, and both Lex and I had much needed naps! Then we drove back into Oxhill to The Peacock, for a delightful pub meal. It was wonderful food: Carol and I both had the chicken, mushroom and wine pie, Lex a primavera linguine, and Glen the sea bass. A glorious meal! Once again, the weather has been kind to us, and it’s a beautiful evening – the sun is literally a red ball, but unfortunately, none of our photos have shown what it is really like.
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