10th October
Our plans changed this morning after I had had an epiphany in the shower. We decided that we would do Warwick Castle on Saturday morning the morning we leave, so we have something to do rather than hanging around randomly. This meant we had this morning free.
We still headed into Warwick, for a general drive around and wander around the city centre shops.
Next we headed into Coventry, to figure out where Mum has to go to attend her course tomorrow. Once we found the University we realized we had left the specific instructions of where she had to go. Still, we managed to find the building which ateast gives us a general idea for tomorrow!
Our final destination was Baddesley Clinton and on the way we stopped at the town of Kenilworth. Here of course, we had a wander through the town centre and all the shops!
Baddesley Clinton is a beautiful moated manor house, located some 13 km north-west of Warwick. The house probably originated in the 13th century, when large areas of the Forest of Arden were cleared for farmland.
In 1438, John Brome, Under-Treasurer of England, bought the manor, which passed to his son, Nicholas. Nicholas was responsible for the extensive rebuilding of the nearby parish church dedicated to St Michael, done as penance for killing the parish priest, a murder reputed to have taken place in the great house itself. The house from this period was equipped with gun-ports, and possibly a drawbridge. When Nicholas Brome died in 1517, the house passed to his daughter, who married Sir Edward Ferrers (High Sheriff of Warwickshire) in 1500. The house remained with the Ferrers family until 1940, when it was purchased by Thomas Walker, a relative of the family who changed his name to Ferrers. His son, who inherited it in 1970, sold the estate in 1980 to the National Trust, who currently manages the site.
Just down the road from Baddesley Clintion is another of England's great houses, Packwood House. Packwood House is a timber-framed Tudor manor house near Lapworth, in Warwickshire. It has been owned by the National Trust since 1941, has a wealth of tapestries and fine furniture, and is known for the garden of yews.
The house began as a modest timber-framed farmhouse constructed for John Fetherston between 1556 and 1560. The last member of the Fetherston family died in 1876. In 1904, and the house was purchased by Birmingham industrialist Alfred Ash. It was inherited by Graham Baron Ash (Baron in this case being a name not a title) in 1925, who spent the following two decades creating a house of Tudor character. He purchased an extensive collection of 16th- and 17th-century furniture, some obtained from nearby Baddesley Clinton. The great barn of the farm was converted into a Tudor-style hall with sprung floor for dancing, and was connected to the main house by the addition of a Long Gallery in 1931. In 1941, Ash donated the house and gardens to the National Trust in memory of his parents but continued to live in the house until 1947 when he moved to Wingfield Castle.
We continued on our ways and headed through Dorridge, Knowles and ending in Solihull. We were after a grocery store, and though the first two towns had them, we continued exploring as much as we could before the dreaded 5pm... when everything closed. We were in Solihull when this occurred, so we headed to Morrisons here and bought our groceries for dinner before heading home to eat them!
No comments:
Post a Comment