Tag Archives: #AtoZChallenge
Wigfair Hall and the wandering architect #atozchallenge
I’m starting at Wigfair Hall in Wales, but I am going to wander off to somewhere else by the end of the blog, just to warn you. But first, Wigfair. The Reverend Howard built this large country house on the River Elwy in 1884. Part of the house is a tower, which was originally a […]
Voewood House – a publisher’s legacy #atozchallenge
Most of my posts have been about old, really old houses, so it’s nice to choose one that is more recent (relatively speaking). Voewood House, near Holt in Norfolk, was built for the Reverend Percy Lloyd, the son of the publisher, Edward Lloyd. Lloyd’s publication, Lloyd’s Weekly, was the only newspaper in the 19th century […]
The tale of two Uffords #atozchallenge
For the letter M I told the sad tale of six houses called Montagu. This time I have two Ufford Halls and thankfully, they are still intact. The youngest Ufford is a Georgian mansion near Peterborough. The house was built in 1734 by the Duke of Rutland’s younger son, Charles Manner. His son enlarged the […]
Snowshill Manor – let nothing perish #atozchallenge
The point of having a house is to live in it. Isn’t that its purpose? For Charles Paget Wade that wasn’t the case. In 1919, he bought the Tudor manor house of Snowshill in the Cotswold village Snowshill and restored the property. From 821, Snowshill was a monastic building and under the control of Winchcombe […]
Ruffold Old Hall – a guided tour #atozchallenge
Would you like to join me on a guided tour? Please follow me as we enter Old Ruffold Hall, a timber framed manor house in Lancashire. The Hesketh family had been lords of the manor since 1520 and Sir William needed money, so he and his son managed through marriage to acquire sufficient money to […]
Peckover House – the banking house #atozchallenge
My father lived in Wisbech as a child. The market town is on the River Nene in The Fens of Cambridgeshire. The fenlands are reclaimed from the sea. Flat like The Netherlands, whom helped drain it, the region with is rich farm soil is criss-crossed with dykes and man-made cuts (rather like canals). Originally the […]
The large and very, very small rooms of Nunnington Hall #atozchallenge
Nunnington Hall in Yorkshire, as it stands now, is the creation of the Viscount Preston, who was the owner in the late 17th Century, but there has been a house there since the thirteenth century. There are plenty of rooms – the stone hall, dining room, the oak hall, the drawing room and bedrooms, mainly […]
The sad tale of the Montagu Houses #atozchallenge
Continuing my theme of Great Houses – I present not one Montagu House, but several. Montagu House, Bloomsbury Sq (House 1) Bloomsbury was a fashionable part of northern London and between 1675 and 1679, Ralph Montagu, first Duke of Montagu, built a house designed by Robert Hooke. In 1686, it was destroyed by fire. Montagu […]
Little Moreton Hall – less of the little #atozchallenge
In 1504, wealthy Cheshire landowner, William Moreton, began to build a rather irregular shaped house. Described by the National Trust (who now take care of the hall) as a ‘stranded Noah’s ark’; it is decidedly top heavy. The way the building grows with each storey added is not unusual for Medieval or Tudor houses which […]
The Progress at Kentwell #atozchallenge
Have you seen the progress at Kentwell Hall? This was the marketing ploy used by the new owners of Kentwell Hall, a Tudor property in Suffolk that had fallen into disrepair by the 1970s. The family who bought it have spent thirty years working on the restoration project in much the same way most […]
The Quiet Writer 