Thursday 12 May 2011

Tong Church

Yes there is a village called Tong and it has a church. Or to name it correctly,The Collegiate Church of St Bartholomew, Tong, built in 1409

It is is one of those fantastic wow finds of the whole year. We were just driving along from the Old Hall at Moseley to Lilleshall Abbey ruins and it just appeared sitting there on a little hill. What drew our attention was it's impressive looks from the outside with battlement style high walls with buttreses and a low roof, a central square tower that changes shape to octagonal above the roofline and the octagonal tower is topped off by a squat spire.

It is inside that the marvel hits you, it's like a mini cathedral with Gothic tombs and a magnificent two and a half ton great bell. The revelations just keep leaping out at us everywhere we looked. One of the tombs was Sir Henry Vernon (died1515) who was the guardian of Prince Arthur when he was learning the art of Kingship at Ludlow about 35 miles away. Another tomb has an authenticated poem written by Shakespeare
" ask who lies here but do not weep, he is not dead he doth but sleep......"

There is another tomb in the golden chapel added in 1510 undamaged by Cromwells troops, still with the original painting on the stonework, yet another has a brass plate showing the first time an Elephant was enscribed in England. The engraver had never seen one and refused to believe the description of an animal that could be so large, so he made one dog sized to go at the masters feet.

One last tomb, or more precise the grave of Little Nell, from Charles Dickens Old Curiosity shop, is in the graveyard. Charles Dickens' Grandmother was house keeper at the local castle and it is said that the Character of little Nell is based on his wife's sister who died when she was 17. The Old Curiosity shop was in the village, but did little Nell really exist?.

The verger took us up to the bell tower to look at the great bell and also showed us some of fine detailed carvings around the choir and a little secret that I willbe following up at Kings College Cambridge in a few weeks.

Outside the Church, on the north side the wall peppered with musket and cannonball shots particularly around one window, relics from the civil war, which it whay it's surprising that the interior of the chapels are in such good condition.

A truly surprising visit and one to be repeated I think when we are next in that part of the country.


www.tudorhistorytours.com

Monday 9 May 2011

Moseley Old Hall

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

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Boscobel House

Built in the late 1500's and extended in the 1630's, Boscobel House is a timber framed hunting lodge. The outbuildings and dairy farm were used right up until the 1960s as a working farm. All the cow stalls and ceamery are still there.

A house of this period does of course contain priest holes, the hiding places that were life savers for Catholic priests. The timber framed parts of the house have all warped over the centuries and the floorboards are warped too, so that you can't walk about without finding a squeak. It has a lovely little Chapel set on the top floor.

In fact, pretty a setting as it is, there is little to distinguish it from other properties, except for 2 nights in September 1651 when King Charles II fled here after losing the battle of Worcester. It is also here that the famous Royal Oak stands or stood.

The King first came to nearby Whiteladies Priory, an Augustian Nunnery that was dissovled and sold in 1538 by Henry VIII and now a ruins. The King was looked after by the 5 Penderel brothers who conducted him to Boscobel House.

The King spent the day hiding in the nearby famous Oak Tree with a major Careless. An event that resonates down to us as all over the country there are pubs called the Royal Oak. The tree actually no longer exists but a daughter tree has stood for a couple of hundred tears on the spot and got hit by lightning so unfortunately has suffered, a new sapling was planted, a grand daughter tree that now grows healthilly.

Upon the retoration of the Monarchy 9 years later the King never forgot those who helped him, the Penderel brothers were given a pension that is still paid to their descendents to this day.


www.tudorhistorytours.com

Monday 2 May 2011

The Great Escape- day one

You could call the Holiday weekend tour the Great Escape or Where did the Catholics go?

The Great Escape was the flight of King Charles II in September of 1651 after he lost the battle of Worcester about 40 miles away and we followed his flight through the West Midlands. All the places we visited were also prominant recusant catholic families and the great houses had a number of Priest holes, where Priests and the King himself were hidden when the troops came crashing in the door.

Pausing in Wolverhampton on the way to see Monty Python's Spamalot live on stage,(a peculiarly British sense of humour) we also saw the house where one of the signatories to the US Declaration of Independence lived, a Mr Button Gwinnet who represented Georgia, an odd name but he lived there none the less as there is a blue plaque on the wall.

The first place on our trip to find out where the Catholics went, was Baddesley Clinton, a very peculiar name, but is the name of the village and near Warwick 7 miles away. The house is a stone built, fully moated square manor house dating back to the 1300's and was in the Ferrer family ownership for 500 years up to the 1920's. It has a beautiful and peaceful inner courtyard with the building on three sides and the fourth side open to the moat giving a supeb view out over the farmland.

Baddesley Clinton has no less than 3 priest holes hidden around the house, the last one was used for real in 1591, the Elizabethan Era. A numer of recusant families in the area secretly paid for priests to be educated abroad and travel about secretly administering to the flock. Danger of discovery was ever present and the priest holes were literally life savers.

The House also has a large tapestry hanging in a upstairs room that is said to be the scene from the Summer of 1575 at Kenilworth about 8 miles away, when Robert Dudley entertained Queen Elizabeth on that glorious grand progress. It shows Dudley and Elizabeth walking around the privy garden that he created to try and persuade her to marry him.

A most foul murder was committed here in 1485, the blood stains are still on the floorboards. The owner came home to see his wife having rather too close attention paid to her by the local clergyman. A good story and a place well worth a visit.

www.tudorhistorytours.com

The Royal Wedding

What a weekend for Britain! We had such a party to celebrate the Marraige of Prince William and Catherine. Half the nation watched it on TV and it was marvelous event for the Royal couple and the nation. I hope that some of you 2 billion people around the world didn't get up at some ungodly hour to watch the whole thing. That's a third of the population of the entire planet watched the pomp and majesty of the occasion.

Now a couple of points worth noting, It's traditional that the the bride's bouquet gets placed on the grave of the unknown soldier at Westminster Abbey and it's there now on a white cushion. The crowds would have died down a bit before our next visit to London and will still be there.
Second, the Wedding dress will be put on display, probably at Buckingham Palace in the next couple of weeks.

We used the Holiday weekend to go on a short trip to the West Midlands to see some Tudor treasures and found some extraordinary surprises along the way. See our next series of blog entries to find out where we went.

www.Tudorhistorytours.com