Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (77 page)

Now Sandys was one of those energetic and savvy Tudor apparatchiks. He’d been a diplomat during the reign of Henry VII, and subsequently became a staunch supporter of Henry VIII and his new queen, Catherine of Aragon. He was Treasurer of Calais and made a Knight of the Garter in 1518, and was one of the velvet-tongued-talkers who arranged for the meetings between Henry VIII and Francois I of France at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He also already owned another substantial property in Hampshire—this one near Basingstoke and called The Vyne—where he’d received Henry and Catherine in 1510, and Henry and Anne in 1535.

Sandys was 66 when he set about transforming the priory with its ruined outbuildings, using the structure of the massive church as the spine of his new great house. Four years later, when he died, the house was nearly completed—the main part of the house, the Great Chamber, created out of the church nave.

And again, things looked good and the prosperity of the place seemed a certainty: Elizabeth I visited Mottisfont in September 1569 and again in 1574.

But...and it’s a big but...by the middle of the 17th century, England was engulfed in Civil War, and Henry, the 5th Baron Sandys, like so many other Hampshire landowners, fought on the side of the king. He died at the Battle of Cheriton in 1644. Within ten years, the family could no longer afford to keep both houses going, so they sold The Vyne.

Finally in 1684, the 8th Baron, Edwin, died childless. The title expired and Mottisfont was left to Sir John Mill, his nephew.

Then in the 1740s, it was one of Sir John’s sons, Sir Richard Mill—Member of Parliament, Sheriff of Hampshire—who demolished much of the Tudor building, then rebuilt and transformed the house, adding a pedimented three-storey extension onto the the old Tudor house, transforming the place into the Georgian home that is seen today. Though interestingly, much of the mediaeval structure was retained, hidden behind the new walls of the new rooms of the south front.

(By 1791, the park had been turned into a fashionable landscape garden. While sometime in the late 18th/early 19th century, an Ice House was built not far from the house—aka a Regency Refrigerator—to be filled with ice during the spring, keeping it cold enough to store winter game, etc. into the summer months.)

And for another century, the Mills family lived and flourished at Mottisfont. In 1835, the estate passed to the Reverend John Barker (a cousin) who instantly changed his surname to Barker-Mill.

Sir John Barker-Mill, besides being a reverend gentleman, was a keen rider to hounds and a racing man. In his time, he replaced the old stables with something more suitable for his fine hunters and his stud-farm, and founded Reverend Sir John Barker-Mills Foxhounds. He also was known for his cherry-coloured cravats and his loud check trousers.

Barker-Mill died childless in 1860, but his widow lived on at the house into the 1880s, founding the first school to be built in Mottisfont village.

The new owner of Mottisfont in 1884 was a Mrs. Marianne Vaudrey (who later changed her name to Vaudrey-Barker-Mill) and she decided to let the house to a family with ten children, the Meinertzhagens, on the condition that they altered nothing in the house and most particularly did not install either electric lighting or any kind of central heating!

Their rent was £320 a year, and they loved it there. Mrs. Meinertzhagen was the sister of social reformer, Beatrice Webb, she who also co-founded the London School of Economics, and the house was frequently visited by the social reformers, politicos, and intellectuals of the day, including George Bernard Shaw, Cecil Rhodes, Charles Darwin, and Henry Stanley, of Stanley and Livingstone fame.

In 1898, following the death of their eldest son in 1898, the Meinertzhagens left Mottisfont, and Mrs. Vaudrey-Barker-Mill set about removing the central heating which had been installed, contrary to her wishes, and spending a considerable fortune, some £40,000 (roughly £3 million in today’s money) restoring the old place.

A keen follower of The Gothic, she wished to bring out the monastic history of the place. She removed a parapet on the north side to reveal the roof of the Tudor Great Chamber; she had stucco removed to reveal the mediaeval masonry and arches. She had the Long Gallery redecorated. And when the work was complete in 1908, she let the house for shooting parties. However, in 1932, she had the contents of the house sold.

Whereupon in 1934, the house was bought by a merchant banker and his wife, Gilbert and Maud Russell, who wanted a country house for weekend parties and where they could raise their young family. Another fortune was now spent modernising the house, adding electric lights, and rooms were redecorated and reconfigured once again.

The artist Rex Whistler was commissioned in 1939, to help transform the old, dark entrance hall into a large saloon, and his
trompe l’oeil
murals, painted in gothick style in keeping with the house’s origins, were his last and perhaps most beautiful completed work before he was killed in France in 1944, while on active service.

During WWII, along with many other big houses up and down the country, Mottisfont was requisitioned—the Long Gallery became a hospital ward with up to eighty patients at any one time, and children who’d been evacuated from London lived in converted accommodations in the Stable Block. And it wasn’t until after the war that Mrs. Russell was able to make Mottisfont her home.

Finally, in 1957, Mrs. Russell gave the house and the estate to the National Trust, though she continued to live there for another fifteen years.

In 1972, Graham Stuart Thomas, the Trust’s Garden Adviser, settled on the Walled Garden (formerly the Kitchen Garden and orchard—they grew pears, pine-apples, grapes, figs and vegetables for the house...) as a perfect home for his collection of historic (pre-1900) roses—there are hundreds of them—and it was he who laid out the Rose Garden with such flair and all-consuming love, planting the shrub and climbing roses amongst mixed perennial borders of foxglove, delphinium, iris, and clipped box.

Today, without a doubt, it is the Rose Garden—Britain’s national collection of old roses—which attracts visitors from all over the world to Mottisfont in June. And it’s no stretch either to understand why, or to say that Thomas saved the old roses for posterity—they were considered very unfashionable and uncool when he began collecting them.

At times, and in certain places in the garden, the scent of roses and clove pinks is almost too fragrant to bear. And there is no direction in which one may look which is not nature at her sweetest, most bountiful perfection, harmony for all the senses....

The Lost Palace of Richmond

by Anita Davison

W
hilst researching the Royal Palaces that once lined the River Thames, I have always wondered about the “lost” ones, those that were left to become ruins, or destroyed long before photographs could tell us what they looked like. One which interests me particularly is Richmond, a royal residence that once dominated the ground between Richmond Green and the River Thames.

In medieval times, Richmond Green was used for grazing sheep, archery, jousting tournaments, and pageants. The earliest recorded cricket match between Surrey and Middlesex was played there in June 1730, which Surrey won, though the score is not known.

The green is surrounded by substantial Regency and Georgian houses which change hands for jaw-slackening amounts, and where locals and dreamers sit at The Cricketers pub and at pavement cafes to watch the cricket and attend fairs in the summer. However, in Tudor times, the houses round the Green existed to serve the Royal Palace, and clues still exist as to its former splendour in the names of the streets that radiate on the west side of the Green, like “Old Palace Gate”, “Friars Lane”, “Old Palace Yard”, and “The Wardrobe”. The only remaining section of the palace that remains today is a red-brick gatehouse which still bears Henry VII’s coat of arms.

The manor of Shene contained a manor house since Henry I’s time, held by a Norman knight before being returned to royal hands. Edward II owned it, and after his deposition it passed to his wife, Queen Isabella. After her death, Edward III turned the manor house into the first “Shene Palace”, where he died in 1377.

His grandson, Richard II, came to the throne as a boy, and while still a teenager, married Anne of Bohemia. Shene was their favourite home and when Anne died of the plague at the age of 27, Richard, stricken with grief,
“caused it to be thrown down and defaced.”

Henry V began construction on a new castle-like building, though the work halted at his death in 1422. Building resumed for the new king, Henry VI, who was only eight years old when he was crowned.

Edward IV gave Shene Manor to his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, who handed it over to the new Henry VII after his victory over Richard III, who subsequently married her daughter, Princess Elizabeth of York.

The wooden buildings were destroyed by fire when the king and his court were there celebrating Christmas in 1497. In 1500, the name of Shene was changed to Richmond, in honour of the title, Earl of Richmond, which Henry VII held when he won at Bosworth Field.

Built of white stone, the new palace had octagonal or round towers capped with pepper-pot domes that bore delicate strap work and weather vanes. It had three stories set in a rectangular block with twelve rooms on each floor round an internal court. This area contained staterooms and private royal apartments, while the ground floor was entirely given over to accommodation for palace officials.

A bridge over the moat, surviving from Edward III’s time, linked the Privy Lodgings to a central courtyard some 65 feet square, flanked by the Great Hall and the Chapel and with a water fountain at its centre. The Great Hall had a buttery beneath. The Chapel ceiling was of chequered timber and plaster decorated with roses and portcullis badges, underneath which were extensive wine cellars.

The middle gate that opened into the Great Court was turreted and adorned with stone figures of two trumpeters, and to the east was situated the palace wardrobe where soft furnishings were stored. There was also a moat, a Great Orchard, public and private kitchens, and a Library. The palace gardens were encircled by two-storey galleries, open at ground level and enclosed above, where the court could walk, play games, admire the gardens, watch the tennis.

Richmond Palace became a showplace of the kingdom, and the scene of the wedding celebrations of Henry VII’s eldest son, Prince Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon. Also, the betrothal of Princess Margaret to King James of Scotland took place at Richmond in 1503.

Henry VII died at Richmond in 1509, and the following year, his son, Henry VIII, married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. In 1510 Catherine gave birth to a son, Henry, at Richmond, whose lavish christening celebrations had barely finished when the baby died a month later.

Henry VIII’s jealousy of Wolsey’s palace at Hampton Court led to him confiscate Hampton Court, giving Wolsey Richmond in exchange. Richmond became home to Mary Tudor, who stayed for a few months before being moved to Hatfield House. Then the palace was given to Anne of Cleves as part of her divorce settlement from Henry VIII.

In 1554, when Queen Mary I married Philip II of Spain, Richmond was where they spent their honeymoon, and within a year, Mary had imprisoned her sister Elizabeth there.

Queen Elizabeth was particularly fond of Richmond as a winter home—and loved to hunt stag in the “Newe Parke of Richmonde” (now the Old Deer Park). It was here she summoned companies of players from London to perform plays—including William Shakespeare’s. She also died there in 1603.

James I gave Richmond to his son, Henry, Prince of Wales, as a country seat, but before any refurbishment could be done, Henry died and it passed to Prince Charles, who began his extensive art collection, storing it at Richmond.

In 1625, King Charles I brought his court to Richmond to escape the plague in London, and he established Richmond Park, using the palace as a home for the royal children until the Civil War.

After Charles I’s execution, the Commonwealth Parliament divided up the palace buildings and had them extensively surveyed, in which the furniture and decorations are described as being sumptuous, with beautiful tapestries depicting the deeds of kings and heroes. The brick buildings of the outer ranges survived; the stone buildings of the Chapel, Hall, and Privy Lodgings were demolished and the stones sold off.

By the restoration of Charles II in 1660, only the brick buildings and the Middle Gate were left. The palace became the property of the Duke of York (the future James II) and his daughters, Mary and Anne, grew up there. Their only surviving half-brother, Prince James Edward (the “Old Pretender”), was nursed at Richmond, but the restoration work, begun under the auspices of Christopher Wren, ceased in the revolution of 1688 when James II fled to France.

The surviving buildings were leased out, and in 1702, “Trumpeters’ House” was built, replacing the Middle Gate where two statues of trumpeters stood. These were followed by “Old Court House” and “Wentworth” in 1705-7. The front of the Wardrobe still shows Tudor brickwork as does the Gate House. “Maids of Honour Row” built in 1724 is a uniform terrace built for the maids of honour of Caroline of Anspach, the wife of George II. These replaced most of the buildings facing the Green in 1724-5 and the majority of the house now called “Old Palace” was rebuilt in about 1740.

Traces of the elaborate gardens are still there, having been incorporated into private residences. The view from the river is still beautiful, and as you pass in a barge and squint a little, maybe you can still see the “pepper pots” and turrets of the old palace where kings and queens once lived.

Faversham, Kent

by Lauren Gilbert

F
aversham is a fascinating port town in Kent. Some years ago, my husband and I had the pleasure of attending the Hop Festival there. It’s a lovely town, compact and walkable. Its history goes back to before 811, and it was known to be settled by the Romans.

Part of the ancient royal demesne, Faversham is mentioned in the Domesday Book, and it also possesses an early Cinque Ports charter (considered to be the oldest in existence) and was linked to Dover. King Stephen founded Faversham Abbey in 1147 and was subsequently buried there with his wife Matilda and son Eustace. The abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII and now nothing remains but ruins. The beautiful parish church, St. Mary of Charity, still remains.

As a port city, Faversham had a customs house, and fishing was an important industry. (The oyster beds were particularly important.) The town has an association with medieval queens and a fascinating history. Queen Elizabeth I endowed a grammar school here.

However, I am going to focus on a specific point of interest: gunpowder.

Advances in weaponry and military activity created a need for gunpowder, and Faversham was peculiarly suited to meet this need. The ingredients for gunpowder, especially charcoal and sulphur, were readily available. The site was perfect for factories, with a stream for watermills, and the continent was easily accessible from the port. The earliest gunpowder works was established in the 16th century. The original small factories were joined together as the Home Works.

Home Works was ultimately nationalized by the British government in 1759. Another factory, Oare Works, had been built nearby in Davington parish in Kent in the 1680s. A third factory, Marsh Works, was built by the government in 1787. These mills provided gunpowder to the East India Company and the military, supporting the war effort. It is interesting to think of the powder from these factories possibly being used by Nelson’s ships at the Battle of Trafalgar and by Wellington’s troops at Waterloo!

Gunpowder from these factories was also used for blasting for canals and tunnels (especially important for railway expansion). These plants continued in operation, and produced explosives during World War I.

In 1916, a horrible explosion killed over 100 employees. In 1934, the gunpowder factories were closed due to fears that the area would be vulnerable to invasion or attack if war with Germany was declared.

The site of Home Works was redeveloped in the 1960s except for Chart Gunpowder Mill, which is an historic site. The Marsh Works became a site for mineral extraction which is still in operation. Oare Works is a county park, featuring conserved process houses, trails, and a visitor center.