Days Out - 2018 - Part One
Jul. 28th, 2018 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smallhobbitAs last year, with SM not working during the school summer holidays we've decided to go on a few more visits.
Yesterday's day trip was to Coughton Court near Alcester. Coughton Court has been the home of the Throckmorton family since 1409, and the current building dates from Tudor times.
The last three pictures were taken from the top of one of the towers looking down. The Throckmortons are a Catholic family and there is a double priest hole in one corner of the Tower Room. Unlike normal priest holes, this one has a second hole underneath the first to provide extra protection for a hiding priest. As a catholic family a number of the members were involved in the Gunpowder Plot, including two of the grandsons of the Throckmortons (Catesby and Tresham):
Over the years the family have collected a number of significant items, including a chair made from the bed which Richard III slept in the night before the Battle of Bosworth, a bishop's cope embroidered by Queen Katharine of Aragon, and a chemise worn by Mary Queen of Scots at her execution.
When we visited there was a small exhibition of the work done by local women during WWI. And the family weren't exempt from the war - the Baronet at that time being killed in Mesopotamia:
The second letter is the official letter of abdication signed by Edward VIII.
It's an interesting place, being full of little bits of history down the centuries. For me, the most fascinating article was the mass cabinet. It's a really beautifully made cabinet, with highly expensive wood (it cost the baronet more to create than the coach and four he bought his wife), and opened up it looks just like a normall cabinet, until a little mirror is inserted in the middle of the cabinet, which converts the centre part into an altar. Each of the little square drawers arround the altar would hold pens etc, but pull them out and behind them is a further small drawer for holding wafers.
Yesterday's day trip was to Coughton Court near Alcester. Coughton Court has been the home of the Throckmorton family since 1409, and the current building dates from Tudor times.
The last three pictures were taken from the top of one of the towers looking down. The Throckmortons are a Catholic family and there is a double priest hole in one corner of the Tower Room. Unlike normal priest holes, this one has a second hole underneath the first to provide extra protection for a hiding priest. As a catholic family a number of the members were involved in the Gunpowder Plot, including two of the grandsons of the Throckmortons (Catesby and Tresham):
Over the years the family have collected a number of significant items, including a chair made from the bed which Richard III slept in the night before the Battle of Bosworth, a bishop's cope embroidered by Queen Katharine of Aragon, and a chemise worn by Mary Queen of Scots at her execution.
When we visited there was a small exhibition of the work done by local women during WWI. And the family weren't exempt from the war - the Baronet at that time being killed in Mesopotamia:
The second letter is the official letter of abdication signed by Edward VIII.
It's an interesting place, being full of little bits of history down the centuries. For me, the most fascinating article was the mass cabinet. It's a really beautifully made cabinet, with highly expensive wood (it cost the baronet more to create than the coach and four he bought his wife), and opened up it looks just like a normall cabinet, until a little mirror is inserted in the middle of the cabinet, which converts the centre part into an altar. Each of the little square drawers arround the altar would hold pens etc, but pull them out and behind them is a further small drawer for holding wafers.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-28 03:53 pm (UTC)I hate to say though, that scholarly opinion now has it that Richard iii's bed dates from a much later period, so it and the chair are fakes, like his supposed coffin used as a horse trough.
That is some house and some view from the tower!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-28 05:13 pm (UTC)The family collected an old group of items, so my interest was more in that they had a chair which they believed to be from Richard III's bed rather than the chair itself.
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Date: 2018-07-28 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-28 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-28 06:59 pm (UTC)It looks like you all are still experiencing a drought?
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Date: 2018-07-28 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 07:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 07:52 pm (UTC)WOW! Those are real treasures, all right.
I love this sort of living history. But I've never heard of priest holes before. I'm assuming this is from the early period of the Church of England, when being Catholic would get you burned at the stake?
no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 08:09 pm (UTC)Priest holes were designed specifically to hide the priest in. This would be a Roman Catholic priest (often a Jesuit) who would live with a wealthy family, but would have to hide if others came to seek him out. It was illegal to be a Catholic priest in England at that time. This would have been from the reign of Elizabeth I through that of James I (in whose reign the Gunpowder plot happened). If caught the priest would be tortured and then probably hung, drawn and quartered.