Royal Progress day 6

Day 6 Sudeley and Baddesley Clinton Sudeley Home of Katherine Parr after Henry VIII died and she married Thomas Seymour. It was here that she died a few days after childbirth. Sudeley is a delightful place partly in ruins after Oliver Cromwell troops destroyed it during our civil war and the family home of the Ashcroft family. This year is a special year, the 500th anniversary of Katherine’s birth so there are many special items on display like her prayer book and a copy of the book she wrote and one of her teeth and a lock of her hair taken from her grave in the late 1700’s (a very odd story). Katherine now lies peacefully in the church within the grounds of the Castle in a splendid tomb befitting a queen of England and only Queen of England to be buried on private land. Onto Baddesley Clinton, one of the very few fully moated manor houses left in England. It dates from the late 1400’s and was home to the Ferrers family, a Catholic family though not one involved is plots like the Throckmortons. The place does have three priest holes for hiding in and who knows there may be more to be found in the future. The family has had some characters in the past and we were entertained by stories of the “Quartet” two men and two women who lived in the house in what we can only describe as an unconventional relationship! We finished the day with a minor pub crawl around Old Kenilworth in Warwickshire where we are staying for the next two nights in a hotel built around an Oak tree in 1538 and there are some great old pubs.