Witley Court Society - Inaugural Meeting

Witley Court Society members at the Witley Church Tearooms. Photo by Gill Edmonds.

Today was the day of the inaugural meeting and launch of the new Witley Court Society, which was held at the Witley Church Tearooms (in the conservatory) by kind permission of Mrs. Gill Edmonds, the proprietor of the establishment. A small, though quite impressive, exhibition of material relevant to Witley Court and its owning families was set up by the membership in order to give the visiting public a view of our activities. Sadly the weather, once again, kept people away in their droves, but we did receive some interest from those who came into the tearoom. We hope that this display will form the basis of our publicity for the future and it is envisaged that the tearoom will again play host to our society in the not-too-distant future, together with other venues. I am most grateful to all society members for their support, especially Sally & Paul Ludlow, Rod Sproat, Mark Brown, Rita Phillips, Alan Milward, Ruth Butler, Roger Wylde and Angela Snow who all helped out on the day, not forgetting Nancie Stansfield from the tearoom who supplied us with refreshments. The A.G.M. will be held at The Hundred House, Great Witley on Thursday 12th July 2012, at which meeting the affairs of the old P.F.R.S. will be officially wound-up and the new W.C.S. will come into being.

More from David and Ruth's travels - Around the Midlands in early June

Croome is an 18th century landscape park, garden and mansion house in south Worcestershire designed by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown with some features by Robert Adam. It was for centuries the seat of the Earls of Coventry. The park and garden are owned by the National Trust. The mansion house, Croome Court, was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust and is currently leased to the National Trust. Croome is near Pershore, south of Worcester, in Worcestershire, England. The court remains unfurnished at present, pending restoration to the structure and fabric of the building. Much of the original furniture is displayed at Kelmarsh Hall near Northampton, and will be reunited with its original home at some point in the not-too-distant future.

St Mary Magdalene's Church, Croome D'Abitot, is a redundant Anglican church in the village of Croome D'Abitot, Worcestershire, England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building,^[1] and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.^[2] It stands on a hill in Croome Park.^[3] Commenting on the church, the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner stated it is "one of the most serious of the Early Gothic Revival outside, one of the most elegant inside".

Ragley Hall near Alcester in Warwickshire is home to the Marquess and Marchioness of Hertford and their children. The House and the 400-acre (1.6 km²) grounds are seasonally open to the public. The Hall is filled with fine paintings, ceramics and antique furniture. The Great Hall is adorned with stunning Baroque plasterwork by James Gibbs and the Red Saloon remains exactly as it was decorated and furnished by James Wyatt in 1780.
The Gardens provide colour and interest throughout the year with a Winter Garden, Spring Bulb Bank and contemporary Rose Garden among the highlights. The Woodland Walk takes you around the park and provides stunning views of the Countryside and there is also an adventure playground for children which is beautifully blended into its current surroundings.

The stable block at Ragley Hall is considered to be one of the finest examples still in existence in this country.

Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, England is an elegant, 18th century country house about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Market Harborough and 11 miles (18 km) miles north of Northampton.
The present Palladian hall was built in 1732 for William Hanbury, a famous antiquarian, by Francis Smith of Warwick, to a James Gibbs design; the hall is still today surrounded by its working estate, and comprises both parkland and gardens. Pevsner described the building as, “a perfect, extremely reticent design…done in an impeccable taste."
Hanbury in building the hall was utilising a fortune which had been bolstered by an advantageous marriage to a niece of Viscount Bateman; he went on to acquire the Shobdon estate in Herefordshire and one of his grandchildren William Hanbury (III) succeeded to a Bateman baronetcy.
Richard Christopher Naylor, a Liverpool banker, cotton trader and horse racing enthusiast purchased the estate in 1864 mainly for its hunting potential. In 1902 George Granville Lancaster bought the estate; his son, Claude, inherited on his majority in 1924, and later passed to Claude's elder sister Cicely in 1977; she later established the Kelmarsh Trust to safeguard the estate's future after her death in 1996.
Ronald Tree and his wife Nancy Lancaster took a 10-year repairing lease on the Hall in 1927 on the Hall. Tree became the Member of Parliament for Harborough in 1933. His wife, who became renowned for her work and taste in interior design, subsequently married the owner of the Hall, Colonel Lancaster.

The garden at Kelmarsh Hall

Canons Ashby House is an Elizabethan manor house located in Canons Ashby, Daventry, Northamptonshire, England. It has been owned by the National Trust since 1981, although "The Tower" is in the care of the Landmark Trust and available for holiday lets.
It has been the home of the Dryden family since its construction in the 16th century. The manor house was built in approximately 1550 with additions in the 1590s, in the 1630s and 1710; it has remained essentially unchanged since the 1710s.
John Dryden had married Elizabeth Cope in 1551 and inherited, through his wife, an L-shaped farmhouse which he gradually extended. In the 1590s his son, Sir Erasmus Dryden completed the final north range of the house which enclosed the Pebble Courtyard.
The interior of the house is noted for its Elizabethan wall paintings and its Jacobean plasterwork.
The house sits in the midst of a formal garden with colourful herbaceous borders, an orchard featuring varieties of fruit trees from the 16th century, terraces, walls and gate piers from 1710. There is also the remains of a medieval priory church (from which the house gets its name).

The dining room at Canons Ashby

In early June, Ruth and myself spent a few days visiting stately homes in the Midlands, principally around Northamptonshire. Unlike our previous sorties this year, the weather varied from poor to absolutely atrocious, but nevertheless we still found lots of interesting new places to visit.

In Search of the Ward's - Part 2. More from David & Ruth's travels, this time to North Wales in May.

Off we went again, this time to North Wales commencing Sunday 20th May, for a weeks exploring, based near Wrexham for five nights. At long last the sun shone, and all week at that. Plenty of sights to see and a few surprises thrown in for good measure.

Chirk Castle (NT), built by Roger Mortimer in the late 13th century, sold to the Myddelton's in the late 16th century and extensively altered by Pugin in the 19th century.

Chirk Castle: the Drawing Room, neo-classical late 18th century.

Chirk Castle, shrub garden and pool. The topiary is another major feature to be found at Chirk.

Erddig (NT) near Wrexham, built for Joshua Edisbury by Thomas Webb in 1684.

All of the outbuildings and servants quarters at Erddig survive to the present day.

The saloon at Erddig which dates from around 1770.

Bodelwyddan Castle near Rhyl houses a fine collection of portraits by the Victorian artist G.F.Watts and is well worth a look, though the garden was a disappointment when we visited.

Just across the busy A55 road from the castle at Bodelwyddan is the church of St. Margaret, "the Marble Church", whose 200ft tall spire is a prominent ladmark in the district.

The graves of many Canadian soldiers can be found at Bodelwyddan; they fell prey to a serious outbreak of influenza just after the first world war.

Styles of architecture at Bangor-on-Dee viewed from the churchyard.

Lying just within Wales is the village of Worthenbury. The finest Georgian church in Wales is dedicated to St Deiniol and still contains its original three-decker pulpit and box pews. An unexpected gem discovered quite by accident.

This is "The Bolling", a large town house in Malpas, Cheshire. It was once owned by Sir John Hubert Ward, a younger brother of the second Earl of Dudley.

Hendwr house on the Welsh estate near Croggen in the Dee valley.

The River Dee flowing through the Croggen estate between Corwen and Bala. The Dudley's once owned vast tracts of land in this area which was maintained for agriculture, quarrying and as a sporting estate.

The Dudley Arms Hotel at Landrillo in the valley of the River Dee.

Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Three stone urns originally from Witley Court.

Waddesdon Manor is a nineteenth-century French chateau-style mansion in Buckinghamshire which is owned and administered by the Rothschild dynasty. It contains fabulous collections of marble features, French furniture, tapestries and old-master paintings.  In the garden there is a selection of statuary including three stone urns which came from Witley Court; they were carved by the Forsyth brothers to designs by Nesfield.

Ward Family: Other Residences - part 1

Apart from Witley Court, the Earl of Dudley's family owned a number of other large properties in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and further abroad. They also took temporary leases on houses belonging to fellow peers and vice-versa.

Ednam House, Kelso, Scotland, the main family residence north of the border, though there were also a number of others

Great Fosters, Egham, Surrey. The second earl owned this large Tudor mansion in Edwardian times but never lived there. These days it is a discreet high-class hotel. Seen in the opening credits of the 1950's television comedy series "Wack O", which starred Jimmy Edwards.

Holt Castle, Worcestershire, not far from Witley Court itself

The old family residence of Himley Hall near Dudley, which the third earl sold to the Naional Coal Board in 1948. This scene was taken at a British Red Cross Society fete in 1944.

The principle Ward residence in the capital - Dudley House, 100 Park Lane, Mayfair, on the Grosvenor estate. Sold by Sir John Hubert Ward in 1938 

Screebe Lodge on the Galway coast in Ireland. It was here that Countess Rachel drowned in a bathing accident in the summer of 1920

The Rain Never Stops

Yet another miserable cold wet day that kept the visitors away from Witley Court. This morning a small party of elderly folk from Kidderminster, but apart from these few it was very bleak for all concerned. I managed a grand total of just two visitors in the church all afternoon. I shut-up-shop just after 4 p.m. and found that Gill had already done the same. Not a soul to be seen anywhere and I was "Billy-No-Mates" in the gathering gloom.

In Search of the Ward's - Ruth & David's tour of the Home Counties during late April

"It's all right for those who can afford it"! - Mrs. B. taking afternoon tea in the old dining room at Great Fosters, Egham, Surrey, a large Jacobean manor house owned by the second Earl of Dudley in Edwardian times and which these days is a very high-class hotel.

Ruth and I spent a few days in Surrey and Berkshire towards the end of April in search of clues as to the activities of the Ward family in this part of the world in times past and present. We visited a number of properties owned by the Ward's, the discovery of which gave us a fascinating insight into the life and times of this noble lineage. As is so often the case, all did not go exactly to plan, but nevertheless we had a splendid time, despite the rather mixed weather. A full report of our activities will appear soon in the pages section of this blog opposite.