Being in the same family for over 400 years has given Moseley Old Hall a special character of it's own. It looks late Victorian due the brick outer facade but the odd thing looking at it is the high brick Tudor Chimneys and that gives it away as something much older.
The timber frame house was built in the late 1500's and was inherited by Alice Codsall who married a man called Whitgreave in 1602. It then passed through the direct line until 1925 when it was given over to the National Trust. The house is in good state of repair now and set out as it would have been in 1651.
It was Thomas Whitgreave in September of 1651 that the most famous member of the family came to be called the Preserver. It was a rainy night when the King came to shelter at Moseley, on the run for his life from Parliamentary forces. Thomas took him in, fed him and let him sleep in a bed that is still there in the same room today.
Our Costumed guide took us through that fateful night, and it sounds like a great manhunt failed to net the prize. Parliamentary troops called when the King was upstairs and beat poor Thomas but was he never asked outright if the King was there so he didn't offer the information.
The King escaped the next day on his way to try and get a ship in Bristol, The manhunt lasted 42 days before the King escaped from the coast of Sussex on a boat to France.
The House has it's priest hole where the King hid and a peculiar chapel on the second floor, all the floorboards squeak and there is not a straight line wall or floor anywhere. A great place and a small but beautiful garden.
www.tudorhistorytours.com
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