Ashdown House

Water!

2012-01-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

When Capability Brown landscaped the grounds around Ashdown House in the 1770s one thing he could not introduce was a water feature. Until Ashdown was connected to mains water in the 1940s the only fresh water supply was from the wells derived from springs on the estate. There was also a "dew pond" by the old stables and a dip in the field shows the spot where this used to be.

The villages along the Portway, the old Roman road from Wanborough to Wantage, grew up along the spring line. This is where the water that had percolated through the chalk came out, forming streams and springs. At Upper Mill in Kingston Winslow they dammed the stream to power both the upper and lower mills. There was a spring in the garden of one of the cottages that was used by the entire village. In Ashbury the springs fed the watercress beds below the Manor.

Higher up along the Ridgeway there has never been a water source which was one of the reasons that the Romans preferred the lower route. At Lambourn, site of one of King Alfred's palaces, there is a "winter bourn" a river that is supposed to be seasonal, flowing in the winter and drying up in the summer. Its source is in the woodlands and it derives from a series of springs. The water falling on the Downs takes three months to work its way through the chalk and emerge as a river. It's water is beautifully clear.

Season's Greetings from Ashdown House!

2011-12-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

Conservation Work Update

2011-10-21T01:58:00.001-07:00

Work on the Ashdown House conservation project has been continuing apace. With the roof space accessible, several interesting things have been found - carpentry marks on the roof timbers, historical "rubbish" left by previous renovations and a new species of bat for Ashdown - the Serotine!

The original timbers behind the Bath stone window lintels have completely rotted away and will be replaced. Work on the staircase has revealed early examples of wallpaper that have been taken away for analysis and dating. All these fascinating discoveries will be interpreted for visitors to Ashdown when the house re-opens in April.

It's also time to give advance notice of a talk about Ashdown House and the Craven Family at the Shrivenham Heritage Centre on Tuesday 15th November at 7.30pm!

The William Dobson Portrait

2011-10-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

Here at Ashdown House we are very proud to have in our collection a group portrait that was painted by William Dobson, Court painter to King Charles I, who was described by John Aubrey as "the most excellent painter that England hath yet bred." Tomorrow, 16th October, there will be a special piece about our Dobson painting on the Number One London Blog. Please do drop in to read about Prince Rupert, Colonel Murray and Colonel Russell and a painting that is packed full of symbols of loyalty to the Royalist cause.

The Roof Goes On!

2011-09-29T03:10:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would get excited about a crane (at least not of the non-feathered variety) but this week the temporary roof was lifted on to the top of Ashdown House and it was a very impressive and exciting sight. The roof was designed to a special architect's plan and the two halves were lifted on separately and then the middle section was constructed over the top of the cupola. It was originally suggested that the cupola might be lifted off the top to enable conservation work but this is now going to take place on the roof with the cupola slightly raised to allow the work to be done. Work on the cupola is going to be very interesting; the copper panels on the sides will be replaced with lead ones to reflect the nature of the original building and the finial on the top will be re-gilded - and the bullets still lodged in it dug out! These date from the time the golden ball was used for target practice during the 2nd World War when US, Canadian and British troops were stationed at Ashdown. There will be updates here about the cupola conservation and maybe even some photos of the bullets!

Now that the roof is in place work can begin on removing the Cotswold slate, repairing those slates than can be re-used and replacing those that are too damaged. The flat roof will also be removed and re-leaded and the balustrade renewed. A large "jacket" will be put over the entire structure of the scaffolding to protect the ongoing conservation work from the weather. This will be thicker at the top and will hide the whole house, though when the National Trust "season" starts up again in April, hard hat tours of the exterior of the building will be available to show people the progress of the project. Exciting! (Unless you don't like heights in which case there will be an exhibition in the Information Centre.) In a short while the original quarry will be opened and chalk extracted to repair the external walls of the house. There's a lot going on!

The house closed yesterday and the portrait collection is being removed today. Whilst the renovation work is in progress the portraits will also be receiving some conservation care and again this will be reported here on the blog. During October the Information Centre remains open with a short presentation and garden tour on offer to update visitors on the project and show some of the aspects of the Ashdown Estate that don't normally get mentioned. So far the conservation project has proved very popular with visitors and we look forward to welcoming you to Ashdown and showing you what is going on!

There are more photographs of the ongoing renovation project here.

Conservation Project Update

2011-09-15T02:17:00.000-07:00

The cupola and viewing platform on the roof of Ashdown House will be closed from next week, 19th September. The scaffolding has reached the top of the house and work is about to start on the roof. The house and portrait collection will still be accessible until the end of September so if you are planning on visiting Ashdown and would like to see inside you need to get your visit in soon! The house will close at the end of September.

However, for those visiting up to the end of the season in October, we will be running garden tours and special talks in the Information Centre. More details to come so watch this space and our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/Ashdown.HouseNT and Twitter http://twitter.com/AshdownHouseNT

At the top of the page is an arty photo taken in the Information Centre showing South Lodge's very attractive original beams. More on the history of South Lodge next time!

Up and Down the Stairs

2011-09-08T00:50:00.000-07:00

The staircase at Ashdown House is one of the great features of the house and a masterpiece of engineering. Taking up a quarter of the floor space of the entire house, it is built from elm with uprights of oak and individually hand-turned balusters. There are one hundred steps up to the roof. The staircase was constructed "green," with untreated wood, which means that over the three hundred years of its existence it has settled at slightly different rates, giving an uneven tread. When you stand at the top and look down you can see that the stairs are slightly askew! They are - of course - entirely safe, but for reasons of loading, no more than 25 visitors are permitted on the stair at any one time.

The elm stair is the only staircase in the house. There are no servants' stairs as the house is simply too small to accommodate them. Which means that family, visitors and servants were all obliged to use the same space, something that was considered extremely undesirable in an aristocratic Victorian household. If the servants had the misfortune to meet the family or guests on the stair they had to efface themselves against the wall and pretend to be invisible!

The stair is four foot wide and was built on such a grand scale for several reasons. Firstly Ashdown is a hunting lodge and so the main purpose is to get the guests up on to the roof to view the progress of the hunt. Ladies with wide skirts needed lots of room when ascending the stairs. It was also thought appropriate in the 17th century that noblemen of the stature of Lord Craven should have a servant on either side of them as they ascended, in case they needed anything on their way up to the roof! The width of the stair also allowed the more infirm members of the family to be assisted up and down. Another interesting reason for the width of the staircase was the fact that it was designed to allow Lord Craven to defend his property by force if required; the staircase is wide enough for a sword fight! It also turns in a clockwise direction because Lord Craven was a right-handed swordsman and this would give him the fighting advantage, descending the stair.

In the 19th century heavy elm and oak staircases such as the one at Ashdown were often ripped out to be replaced by something more light and fashionable. We are fortunate that the one at Ashdown was preserved and also that it survived the stationing of troops in the house during the Second World War when much of the panelling and other wooden features in the house was used for firewood. Originally the upright panels on the stair had carved swags of fruit and flowers, as shown in a photograph from Country Life. These were removed during the 20th century to leave the staircase looking somewhat austere as it does today.

Ashdown visits the Hoydens and Firebrands!

2011-09-04T01:24:00.000-07:00

Today Ashdown House is featured on the Hoydens and Firebrands blog. We're talking about the rise to prominence of the Craven family in the late 16th and early 17th century, the career of Sir William Craven and the way the family transformed itself from obscurity to becoming one of the most prominent noble families of the 17th century. Thank you to the Hoydens and Firebrands for hosting us. Visit the blog here!

The Great Fire of London

2011-09-02T00:37:00.000-07:00

Today, 2nd September, is the anniversary of the Great Fire of London of 1666, which was the most devastating event in the history of the city. Both Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, contemporary diarists, recorded the event in vivid detail. Evelyn wrote: “God grant my eyes may never behold the like, now seeing above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, ye shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of Towers, Houses and Churches, was like a hideous storme, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it. London was, but is no more!”

The death toll of the fire was considerably lower than the 75 000 who had been carried off by the Great Plague in the previous two years but many thousands were made homeless. The fire started in the house of a baker called Farryner, in Pudding Lane, near the Tower of London and, driven on by a high wind, it lasted for three days, spreading eastwards until it ended at a spot called Pye Corner in Giltspur Street. It destroyed St Pauls Cathedral, the Royal Exchange, hundreds of other public buildings and thousands of houses. The Great Fire is commemorated by a monument which stands 202ft tall near the bakery in Pudding Lane where it all began.

One aspect of the Great Fire of London that is not well known is the role played by William, First Earl of Craven, in the attempts to put the fire out. Whilst many of the nobility and courtiers fled the city, King Charles II remained and so did Craven. Craven had already demonstrated his courage and integrity in not deserting London the previous year during the outbreak of plague, commenting then that someone had to remain to preserve law and order. Now he was reported to be out night after night helping the firefighters. In fact it was said that ever after, when his horse smelled smoke it would turn in the direction of the fire. In 1666 there was no organised fire brigade and firefighting was fairly basic, using leather buckets and squirts of water. Against the force of a fire like this they were totally ineffective. The Navy recommended to the King that they needed to pull down the houses to make a fire break but the flames simply leapt the gap. Eventually it was agreed to blow up the houses in the path of the fire to create a greater fire break. The Navy used gunpowder to do this and by the following morning the fire had been stopped.

William Craven was honoured for his role as a London hero with a fresco on the side of Craven Buildings, off the Strand. He was painted in armour, mounted on a white horse, and with his truncheon in hand, and on each side an earl’s and a baron’s coronet, with the letters “W. C.” (William Craven). The painting was recoloured in oils several times but is now long gone although an engraving of it is preserved in Smith’s “Antiquities of London.”

War and Crafts!

2011-09-01T01:21:00.000-07:00

Whilst the scaffolding continues to rise on the house and the building work spreads across the lawns, the displays by members of the Sealed Knot and the traditional crafts on offer still make for a fun and interesting afternoon at Ashdown. When I visited last week the house looked like the picture on the left!

Meanwhile in the woods Ray was busy demonstrating wood turning techniques using locally sourced hazel. The magnificent 17th century oak and elm staircase in Ashdown House would have been made using these techniques and with each upright baluster hand-turned.

In the Information Centre we had lace-making and outside the main house members of the Sealed Knot were happy to demonstate techniques with sword and pikestaff!

Next week on the blog, a few more words about Ashdown's magnificent staircase as well as an update on the Conservation Project! (Apologies for the weird formatting of this post - Blogger does not make these things easy!)

This Week at Ashdown

2011-08-19T01:43:00.000-07:00

The conservation work is about to start! The portable cabins have gone up on the lawn in front of the house, looking curiously like the prefabricated huts that occupied the same position during the Second World War when US, Canadian and British troops were stationed at Ashdown. You can just see the main house peeking over the top in this rather rainy scene!

Before the work gets going, here are a few pictures giving an idea of some of the work that needs to be done:
Extensive repairs to the cupola. Yes, it does look a bit weatherbeaten!

Repair and replacement of the chalk blocks in the external walls. You can see how much of the chalk has worn away here on the south front of the house.

Re-laying of the Cotswold stone slates on the main roof and dormers. This was a photo taken a few years ago, the last time the house underwent some work.

Meanwhile the house is still open and guided tours of the interior and the portrait collection continue. On Wednesday it was very busy with a lacemaking demonstration in the Information Centre, a display by the Sealed Knot in front of the house and wood-turning in the grounds. Photos of all of that next week, I hope, when the sun will be shining!

Conservation in Action at Ashdown

2011-08-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

Ashdown House is extending its presence on the web. Yes, we have gone digital with a Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/orrjXp and a Twitter account @AshdownHouseNT for short and sweet updates on everything that's going on at your favourite 17th century hunting lodge! The main reason for this is that in a couple of weeks time the scaffolding will be going up and a conservation project will be starting. The purpose of the project is to re-roof the house and to do major structural repairs. The progress of the project will be shared here on the blog and visitors to the house will be able to take special tours to see the conservation work in action. It's a very exciting time for all those of us who work at Ashdown and we will be able to see this amazing house with the roof off and to learn much more about its history, design and construction, plus all aspects of the conservation process. I hope that you will enjoy following progress here and on Facebook and Twitter, and that those visitors who can join us at Ashdown will enjoy seeing conservation in action!

Geocaching at Ashdown Park

2011-07-21T08:01:00.002-07:00

This summer the National Trust is promoting the joys of geocaching. Here is a link to their site and a list of some of the Trust land where there are geocaches to be found. Geocaching is a high tech treasure hunt; here is the NT's description of what it entails:

"Geocaching is an exciting outdoor adventure for the whole family. It’s a treasure hunt for the digital generation, where you can enjoy the freedom of being outside and discovering new places. All you need is a handheld GPS device and a sense of fun. A geocache or ‘cache’ is a small waterproof treasure box hidden outdoors. Geocachers seek out these hidden goodies guided by GPS, which uses coordinates or ‘waypoints’ that can be sent directly to a GPS device from opencaching.com. Simply choose a geocache to find and click ‘send to GPS’.

On the side of a windswept mountain or on an expanse of beach, there are geocaches hidden right across the UK. Most have been set up by keen members of the public with our permission. But some, organised by our staff, also mark out a trail where your mission is to seek out more than one cache as part of a walking route.

Once you’ve found the treasure box – what will you discover inside? Most caches tend to have a log book for you to leave a message in and the satisfaction of finding the box is a reward in itself. But often you will also find a strange array of trinkets that people have left to swap. These can range from a key ring or a small toy to a pine cone or a pretty pebble. It’s important to remember that if you take a treasure out of the box, you should leave another trinket in its place. So come prepared! Always leave the cache in the same place and in the same condition as it was found for the next visitor. Sometimes there may even be a clue leading you on to more hidden treasure nearby."

Ashdown Park is one of the many places where geocaches have been hidden with the Trust's permission. These range from a special trail through the woods to a spectacular hide high on the top of Weathercock Hill to an earthcache exploring the sarsen stones. Here is a link to one of the caches to give you a taster!

The Lime Avenue

2011-07-07T06:28:00.000-07:00

The Lime Avenue at Ashdown, which runs north from the car park, parallel to the North Avenue, is in full blossom at the moment and the scent is beautiful. The trees also hum because of the number of insects harvesting the nectar! As a tribute to the beautiful lime trees and their scent I am posting up a couple of lime blossom recipes that you might like to try.

The Wild Man Wild Food site offers Carragheen Wild Cherry Mousse, which can be made with lime blossom rather than cherries. It sounds delicious. Check out his recipes here!

Lime blossom tea is also a soothing remedy with a sweet aroma. To make lime blossom tea, pour one cup of boiling water over one teaspoon of the dried flowers. Cover the pot and let the tea brew for about ten minutes. Lime blossom tea can be taken as a herbal tea to sooth anxiety and fatigue and also as a remedy for fevers.

Sir William Craven - Gentleman?

2011-05-23T02:47:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I was fortunate enough to attend a performance of The City Madam at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon. This would have been enough of a treat on its own but the fact that the play, a satiric comedy, was written in 1632 and reflects on the consumer culture of the early 17th century was an added bonus. The story contrasts the city and the court, new money and old and as such throws a contemporary spotlight (okay, that's an anachronism but you know what I mean) on precisely the society in which Sir William Craven, founder of the Craven family fortunes, rose to prominence.

The playright, Philip Massinger, was the son of a provincial gentleman and a tradesman's daughter who was very familiar with the scramble up the social ladder in 17th century society. As such he was well-placed to ask the question "What makes a gentleman?" John Evelyn, in The Mode, 1661, complained: "How many times have I saluted the fine man for the master, and stood with my hat off to the gay feather, when I found the bird to be all this while but a daw." Clothes, it seems, not birth, did maketh the gentleman, at least superficially.

In scene two of The City Madam Sir Maurice Lacy makes fun of the gentleman Mr Plenty with the following words: "Thy great-grandfather was a butcher, and his son a grazier; thy sire constable of the hundred and thou the first of thy dunghill created gentleman." This demonstrates the arrogance but also the fear and dislike that the aristocracy had for those rich men on the rise.

One of the themes of the play is that there should be a distinction between the city and the court. Wives of city merchants, no matter how rich, should not ape their betters in the aristocracy, either in terms of their dress or in their proud attititudes. Their social climbing is ridiculous; inappropriate and a poor example. The character of Lady Frugal, for example, dresses with extraordinary ostentation in her silks and furs despite the fact that she is the daughter of a country farmer who was only "ladified" because her husband made a fortune.

Sir William Craven fits beautifully into this profile of a man on the make. He came from a poor family, he was a self-made man and he rose to be Lord Mayor of London. He married late, when he had made his pile, into the rich mercantile class to which he now belonged. He bought himself a knighthood. His wife was thereby "ladyfied." Craven was also renowned for his charitable giving - another feature of rich London merchants - both in the City and back home in Yorkshire where he endowed a school, rebuilt the parish church, paid for a bridge and causeway to be built and undertook many other good works. He was also a moneylender to the aristocracy, which increased his fortune immeasurably.

Despite this rampant and some might say entirely admirable social climbing, Craven was still very much a man of the upper middle classes, not the aristocracy, when he died in 1618. What happened next in the Craven family, though, was possibly even more interesting in terms of upward mobility. In his will Craven specified that his wife (for obvious reasons now one of the most sought-after widows in London!) should invest some of his billions in land. This she did, buying estates at Combe Abbey, Ashdown, and Stokesay amongst many others. This was an interesting move. Arguably land was a good investment but it also had strong social implications as well. Craven was posthumously moving his fortune and his family's social positioning from the middle to the upper class.

The transformation of a "poor" family into an aristocratic one was achieved in only two generations when Sir William Craven's sons William and John became respectively First Earl of Craven and Baron Craven of Ryton. The entire family in fact moved up the social scale with Sir William's brothers and sisters and their children becoming country gentry and moving on the edge of aristocratic society. At the end of the 16th century no one would for a moment have considered the apprentice William Craven to be a gentleman. In 1664 his sons were undeniably aristocrats in that they both held titles in the peerage.

Interestingly William First Earl of Craven chose not to further consolidate his family's position in the aristocracy through a rich marriage. A suggested betrothal between him and Lady Mary Cavendish did not come off and he never married at all. And although he was undeniably a member of the court and prominent in the aristocracy, old prejudices of blood and title still persisted. The First Earl was very much looked down upon as an arriviste by members of the "old" nobility. It was ever thus...

One Man and His Dog

2011-04-21T06:11:00.000-07:00

Rupert of the Rhine, son of Elizabeth of Bohemia and nephew of King Charles I was renowned for his love of animals, a curious and rather endearing trait in a man also known for his ferocity in battle! In this he was said to take after his mother who, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, was recorded as “preferring her dogs, her hunting and her monkeys to her children, in that order,” according to her youngest child Princess Sophie. Perhaps this explains why Elizabeth was estranged from all her children at one time or another.

It was said that when Rupert was little more than a boy and captured during one of the battles in the Thirty Years War he had a pet hare to keep him company in prison and trained it to open the door of his cell. Now that I would have liked to have seen... Given that Rupert also had a pet dog at the time, it would have been interesting to see how the dog and the hare interacted.

The most famous of Prince Rupert’s dogs was a standard poodle called Boy or Boye, who ran with his cavalry. Boy was a particular target for the Roundheads, who became obsessed with the idea that he was Rupert’s familiar and attributed various magic powers to him, including that he was fluent in several languages, that he was invulnerable in battle and that he could put a spell on the enemy. Boy began to feature in Roundhead propaganda. In a pamphlet of 1643, “Observations upon Prince Rupert’s Dogge called Boy” the writer reported that Boy sat beside Rupert in council meetings and that the King himself allowed Boy to sit on the throne. Boy attended church services most… doggedly. After one Royalist victory it was said that Prince Rupert and his officers sat up all night drinking in celebration and raising a toast to Boy. The Roundheads tried both poison and prayer to destroy “this Popish profane dog, more than halfe a divill, a kind of spirit.” Although the dog was a white poodle they depicted him as black in the propaganda pictures in order to identify him with the traditional colour of the devil.

Almost inevitably, Boy fell prey to a Roundhead bullet at the Battle of Marston Moor. The Puritans claimed in another pamphlet, “A Dog’s elegy, or Rupert’s Tears” that Boy had been “killed by a valiant soldier who had skill in Necromancy.” The verse ran:

“Lament poor cavaliers, cry, howl and yelp,
For the great losse of your malignant whelp.”

In an age of superstition it is easy to see why men might attribute magic powers to such a creature and also why the enemy might use it as a symbol of the Royalist cause. To the cavaliers, Boy was a talisman and they mourned his loss very deeply. Boy went down in the Army records as the first official British Army dog.

Palatine Pets!

2011-04-01T00:44:00.001-07:00

In a memorable line in her memoirs, Sophie of Hanover, youngest daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, commented that her mother preferred "her hunting, her dogs and her monkeys" to her children. This may be a little unfair - Sophie was renowned for her sharp tongue and her criticisms of Lord Craven, amongst others, were somewhat ungrateful perhaps - but there was certainly some truth in the fact that Elizabeth was devoted to her animals.

Even as a girl at Combe Abbey Elizabeth had a pet dog, a "ruffle dog" as he was referred to in the accounts when Lord Harington paid twelve pence for his shearing. She also had pet monkeys, who slept on beds of herbs and cotton that cost three pence, and parrots, whose cages were renovated by a joiner for three shillings and ten pence.

After her marriage Elizabeth took her dogs and her monkeys with her to Heidelberg where Frederick extended and modernised his palace to include a monkey house and menagerie. Friends sent Elizabeth pets; Irish dogs and more monkeys which were apparently shunned by the older ones already in residence. Elizabeth loved her monkeys so much they were referred to as her "jewels" and they became so conceited with her attention that they would come to no one but her. She would play with them every morning.

There is a story that when Frederick and Elizabeth were forced to flee Prague after the Battle of the White Mountain, a servant was hurrying through the palace checking that nothing of importance had been left behind and discovered that Prince Rupert had been left behind in the nursery. He rushed out to the carriage with the child, only to find that Elizabeth had made sure that her monkeys were safely on board! Whether or not this is true, by the time she had been in exile in The Hague for a few years, Elizabeth's menagerie had increased to thirty dogs and monkeys. Jack, the most senior monkey, would sit by her writing-desk in the salon. Apollon, her favourite dog, was a beautiful greyhound. Right until the end of her life, in fact, Elizabeth took solace in her menagerie and in her letters often enquired into the health of her relatives' pets whilst sometimes forgetting to ask after their family!

Some of the portraits of Elizabeth feature animals though in the 16th and 17th century the inclusion of an animal in a painting might have a symbolic meaning rather than indicate that it was necessarily a pet. Dogs in particular have been human companions for thousands of years and so might feature alongside other possessions. Their close connection to the sports of hunting and shooting also make them obvious choices to include. In Elizabeth's case, though, it seems likely that the animals that appeared in her portraits were real pets.

Of her family, Prince Rupert notably inherited Elizabeth's love of animals (despite having had to take second place to a monkey) and next time I will be blogging about Rupert and his dog Boye.

The Lost Battle

2011-02-28T03:33:00.000-08:00

Today for your pleasure a historical mystery... It's not unusual for the site of an ancient battle to be disputed, unknown for certain in the present day, and the location of the Battle of Ashdown, which took place in January 871AD, has long given rise to discussion. From Compton, near Streatley on the River Thames, to Uffington Castle and various other points east, the Battle of Ashdown has been mooted to have taken place in several places that fit the somwhat vague geographical description given is Asser's life of King Alfred: that of a place where the Danes held the high ground and there was a lone thorn tree. Sadly this doesn't really narrow the field a great deal.

As a brief background: In 870, the Danes embarked on an invasion of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. They sailed up the Thames and came ashore at Maidenhead in Berkshire. Moving inland, they captured Reading and began fortifying the site as their base. The Danish commanders, Kings Bagsecg and Halfdan Ragnarsson, were supported by five Earls. They met considerable resistance from Aethelwulf the Earl of Berkshire, who was backed up by King Ethelred of Wessex and his younger brother, Alfred. After initial successes Ethelred planned an assault on the Danes' camp at Reading but was unable to break through the defences and was driven back to the Berkshire Downs. The Danes, seeing an opportunity now to crush the Saxons and take Wessex, rode out from Reading with the bulk of their army to take on the Saxons on the Berkshire Downs. Where did this encounter occur?

Local legend tells of Alfred riding to Blowingstone Hill near Kingston Lisle to use the ancient sarsen blowing stone to call all men to battle. He then mustered his forces at "Alfred's Castle" the Iron Age hill fort west of Ashdown House, joined with his brother's troops who had been encamped at Hardwell Camp, and rode to do battle with the Danes at nearby Uffington Castle. All well and good, but other sources place the site of the battle elsewhere on the Berkshire Downs, at Compton, near East Ilsley, and in other places to the east, along the Ridgeway, closer to the Thames and to Reading. No one knows for certain... One could say that the clue is in the name but during the Saxon period the word "Ashdown" referred to the entire expanse of the Berkshire Downs.

Recently I read a fascinating and cogently argued article by the late local historian Peter Knott that drew on field names and other local evidence to place the Battle of Ashdown to the south west of Ashbury village, along the escarpment that borders the Ridgeway. Up until the mid-eighteenth century this escarpment was too steep to cultivate for crops; even now the steepest inclines are covered in trees. Ancient records identify this area of land as called "The Wayte," a name that can be traced back to usage in the 13th century. Margaret Gelling, in "The Place Names of Berkshire" gives the meaning of the wayte as a look out place, but an alternative is given in the Oxford English Dictionary: an ambush. This meaning is still in use today in the form of "lying in wait." Could this be a record in a place name, a piece of land where the Saxon lookouts patrolled and Alfred's army lay in wait for the Danes as they marched out of Reading?

One of the most intriguing aspects of the case is the reference in a charter of 947AD to a place near Ashbury called Rammesburi or The Ravens' Fort. This raven is the familiar of Woden, the Teutonic god of war and death. It also has sinister connections in literature as a bird that haunts battlefields. Today the location of the Ravens' Fort is lost, but we know from the charter that it lay on the boundary of Ashbury lands. Could the Ravens' Fort have been named in memory of the Battle of Ashdown? As a final twist, ravens are birds that habitually nest in the same places that they have inhabited for centuries. Today there are ravens on Weathercock Hill, to the east of Ashdown...

"Alfred moved his army against the enemy... The opposing armies clashed violently... The Vikings took ignominious flight, and many thousands were slain over the whole broad expanse of Ashdown..." Asser.

Ashdown House - The Ultimate Romantic Gesture!

2011-02-11T03:59:00.000-08:00

It is the ultimate in romantic gestures. Ashdown House is a Valentine’s Day gift in bricks and mortar (or chalk, actually), a house built by the Earl of Craven for the love of a woman who never lived to see it – Elizabeth of Bohemia, The Winter Queen. On Elizabeth’s return to England from exile in 1661 the Earl of Craven, knowing of her desire to live quietly in the country, commissioned not one but two houses for her pleasure. The first, Hamstead Marshall, was designed to mirror Elizabeth’s palace in Heidelberg. The second, Ashdown, was a hunting lodge so that Elizabeth could continue to pursue her lifelong passion for hunting.

In honour of the approach of St Valentine’s Day, the fascinating blog lostpastremembered, which marries food and history, has posted a piece about William, Elizabeth and Ashdown. As well as detailing the Earl of Craven’s devotion to his lady over the course of forty years, the blog piece gives a wonderful insight into all things culinary from the period, from the way the table would be laid for a banquet at Elizabeth and Frederick of Bohemia’s castle in Heidelberg, to a stunning recipe for Raspberry Sauce with Port to complement the romance of the story. You can read the whole post here - and make the dessert as well if you wish!

Season's Greetings from the Ashdown House Blog!

2010-12-23T01:53:00.001-08:00

The Ashdown House Blog thanks you for visiting us this year and wishes you a very happy holiday! Join us in the New Year for more pictures, news of Ashdown and insights into the history of this beautiful seventeenth century hunting lodge.

The Sotheby's Sale Part 2 - A Couple of Family Portraits

2010-12-17T07:20:00.000-08:00

The Ashdown House portrait collection contains a number of paintings of Elizabeth of Bohemia's family but with the exception of a portrait of her eldest son Frederick Henry in his teens (painted by his sister, Louise Hollandine) there are none of her children at a young age. It was particularly nice therefore to see these two family portraits in the Sotheby's exhibition.

A Portrait of a boy and a girl, said to be the children of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, from the circle of Sir Anthony Van Dyck is said to represent Edward, Count Palatine and his sister Henrietta Maria. Edward was born in 1625 and Henrietta Maria, named for her aunt, the wife of Charles I, was born in 1626 so they were close in age. The other portrait of Edward is by Van Honthorst and was painted in 1638 when he was thirteen years old.

Princess Henrietta Maria is frequently described as gentle and sweet-tempered in the biographies of her mother, which also record that she was "happy in the kitchen," an odd place to find a princess. She was talented at embroidery, preserve-making and confectionery. The only blonde daughter, she was also considered the beauty of the family with a complexion of lilies and roses, so said her sister Sophie in her memoirs. At the age of twenty four Henrietta Maria received an offer of marriage from Prince Siegmund Rakoczy of Siebenbergen in Transylvania, who had apparently fallen in love with her portrait, spurning a wealthier match in order to make her an offer. He wooed her with a diamond watch and ardent love letters. Elizabeth was delighted; her eldest surviving son Charles Louis, newly restored to the Palatinate lands, less so. Reassured that Prince Siegmund's title was recognised by the Emperor and that he kept 200 men at arms and 50 gentlemen in attendance, and that the family ate off silver plate, Charles Louis eventually gave his consent.

The couple were married by proxy on May 14th 1651 and Henrietta Maria set off to meet her huband with a meagre trousseau. Fortunately when the couple met they liked each other; Henrietta Maria wrote that Prince Siegmund was stately, kind and generous and drove always with six horses. There was only one more letter from Henrietta Maria reporting how happy she was in her married life. Within five months of the marriage she had died, to her husband's great despair. He had her buried in her wedding gown, wearing the string of pearls that had been one strand of her mother's famous eight strand pearl necklace. Over 200 years later when Queen Victoria inherited the remaining seven strands she wished to complete the necklace. The suggestion that Henrietta Maria's grave should be opened and her strand removed was refused however; the necklace remains a seven strand one in the possession of The Queen.

Prince Edward, Count Palatinate of Simmern, to give him his full title was born in October 1625 at Prince Henry of Nassau's country house two hours from The Hague, where the family had withdrawn to avoid the plague in the city. He was said to be exceptionally good looking, with black hair and black eyes. Elizabeth sent three of her sons, Maurice, Philip and Edward, to France when they were in their early twenties in order to achieve some polish and address. Where good manners and charm were not the trademark of either Maurice or Philip, Edward excelled.

At the age of twenty one Edward married a French Catholic bride eight years his senior. Anne de Gonzague, daughter of the Duke of Nevers, was celebrated in Parisian society for her wit, beauty and wealth. Her affairs were well known but after she fell in love with Edward her only intrigues were political and she became a well known writer. Edward also seemed very happy in the shadow of his wife, turning up for all the fashionable events and certainly enjoying a rich lifestyle after a youth in straitened circumstances. Edward and his wife had three daughters. Eventually Elizabeth forgave him his conversion to Catholicism and received the family in the Hague. There is a portrait of Edward in the Ashdown collection that was painted at this time. According to the records, there was also a matching portrait of his wife Anne, painted in masquing costume. This is interesting because this portrait, originally in the Craven collection, is not at Ashdown. But there is a picture of a lady in masque costume painted by Van Honthorst which is said to be Princess Elizabeth. A case of mistaken identity, perhaps!

The Sotheby's Sale - Part 1

2010-11-30T07:14:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that the Ashdown House Blog has taken a six month sabbatical. Now we're back, and what better way to start the new season of blogs than with a selection of items from the recent Sotheby's sale of the contents of Ashdown House.

There were many fine paintings in the sale but one of particular interest was the Allegory of Love by Sir Peter Lely. This is thought to represent William Craven and Elizabeth of Bohemia. The Sotheby's catalogue gives the provenance of the painting as "by descent in the Craven family..." This begs the question of whether the painting was one of those bequeathed to William Craven by Elizabeth or whether he commissioned it originally. The date of the painting is not recorded in the catalogue.

An inventory of the paintings at Coombe Abbey in 1769 states that "an allegorical painting" was hanging in Lord Craven's dressing room. No such picture was listed in the 1866 catalogue of paintings at Coombe but a photograph from Ashdown dated 1913 shows it hanging on the stairs so it may have been transferred from one Craven property to the other at some point in its history.

If the picture does represent William Craven and Elizabeth then it sheds a very interesting light on their relationship, not least because it would be a contemporary reference to a romantic connection between the two of them. Craven was devoted to Elizabeth's service for over thirty years and was both a financial and an emotional support to her during the years of her exile and widowhood. He also provided a house for Elizabeth when she returned to London in 1661 and the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn record that they were seldom out of each other's company. There was some gossip about their relationship but no contemporary written reference to any marriage between them. The marriage was later spoken of as fact in the Craven family but there appears to be no evidence to support it. The painting is therefore both a clue and an enigma.

A Bit of a Chill!

2010-05-28T04:42:00.001-07:00

In Ashdown village there are the remains of an icehouse. Trust me, they really are under this pile of weeds! Icehouses predate the refrigerator as a means of storing ice for preserving food. They consist of chambers wholly or partly subterranean and suitably insulated from above. The practice of building ice houses came to England in the 17th century via France following the Restoration, one of the first ones being located in Upper St. James' Park, now known as Green Park, in 1662. By the eighteenth century it became increasingly common for major houses to have their own icehouse. A spell of several hard winters towards the end of the 18th century also encouraged their use.

The ice would have been collected from the nearest convenient lake or pond and dropped into the pit of the icehouse, possibly layered with straw to make removal easier. The ice was used in cooling drinks and for making cold confections in the kitchens. In the kitchen of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton there is a menu on display for a dinner dated 1817 and of the 22 sweets no less than 7 were made using ice.

Most icehouses comprised a rectangular chamber that is situated at the same level as or very slightly below the level of the entrance, which has a single door. This is probably the type of icehouse that existed at Ashdown since there is little evidence to suggest that much of it was subterranean.

In the cold surroundings, the ice should be capable of being stored for more than a year, and an experiment was carried out at Levens Hall in Cumbria in 1980 when ice was kept in the icehouse for 13 months under conditions similar to those prevailing in earlier times.

The location of icehouses in relation to the main house was often quite arbitrary. This picture is of an extant icehouse at West Wycombe. In most cases they seem to be neither close to the source of the ice nor to the kitchens. A distance of several hundred metres is not uncommon. This is one of the reasons why there is no point in shouting for help if you accidentally got locked in there! At Ashdown the icehouse was by the stables, a quarter mile from the main house and the kitchens, and the main mystery is where the ice was sourced. There are no lakes or ponds in the vicinity of the estate now although there would be some occasional pools in a wet year. Was the ice perhaps brought from Shrivenham or Lambourn? It would be fascinating to know.

The Romance of it All!

2010-05-08T03:21:00.000-07:00

In a week when the National Trust and Harlequin Mills & Boon announced that a historical romance was being published to commemorate 400 years of Ham House (left), I thought it would be nice to put forward Ashdown House's own romantic credentials. Indeed there can be few historic houses in the country that could rival Ashdown as far as scandal, love and sex are concerned. After all, it was home to the outrageous Elizabeth Berkeley, the beautiful 18th century Lady Craven, whom Horace Walpole called "infinitamente indiscreet." Lady Craven took lovers with the same flair that her husband took mistresses (sauce for the goose...), finally left Lord Craven to travel extensively through Europe and to more exotic climes, and set herself up as "sister" to the Margrave of Ansbach. It is said that Lady Craven received the news of her husband's death on the Friday, went into her widow's weeds on the Saturday and by the Sunday was wearing white satin and many diamonds, in which outfit she married the Margrave. The happy couple returned to England, purchased a villa on the banks of the Thames and, supremely indifferent to the disapproval of high society, held glamorous parties and entertained lavishly.

Evidently Lady Craven's eldest son had inherited something of his mother's unconventional ways, for he was the first lover of the notorious courtesan Harriette Wilson, who lived with him at Ashdown House for some time. I don't think Harriette was much taken with either the house or the country. Or with William, for that matter. I have talked about William, Harriette and Jane Austen (there's a menage a trois for you!) in a previous blog post so will say no more here about the Regency rakehell Earl of Craven other than to note that he went on to marry an actress.

But of course the Ashdown love story to end all love stories has to be the tale of the First Earl of Craven and Elizabeth, the Winter Queen. Indeed it is said that Ashdown was built "for the love of a woman who never lived to see it." Craven first met Elizabeth, daughter of King James I, when he was a soldier fighting in the 30 Years War in Europe and she was the was the stunningly pretty, charming and charismatic wife of Frederick, the Elector Palatine. Elizabeth attracted to her service a whole cadre of knights who worshipped her in the courtly traditions of medieval love; they included her cousin Christian of Anhalt, who used to carry her glove as a token when he rode into battle. There is a record of the Christmas celebrations at Heidelberg during the early years of Elizabeth's marriage when a host of infatuated young gentlemen threw themselves at Elizabeth's feet and pledged their swords to her service. Her husband Frederick was apparently not amused.

Craven's devotion to Elizabeth lasted for over 40 years, during which her fortunes were on the slide. Frederick's acceptance of the throne of Bohemia in 1619 provoked the Holy Roman Emperor into a response that saw the Protestant forces defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. Elizabeth and Frederick were forced into exile and Elizabeth lived for 40 years in The Hague before the restoration of her nephew King Charles II finally saw her return to England. Her son Charles Louis eventually reclaimed his ancestral Palatine lands but Frederick had died in exile and Elizabeth, pawning her jewellery and her furniture to make ends meet, was increasingly reliant on both the moral and financial support of courtiers such as William Craven. One letter from her to him reports: "We have no money... and today if none be found we shall have neither bread nor meat nor candles..." Craven was clearly a man who could take a hint; he provided vast sums of money to support Elizabeth's household through her exile.

Opinion is divided over the relationship Elizabeth had with Craven. There are those who say that they were secretly married and there are even suggestions that one of the generous payments that Craven made to Charles I during the English Civil War (£50 000) had as a condition that he be permitted to marry Elizabeth, a twist worthy of a historical romance. In the 18th century the marriage of William and Elizabeth was spoken of openly within the Craven family but there appears to be no evidence to support it. Confusingly, at one point it was rumoured that Craven wanted to marry Elizabeth's eldest daughter, the Princess Elizabeth Palatine, the greatest beauty of the age. Elizabeth senior was twelve years older than William Craven, her daughter considerably younger.

In his youth a match had been put forward between William Craven and Lady Mary Cavendish but it came to nothing and she bemoaned the fact that he seemed to prefer soldiering to paying court to her! After this there is no record of Craven showing an interest in any woman other than Elizabeth. This is striking for a man who was not only one of the ten richest landowners in seventeenth century England but also had a title and estates to pass on to subsequent generations. Also striking is the fact that William Craven remained at Elizabeth's court in The Hague during the period of the English Civil War rather than return to fight for her brother Charles I despite being an experienced soldier, a staunch supporter of the Stuart cause and a financial benefactor to Charles. One might deduce from this that William's love for Elizabeth was stronger than his support for the Stuart cause in England and indeed stronger than his concern over the fate of his own estates - an interesting debate.

So was William's love for Elizabeth courtly or rather less rarefied? Was it requited or unrequited? Were they secretly married? The nature of Elizabeth's correspondence with Craven is irreproachably formal, though there might have been some fun in writing in formal terms to a secret lover. Against the match is also Elizabeth's sense of her own consequence; when all was said and done she was a queen and the daughter of a king. Craven was the son of a self-made man who had made a fortune in the cloth trade, bought himself a knighthood and invested in land. The match would have been beyond unequal.

What we do know is that on Elizabeth's return to England in 1661 it was William Craven who put his house in London at her disposal and he also began work on two houses on his Berkshire estates, Hamstead Marshall, which was to mirror Elizabeth's palace in Heidelberg, and Ashdown House, a tiny white palace for a queen. Elizabeth died before either of these projects were completed. A secret marriage between the two of them may be in dispute. What is not in dispute is the devotion William Craven showed to Elizabeth of Bohemia for over 40 years.

The Park Pale

2010-04-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

The Ashdown park pale is a thing of beauty. Not only that, it is enormous and ought really to be an ancient monument in its own right. Built originally around 1300AD, it was intended to keep the deer within the bounds of the Ashdown hunting chase at a time when there was a hunting lodge belonging to Glastonbury Abbey on the Ashdown site.

Park pales consisted of a bank and ditch with a wooden palisade, or fence, on the top. They were designed to let the deer in through gaps in the pale called deer leaps, but once inside the emparkment the deer could not get out again. At Ashdown the park pale that surrounded Middle and Hailey Woods has mostly been either ploughed out of the fields, demolished or worn away, although the later haha is still visible. However to the south of the sarsen field and most particularly around Upper Wood, the park pale is a magnificent earthwork that still stands up to 9 metres high on the escarpment of the hill. There is a footpath that runs up the back of Upper Wood and around the top of the park pale and from this vantage point you get a superb view of the surrounding landscape and in particular the remains of the Romano-British settlement to the south. All part of the complex historical landscape in which the current house sits, and a reminder that though the history of Ashdown post 1660 may be a fascinating one it is matched in interest by what happened before the house was built.

The Palatines - A Made for TV Story!

2010-03-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

We've had The Tudors and the Plantagenets. The Borgias are coming around for a second time. We've even had some of the Stuarts but we've never had a film or TV adaptation based on The Palatines, as far as I know. Why not? Is it the name? Because it has often struck me that the tale of Elizabeth of Bohemia and her family would make a marvellous TV series. In terms of drama, love, scandal, shipwreck and sibling rivalry you can't beat The Palatines.

First there's the parents, Elizabeth and Frederick. An arranged match at sixteen years old and yet they fall in love practically at first sight. (This is after Elizabeth, chosen by the gunpowder plotters to be Queen if they had succeeded in blowing up the Houses of Parliament, survives a kidnap attempt). Then there is the year of living dangerously as King and Queen of Bohemia, the extravagance, the parties, the hordes of young men dedicated to the service of the charismatic young Queen. It all ends in disaster at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 and Elizabeth and Frederick are forced to flee into exile with their young children. Pursued by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor, they finally find refuge in The Hague from where they make endless, hopeless attempts to regain Frederick's patrimony. Frederick dies in exile and Elizabeth is utterly distraught.

Then we have the thirteen children, ten of whom survive into adulthood. There's Frederick, the heir, who drowns when he is fourteen, Charles Louis, hedging his bets during the English Civil War and Rupert who certainly doesn't hedge his bets when it comes to a good fight. Maurice is always in Rupert's shadow but manages to come into his own spectacularly in death, lost in a hurricane at sea whilst he and his elder brother are imitating pirates of the Caribbean. Or is he really alive, as his mother always believes, and a slave of the Barbary pirates? There's the lesser known Philip, picking fights and causing a scandal that engulfs his mother and sisters, and Edward hunting down the richest heiress in Europe because he doesn't want to be poor any more.

The girls don't do too badly either. Elizabeth, the eldest, is considered the greatest beauty of the age and is known as the Star of the North. She refuses to marry the King of Poland on religious grounds and enters a convent, becoming Mother Superior and one of the most respected scholars in Europe and a correspondent of Descartes. Her sister Louise, a talented artist, also enters a convent but this is a Catholic one. Rival mother superiors! Henrietta Maria marries a Hungarian prince but dies within six months of the wedding and is buried in her bridal gown and pearls. Her husband dies of a broken heart shortly afterwards. And Sophie, the youngest, evades her mother's plans to marry her to her cousin Charles II, runs away and accepts the marriage offer of one duke, who then asks his brother to step in and marry her instead because he's not up to the task. Eventually she is named heir to the English throne and founds a new dynasty.

Meanwhile Frederick's death has left Elizabeth impoverished but still trying to hold it all together with a court of two thousand in The Hague and no money. She sells her furniture and pawns her jewellery. Step forward William Craven who is a very rich man indeed, but a commoner, and who supports Elizabeth throughout her exile and widowhood. Finally Elizabeth returns to England forty years after she left. She is something of an embarassment to her nephew, the newly restored King Charles II, and has nowhere to live. So Craven puts his house at her disposal and starts to built two beautiful new palaces for her; Hamstead Marshall and Ashdown House. But Elizabeth dies before they are completed.

I've left a lot out, of course, but I reckon there's still enough material for two series, maybe even three! In the absence of a film or TV series, however, you'll have to come to Ashdown if you want the story told!

Ashdown House opens on 3rd April.

Sarsen

2010-03-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

Ashdown House is unique amongst stately homes in having a sarsen field lying to the east of the house. This field is classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest as the sarsen stones host exceptional lichen flora which is thought to have taken centuries to develop. The sarsen field is an integral part of Ashdown's historic past.

Sarsens are extremely hard boulders composed of quartz sand particles cemented together by silica to form sandstone. Most authorities believe that the sandstone layer was formed approximately 50 million years ago when a tropical climate existed in Southern England. The weathered stones that now litter the landscape are the remnants of this layer which once overlaid the chalk of the Downs. During inter-glacial times the thawing of the ice and the meltwaters eroded the chalk, causing the sandstone to fracture into irregular shaped stones that were carried down hill. Famous sarsen sites include Stonehenge, Waylands Smithy and Avebury Circle.

Despite the proximity of the sarsen field to the house, the stones have been preserved undisturbed for centuries. There are also many sarsen stones in the grounds and in the woods. Many of these have the characteristic holes which were made by the roots of palm and other tropical trees that grew in the area when the sandstone layer was forming. Sarsen stone was also used to face the outer ramparts of Alfred's Castle, the Iron Age fort situated nearby. The antiquarian and traveller John Aubrey passed Ashdown at the time the house was being built and commented that the builders robbed out the fort in order to use the sarsen stones in the foundations of Ashdown House, so Ashdown is literally a house built on Sarsen stone if not of it.

The word sarsen derives from Saracen, meaning "foreigner." The name probably originated as a way to describe these different stones in a chalk landscape. They are also known as grey wethers because the scattering of stones can easily be mistaken at a distance for grazing sheep.

Various legends and folklore have grown up around the sarsen field. It is said that the sarsens are the remains of an army turned to stone by Merlin. Since nearby Baydon is one of the possible sites for King Arthur's Battle of Badon Hill, one can see the links in the legend. The enormous sarsen stone a few miles away at Blowing Stone Hill is reputed to have been used by King Alfred to rally his troops for the Battle of Ashdown in 871AD. Again the link between the stones and local folklore is very strong.

The sarsen stones add another layer of history and myth to the story of Ashdown. They are a constant source of fascination to the visitors to the Park and we hold them in great respect.

With thanks to Keith Blaxhall, Head Warden, for extracts from his article on the Sarsen stones.

Carved Wooden Heads and Cursed Pearls!

2010-02-12T01:28:00.000-08:00

As the new season at Ashdown House approaches I'm reminded of all the reasons why I enjoy working there. One of the main ones is that I always learn fascinating historical facts from our visitors. We get such a huge variety of people through the doors; history buffs, people with a connection to the Craven family, people whose ancestors worked at the house, and experts who have come to see the portrait collection or who are knowledgeable about 17th century architecture, or gardens or both or many other things.

Here are three of the most interesting things that I have learned from Ashdown visitors:

1. That the rather idiosyncratic carved wooden heads on which the antlers are mounted were the accepted way to display hunting trophies in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The science of taxidermy had not progressed to the stage of allowing the preservation of the entire stag's head so the antlers were removed, a wooden stag's head was carved and painted and the antlers were attached to it. Each was done individually, by hand, which probably accounts for the difference in quality, the startled expressions and the lack of a resemblance to a real stag.

2. That the pearls which are worn by Elizabeth of Bohemia and her daughters in many of the portraits were part of a necklace of seven strings that belonged to Elizabeth and had originally been Medici pearls inherited by Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth would pawn the necklace when she was particularly short of money during her exile and then buy it back if she had a special state occasion to attend. On her death she left one strand to each of her daughters. In the nineteenth century there was a long-running dispute between the British Royal family and the house of Hanover over possession of the pearls. The English crown claimed the necklace but only six strands were reassembled. The seventh strand had been given to Elizabeth's daughter Princess Henrietta Maria. She had died only six months after her wedding to Prince Sigismond of Transylvania and was buried in her wedding dress - and the string of pearls. Her descendents declined to open the tomb to retrieve the necklace! The picture shows Elizabeth's eldest daughter, also called Elizabeth, wearing her strand. This Elizabeth was considered one of the greatest beauties of the age and was known as "The Star of the North." She was also a great philosopher. What a girl!

It is also said that the large drop pearl in some of the portraits is "The Bretheren" a famous pearl that brings bad luck to the wearer. Elizabeth of Bohemia was, arguably, a very unlucky Queen but it is easy to attribute this to her poor choice of jewellery with the benefit of hindsight!

3. That in 17th century architecture a huting lodge such as Ashdown was considered a "masculine" building and it therefore required a masculine style of garden. The simple box parterre and stone statuary was considered suitable. There were no flowers or feminine-type adornments! That said, there are those who link William, Earl of Craven and Ashdown house to the Rosicrucian belief system and suggests that the house was an astronomical observatory and the gardens and grounds laid out as they are as part of a wider design in the ancient landscape. Intriguing!

Cross-posted to the Passion For History Blog.

The Jane Austen, William Craven, Harriette Wilson Connection!

2010-02-04T05:35:00.000-08:00

It seems a pity in some ways that the main claim to fame of William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven of the 2nd Creation, is that he was the first lover of the famous courtesan Harriette Wilson. (That is she in the picture on the left, taken from the frontispiece to her Memoirs). He was 31 and unmarried at the time. Harriette was much younger and does not give William a good press. Her memoirs start with the line "I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven..." but she leaves the reader in no doubt that she finds the Earl boring and old-fashioned, with his night caps and his endless talk of his cocoa trees on his estates in the Indies. What Harriette must have made of Ashdown House when William took her to the country in 1801, is anyone's guess. It is hard to imagine that Ashdown's rural isolation could appeal to this precocious and materialistic urbanite in any way.

A bad enough start for William, in all truth. And as if it wasn't a disaster to be denounced as boring by mischievous Harriette, Craven then incurred the disapproval of Jane Austen. In a letter to Cassandra in January 1801, Austen reports that Eliza Fowle "found [Lord Craven's] manners very pleasing indeed.—The little flaw of having a Mistress now living with him at Ashdown Park, seems to be the only unpleasing circumstance about him." More on the Austen/Craven connection anon.

So what do we actually know of William Craven other than these two literary references? William Craven was, in my opinion, far more interesting a man than Harriette implies. The son of the 6th Baron Craven and his scandalous wife Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, he was a man whose family background was what would be referred to today as dysfunctional; both parents took lovers and in 1783 they finally separated after 13 stormy years of marriage, with his mother taking her seventh and youngest child and travelling abroad. After the 6th Baron died in 1791 and Lady Elizabeth, now the Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth, returned to England, her daughters refused to receive her. William, the new Lord Craven, was also for a time not on speaking terms with her. As an interesting footnote, his elder sister Maria married William Philip Molyneaux 2nd Earl of Sefton in 1792 and became one of the patronesses of Almacks, one of thr bastions of respectability in high society.

William and his brother Henry Augustus Berkeley Craven were educated at Eton and William followed this with a distinguished army career. A brief summary of this follows: In 1793 he became an ensign in the 43rd Foot and was promoted to a lieutenancy the same year. In 1794 he became a Major of the 84th and from there to Lieutenant Colonel. He served in the 1794 campaign in Flanders and was present at the siege of Nimeguen. He subsequently served in the West Indies and was present at the capture of Trinidad. On 1st January 1798 he was appointed ADC to the King and made a Colonel. In 1799 he served at the Helder and subsequently in the Mediterranean. In 1803 he was appointed Colonel of the Reserves and was made a Major General in 1805 and served on the Staff from the commencement of war until 1809. He was appointed Lieutenant General in 1811. The Earldom of Craven was recreated for him in 1801 as recognition from the King for his services to his monarch and to his country.

Significantly for a man with the reputation of having kept a notorious mistress - and indeed having married an actress, Louisa Brunton - he was a great favourite of George III's very proper wife Queen Charlotte so must have come across as a gentleman of some moral probity as well as charm!

As Noel Chanan comments in his excellent book about the Earl's son William, Earl of Craven and the Art of Photography: "The marriage raised some eyebrows within the aristocracy but Louisa was accepted in society. The Earl was in many respects a typical Regency gentleman, profligate with his money and also somewhat careless of his personal safety." In 1809, despite the presence of French privateers, he resumed pleasure sailing in the waters of the English Channel in his own lightly armed sloop, the Grafton. Sailing was one of his great passions. He was a founder member of the Royal Yacht Squadron and celebrated the fact by purchasing a three-masted, full-rigged ship of 325 tons, which he called the Louisa for his wife. In the year of his death he bought a third ship, the Mayfly, which cannot but have added to the massive debt that encumbered the estate on his death. It seems appropriate, even inevitable, that he died at Cowes in 1825.

The Earl of Craven's family connections to Jane Austen are well recorded. Jane knew of William Craven through Tom Fowle, her sister Cassandra's fiancé, who was cousin to William Craven and served as his chaplain on the military expedition to the West Indies in 1796. Other connections are explained in the fascinating article by Lanfersieck and Looser, Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Lord Craven. This article also posits that William Craven may have been the model for John Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, suggesting that Sense and Sensibility contains several parallels to Craven's life, including place names, a difficult mother figure and the resonances with a "ruined" young woman, in Craven's case Harriette Wilson.

It is entirely plausible that Jane Austen may have been inspired to draw on Craven for some elements of Willoughby's character. I confess that I don't like the idea because I have always considered Willoughby to be a morally bankrupt character and I don't for a moment believe William Craven to have been so and feel that this comparison, like the comments made by both Harriette Wilson and Jane Austen, do him no favours. Here is a man of considerable depth, with a distinguished service record. There is more to him than the Regency wastrel even if he did possess some of the characteristics of the stereotypical Regency nobleman. In addition, I have always seen Harriette Wilson as being in control of her own destiny unlike the victim Eliza is in Sense and Sensibility. As another aside, I'm also sceptical that William's brother Berkeley Craven was ever Harriette's lover. Poor Berkeley has already been maligned in Venetia Murray's book An Elegant Madness when she suggested that he was besotted with Harriette's sister Amy, confusing him with another Berkeley entirely.

William Craven managed to come to terms with his difficult mother Elizabeth, Margravine of Anspach, at some point after her return to England. He even sold her second husband his estate at Benham Valence, where the Margravine built a villa, close to the Earl's own estate at Hamstead Marshall. William Craven and Louisa Brunton remained happily - and faithfully -married until his death. Perhaps this was a case of real life being happier than fiction?

Houses of the Gunpowder Plot

2009-11-05T04:42:00.000-08:00

Today is Guy Fawkes' Night in the UK, the night on which we celebrate with fireworks and bonfires the thwarting of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.

Ashdown's connection with The Gunpowder Plot is tenuous, to say the least. The house was "consecrated" to Elizabeth of Bohemia by William Craven and it was Elizabeth whom the plotters intended to place on the throne of England as a puppet ruler in the event that they had been successful in killing both King James VI and I and his heir Prince Henry.

In 1605 the nine-year-old Elizabeth was living at Coombe Abbey with Lord and Lady Harington who had been entrusted with her upbringing and education. I have blogged about Coombe and its connection to the Gunpowder Plot earlier in the year and you can read about it here. In a curious co-incidence, the Craven family bought Coombe Abbey from the Haringtons in 1622, three years before they bought Ashdown and long before William Craven became the devoted follower of Elizabeth, the Winter Queen.

Coombe Abbey is in Warwickshire, and was at the centre of a thicket of properties associated with the Gunpowder Plot, some of which are lost and others that are still standing. Looking at the houses associated with the Plot shows how closely connected were the prominent Catholic recusant families who supported it, and how beautifully placed they were geographically to kidnap the young Elizabeth from Coombe and carry her off to a Catholic safe house.

Coughton Court, south of Coombe, was owned by the Throckmorton Family, who were prominent Catholics. In 1605 it was occupied by the family of Sir Everard Digby, who was one of the conspirators and the man deputed to abduct the Pricess Elizabeth from Coombe when Harington was lured away. My writing colleague Elizabeth Hanbury has blogged about her fascinating visit to Coughton Court here. It was in the drawing-room of the Coughton Gatehouse that the news was broken to Lady Digby and other Catholic supporters that the plot had failed and the conspirators, including her husband, were on the run. The gatehouse still stands as it was in the seventeenth century and visitors can enter the drawing-room where Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant, broke the bad news. The windows of the gatehouse contain heraldic glass commemorating the marriages of the Throckmortons to other prominent Catholic families including the Catesbys and the Treshams.

Ashby St Ledgers, to the east of Coombe, was the principal residence of the Catesby family. It was apparently at Ashby St Ledgers that the conspirators met to discuss the details of the Gunpowder Plot. They assembled in a room above the gatehouse that was private from the main house and also commanded a view of the surrounding area so that they were safe from the danger of sudden attack. Ashby St. Ledgers was also the place where Catesby amassed the armaments and gunpowder for use in the plot. The Gunpowder Plot Society relates that the "Gunpowder Plot Room" in the gatehouse "has its original paneling, and its atmosphere is such that it doesn't take much imagination to picture the plotters, sitting around, amid flickering candles, making their plans in here."

Huddington Court, the home of the Wintour or Winter brothers Robert and Thomas, is a stunning back and white half-timbered house said to have been built in 1340. Legend has it that the ghost of Robert Winter's wife wanders the gardens still waiting for her husband to return. The Gunpowder Plot Society was fortunate enough to be given a tour of Huddington and records the visit and details of many more of the properties associated with the plot on their excellent website.

One property far removed geographically from the focus of the Gunpowder Plot and yet devastatingly affected by the involvement of its owner in the Plot is Lyveden New Bield in Northamptonshire. Lyveden belonged to the Tresham family. Sir Francis Tresham's mother was a Throckmorton; the family were staunch Catholics and Sir Francis died in the Tower of London for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. The heavy recusant taxes paid by the family coupled with the disaster of Sir Francis's death meant that the Treshams were ruined and the house at Lyveden never completed. Today it stands as a 400 year old ruin to the memory of a plot that was foiled and the complicated tangle of family relationships and catholic loyalties that were destroyed as a result.

The Ghosts of Ashdown Past!

2009-10-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

The beautiful, warm sunny day today has drawn scores of visitors to Ashdown House and Park. The woods are at their best with rich autumn colours and although the house is open for a final time on Saturday October 31st, the park and estate will remain open all through the winter.

Saturday is, of course, Halloween, and if you are planning to visit I recommend the 4.15pm tour. By then the light will be starting to fade and as you walk through the woods at dusk and see the shadow of the house creeping across the lawns it will be all to easy to believe the stories of hauntings at Ashdown. The wind in the trees and the birds calling in the twilight can sound like the plaintive cries of the child who is said to haunt the woods. The long shadows of the stable hide the beams where a groom is said to have hanged himself in Victorian times.

I've had a number of paranormal experiences in my life but two of the nicest (in the sense that they weren't frightening!) happened to me at Ashdown. They were also two of the most convincing since they were witnessed by other people too, amongst them my ever-sceptical husband!

The first occasion was when we were taking the photograph that appears at the top of this blog, the partial eclipse of the moon one night over the roof of Ashdown House. We were standing on Alfred's Castle, in itself a compellingly atmospheric site. There was no one in the house and no lights were on. All the windows were shuttered. And yet as we stood there watching the full moon rise and the eclipse take a bite out of it, we both thought that we saw the figure of a woman standing in an upstairs window watching us.

The second time that the ghosts of Ashdown past sent a shiver down my spine, we were on a bat walk in the woods at night. About ten of us had gone out to look for bats and listen to their high-pitched calls as they hunted through the woods. We had seen the barn owls as well, hunting their prey along the rides, and as we walked back down the North Avenue the house was ahead of us. Again, there was no one there, no lights on and it was locked up for the night. Yet as we walked towards it we saw a soft golden light like candle or lamplight shining behind the windows of the first floor, and as we all watched, the light moved up the stairs to the next landing and we saw the shadow of a woman. As we drew near the house the light faded away and we were all taken aback to see that again the windows were all closed with the shutters, so how could it have been possible for us to see a light inside?

A Dollar Princess at Ashdown House!

2009-10-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

As Professor Kathleen Burke puts it in her excellent book "Old World, New World": "Beginning about 1870, the union of American money and the British aristocracy was a continuing theme in the Anglo-American relationship... there was something special about the earlier period: perhaps it was the number of such unions, or the amount of cash involved. Perhaps it was the sheer hard-headedness of many of the transactions. For whatever reasons, these fairy tales - or horror stories - provided the plot for many a newspaper article, novel and play."

One such marriage saved the Craven family fortunes in the late nineteenth century. Whilst the story of Cornelia Bradley Martin isn't as well known as some other "dollar princesses" such as Jennie Jerome or Consuelo Vanderbilt, it was every bit as glamorous. This picture shows Cornelia as a child and this link connects to a vintage bromide print of her in the National Portrait Gallery, dated between 1910 - 1914 when she was in her thirties.

Miss Bradley Martin was a mere fifteen years old when she first met the 4th Earl of Craven on her parents' Scottish shooting estate at Balmacaan. They married in 1893 in New York after a brief engagement. The bride was sixteen and had not "come out;" it was felt that the 24 year old Earl had stolen a march on other potential suitors by marrying Cornelia straight out of the schoolroom. The wedding took place in New York's fashionable Grace Church with acres of white satin and much exotic floral decoration including 40 foot high palm trees. An over-excited crowd thronged the street outside for a glimpse of the bride and at one point there was a near-riot when the public invaded the church and the police took an hour to clear it.

Cornelia Craven was herself descended from a notable American lineage. Her mother was the daughter of Isaac Sherman, who had made his fortune in the railroads. Her father, Bradley Martin, was descended from an old Albany family. Her parents had met at the wedding of Miss Emily Vanderbilt. The balls and parties that they gave featured prominently in the gossip pages of the New York Times although after some stern criticism of their opulent lifestyle in the early 20th century, they moved to Britain.

It was no co-incidence that in the same year as his marriage, the 4th Earl began a series of renovations at his main home, Coombe Abbey, which included the restoration of the fabric of the building, a partial re-roofing and improvements to the servants' quarters. Improvements at Coombe continued to draw on the Countess's wealth. In 1907, electric lighting was installed and given the vast size and expensive running costs of such a house it seems inevitable that without Cornelia's money, the Craven family would have had to sell Coombe Abbey much sooner.

The earl and countess adopted a classically wealthy aristocratic lifestyle at Coombe and also moved between fashionable watering holes and glittering society events. In a rather neat example of the Cravens' sense of style, it was reported that Lord Craven sported the longest cigarette holder in London! Quite a claim to fame!

The 4th earl died in 1921 in a mysterious yachting accident during Cowes Week, one of the events of The Season. He fell overboard from his yacht and drowned, a particularly odd end given that he was a good swimmer and was only 55 years old. His body was washed ashore two days after his disappearance. The police report noted, amongst other things, that he had the Craven family crest tattooed on his chest. Tattoes had become increasingly fashionable with the aristocracy during the Victorian period, popularised by the Prince of Wales and later by his son Prince George.

The death of the 4th earl dealt a powerful financial blow to the Craven family fortunes and Cornelia was obliged to sell off the contents of both the Bradley Martin house in Mayfair and of Coombe Abbey. Before Coombe Abbey was sold in 1923 she removed the fireplaces for her home at Hamstead Lodge in Berkshire. She was later to do the same with Ashdown House, removing fireplaces and panelling. Despite these economies, however, the Dowager Countess's establishment at Hamstead Lodge was very grand. She had a staff of 17 inside servants and 8 outside servants plus 19 gardeners. Gardening was her passion and she created "The Dreamland," a garden inspired by a dream she had in the early 1930s.

Visitors to Hamstead Lodge were very eminent; they included Queen Mary, Princess Marie Louise and continental royalty. The Churchill family were regular guests and entertainment was often sporting-themed, including racing weekend house parties and shooting parties. The Dowager Countess was also renowned for her stunning collections, including emeralds and china that had belonged to Marie Antoinette and jewellery that had belonged to the Empress Eugenie. Her staff included two "night-watchmen" who were effectively security staff to ensure that her jewellery and the Craven portrait collection were safe.

It was Cornelia Craven who gave Ashdown House to the National Trust in 1956. She died in 1961. The opulent style in which she and her husband the 4th earl had lived was emblematic of the Edwardian period and very reminiscent of the time a hundred years earlier when the first Earl of Craven of the 2nd Creation and his Countess had lived a life of Regency glamour. The injection of her fortune into the family coffers was of particular benefit to Coombe but also to the remainer of the Craven estates. Hit hard by death duties and the decline of the country estate after the first world war, Coombe, Ashdown and eventually Hamstead Lodge itself were sold off and the glittering years of the Craven's "dollar princess" were gone forever.

The Ashdown Blog will be back on Halloween with a suitably spooky tale of ghostly goings on at Ashdown House!

Unspoilt England

2009-09-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

Ashdown House is in the press again, this time featuring in a list from Candida Lycett Green of the places she loves in England. In her list Candida comments that "Ashdown’s remote downland setting stirs the soul as much as the chalk-white perfection of its architecture." Her article in the Times Online explains in lyrical language the appeal of the unspoilt places that can still be found in this country and describes the romance that thousands of years of history lends to different sites.

Many of the people who work at Ashdown Park or visit the house and estate recognise and understand that it is a very special place. They feel the spirit of the place. From the Bronze Age barrows on the nearby ridge, to the Iron Age hillfort of Alfred's Castle, from the sarsen stones linked by legend to Merlin to the paths through the medieval deer park, from the weathercock on the hill to the little white "palace" at its foot, there is a timeline of thousands of years of history at Ashdown Park that is recorded in the barrows, buildings, holloways and stones that men have placed here down the centuries.

As Candida Lycett Green also comments, these days you sometimes have to dig deep to find unspoilt England. Around here it can sometimes be almost obliterated beneath the bags of litter that people leave on the Ridgeway after a rave at the full moon, no doubt expecting that the mysterious tidy fairies will spirit their rubbish away. Or it can be threatened by the crop circles that appear in the local fields when those pesky "aliens" create something extraordinary without thinking that maybe in the process they are destroying something equally valuable. At times like that it is good to be able to dig deep and connect with the spirit of the place, to stand on the hills above Ashdown Park in a keen breeze and to feel "the continuance of things."

Who designed Ashdown House? - A three hundred and fifty year old historical mystery!

2009-09-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

Ashdown House is beautiful - but we don't know for certain who designed and built it because any papers and drawings relating to the design and build are now lost. This presents us with a fascinating historical mystery with a number of possible solutions. I'm a novice when it comes to architectural history but I love a good mystery and I have gathered together some evidence on the suspects/architects. I'll be asking you to vote at the end - or contribute your own theory!

So without further ado I introduce the first suspect. Step forward Sir Balthazar Gerbier! This is a picture of him by William Dobson (Who is also in the painting along with Sir Charles Cotterell). I'm not sure which of them is which though! There is also a painting of Sir Balthazar Gerbier in the National Portrait Gallery in London but I can't reproduce it here without permission so here is the link!

Sir Balt was quite a character. Born in the Low Countries, he was a courtier, diplomat, art advisor, miniaturist and architectural designer, in his own words fluent in "several languages" with "a good hand in writing, skill in sciences as mathematics, architecture, drawing, painting, contriving of scenes, masques, shows and entertainments for great Princes... as likewise for making of engines useful in war." Never knowingly undersold, he claimed to be descended from the Baron Douvilly although records show that his father was a cloth merchant. He was also said to be a spy. He wrote "A brief Discourse concerning the Three Chief Principals of Magnificent Building (1662) and Counsel and Advise to all Builders (1663) in which he made the famous claim that a staircase of a grand house should be wide enough to allow for a "person of consequence" to have two servants, one on each side as he or she ascended or descended, in case they needed anything!

The evidence in favour of him being the architect of Ashdown House: From 1660 he was working on a house for William Craven at Hamstead Marshall near Newbury, fifteen miles away. Summerson's seminal book on architecture suggests that Ashdown contains design flourishes that are very reminiscent of Gerbier's work.

The evidence against: He died in 1662 with the construction of Hamstead Marshall incomplete. The construction of Ashdown only commenced in 1661/1662. Did he have time to design the house?

Next, the favourite! I couldn't find any pics of Captain William Winde so here is a picture of Belton House, one of the houses that he designed. It looks like Ashdown, doesn't it! Yes, William Winde is the favoured candidate for the role of architect of Ashdown. He was William Craven's godson and one time Usher to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia (which reminds me of the bit in Blackadder when he says "nepotism!" as he is clearing his throat!)

The evidence in favour of Winde: See above! Also, he worked with Balthazar Gerbier on Hamstead Marshall and went on to have a distinguished career as a gentleman architect. He had been abroad during the last years of Cromwell's Protectorate, had seen the architectural styles developing in Holland and France and had studied under the French architect Mansart. Ashdown bears more than a passing resemblance to the original Chateau de Balleroy, which Mansart designed.

The evidence against: He would have been a mere 22 years when he designed and built Ashdown. He did his other domestic architectural work later in life.

Next up is John Webb. Webb was a pupil (and nephew) of Inigo Jones and as such received a training in classical architecture which enabled him to pursue a very successful career.

Evidence in favour: The Victoria County History states that Ashdown was "attributed to Webb" in the Dictionary of National Biography but I can't find this reference in the current edition.

Evidence against: Without any further evidence to support Webb's candidature this has to be very tenuous indeed.

The wild card: Sir Roger Pratt. Okay, so this is where the plot thickens, the mystery deepens and I, for one (and possibly I am the only one!), am intrigued.

The evidence for: Pratt was the architect of Coleshill House about 10 miles up the road from Ashdown and built in 1658 - 1662. This is the interior decoration of Coleshill (which burned down in 1952). The interior decoration of Ashdown is pictured below, on the right. The decoration above the doorway in the hall at Ashdown is identical to the one over the door at the stop of the stairs at Coleshill. Whilst it is hardly surprising that there are similarities in style between the work of architects designing at the same time and subject to the same influences, would another architect copy Pratt's design to the extent of reproducing it identically? Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Or is Pratt the architect of Ashdown House?

Evidence for: The striking resemblances between Coleshill and Ashdown, the fact that Pratt finished work on Coleshill roughly at the same time that work on Ashdown was started and the fact that Pratt was working locally to Ashdown.

Evidence against: None of the sources identify Pratt as the architect of Ashdown.

So what do you think? On the basis of the evidence, can we state with any certainty who designed Ashdown House? Or will it always remain a mystery?

Heritage Open Days!

2009-09-10T03:48:00.000-07:00

The Heritage Open Days for 2009 run from 10th - 13th September and Ashdown House is proud to be a part of the celebration with free admission on Saturday September 12th. Heritage Open Days celebrate England's fantastic architecture and culture and what better way to do so than to visit this unusual and stunningly beautiful seventeenth century hunting lodge, unique amongst the UK's historic buildings. To coincide with this event I will be posting up a blog about the mystery of Ashdown's architect, some information on the different candidates and the evidence supporting each case. It's a real historical mystery! Read the clues - draw your own conclusions on the vision of the man (or woman!) behind Ashdown's brilliant white facade.

All of us who work at Ashdown are extremely proud that this season has seen a huge increase in the number of people coming to see Ashdown House. We are very happy to share this fascinating house and its history with all our visitors. And as we are currently enjoying such lovely late summer weather in Oxfordshire I should put in a word for the Ashdown estate as well. A walk in the woods is the perfect way to spend a sunny September day. Picnic in the grounds, climb to the top of Weathercock Hill for a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, commune with history at Alfred's Castle Iron Age fort or take a walk up to the four Bronze Age barrows and see the whole of the medieval hunting ground spread out before you. The National Trust's little gem of a house is waiting to welcome everyone!

The richest of the rich

2009-08-19T07:38:00.001-07:00

Where did it all go right for the Craven family? It began with the birth in approximately 1548 of a son William, to Beatrix and William Craven in Appletreewick in Yorkshire. William was born in one of two cottages that now form part of the church of St John the Baptist in Appletreewick. He attended a "Dames School" in nearby Burnsall, a place where basic education was provided to the children of poor working families before they themselves were old enough to go out to work. In 1560 William got his big chance when he was chosen to be the new apprentice to Robert Hulson, a Burnsall man who had become a merchant tailor in London.

Based on Craven's later career one can speculate about his rise to riches. He was a clever boy who worked hard and was utterly determined to succeed. After he became a member of the Merchant Tailors' Company in 1569, Craven went into businesss with Hulson and when Hulson died he left his former apprentice £5, “a mourninge gown and my shop at Breedstreete corner of Watling Street with the lytle shoppe and warehowse thereunto adjoining, for a terme of three years.” This bequest was made to William "for failthful and diligent service to me done." He had evidently been a loyal and industrious business partner.

After Hulson's death Craven expanded the business and became a Warden of the Merchant Tailors Company on 4th July 1594. He married late, in 1597, when he was already a man of substance and could look for a wife who was younger but was of equal wealth and stature. Elizabeth Whitmore was the daughter of William Whitmore, another merchant tailor, and her brother George went on to be Lord Mayor of London. Elizabeth and William Craven had six children.

William was by now well on the way to making a fortune and moving up in the fluid social world of the Elizabethan middle class. Opportunities provided by trade gave men such as Craven a route not merely to money but also to influential municipal connections. He was elected Alderman of the Bishopsgate Ward of London in 1600, became Sheriff of London in 1601, was knighted in 1603 and became Lord Mayor of London in 1610. He made his money in the wholesale of cloth for the domestic market, providing, for example, cloth worth almost £600 for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth I. Later on in his career he became a moneylender to the aristocracy, and his debtors included Sir Robert Cecil, the 2nd Earl of Essex and the 9th Earl of Northumberland.

Craven was associated with a number of charitable projects in London and he also became a benefactor to Burnsall and Appletreewick. He paid for renovations to St Wilfrid's Church Burnsall in 1612, furnishing the main body of the church and the chancel with seats and "stalls of wainscot" and he walled the churchyard and had gates added. He paid for a bridge to be built over the River Wharf and had a causeway built from Appletreewick to the church. This was visible until the mid-20th century but is now buried. A rather charming verse was painted onto the church wall to record Craven's generosity:

This church of beauty most, repaired and bright,

Two hundred pouds or more, did cost Sir William Craven, knight,

Many other works of charity whereof no mention here;

True tokens of his bounty in this parish did appear.

His place of his nativity in Appletreewick is seen,

And late of London Lord City Mayor he hath been.

There is a second verse in a similar vein referring to "that bountiful knighte" and his genersoity once again! The total sum Craven spent restoring the church and its grounds was about £600, the equivalent of about £80,000 today.

Craven also built and endowed Burnsall Grammar School in 1605, giving £20 per annum to pay a schoolteacher and £10 for an usher (assistant schoolmaster). The scholars received free education in Latin and English but had to pay one shilling a week for tuition in Maths. The school statutes give a fascinating insight into both Sir William's benevolent paternalism and into the influence which the rest of his family were already exerting in local affairs. All documents relating to the governance of the school were to be kept in a chest in the schoolhouse. The chest had three locks and the three keys were held by the Rector of Burnsall, Sir William and his relatives Robert and Antony Craven. The keys were handed down through the family and the statutes decreed that they should be held by "two men of the name of Craven from the Parish of Burnsall" for as long as there were Craven descendents in the parish.

The school was built on land given by Sir Stephen Tempest, the local squire. The Tempest family had been well-established in the Appletreewick area for three hundred years; it would be interesting to know how they felt about the re-appearance of the newly rich and knighted Sir William Craven in a county where they had always been influential, especially as in 1601 Craven bought the manor house Elm Tree in Appletreeewick, which he re-named High Hall. It was situated opposite the cottage where he had been born. Again this seems a significant statement in Craven's rise to eminence.

When Sir William Craven died in 1618 he left a fortune of £125,000, the equivalent of £5.3 billion in today's values which enable his widow and sons to buy a considerable landed estate and his surviving daughters to marry into the aristocracy.

It was said of the later Cravens that Sir William made all the money and subsequent generations spent it. Whilst this is somewhat unfair, a look at the family tree serves to demonstrate the difference that one "boy-made-good" could make to the future of an entire family. Craven's eldest son William went on to become the first Earl of Craven, a notable soldier and the builder of Ashdown and other grand houses. His second son John became Baron Craven of Ryton. One of his cousins became Master of the Horse to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia and another became her usher. Several other Craven nephews and cousins were knighted and married into the aristocracy. Perhaps the most interesting early descendent is Mary Craven who became Lady Andros. As a result of her connection to the first Earl of Craven she gained a place at the court of King Charles II and went on to marry Sir Edmund Andros, gentleman in waiting to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia and later one of the early colonial governors of America. Mary died in Boston in 1688. It was a long way from Appletreewick and a graphic illustration of how high the Craven family had risen on the coattails of one man.

References: Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.richestoftherich.com/richlist.php?richindex=133 , A Short History of Burnsall School by Stockdale and Townend, Burnsall Church and its Story by M L Dawson.

The Herepath

2009-08-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

The other day I came across the word "herepath" and didn't know what it meant so being a bit of a geek when it comes to words I looked it up on the internet. As a result I came across the website of the wonderful organisation The Friends of the Ridgeway. This is a great site for anyone interested in the Ridgeway, its natural history, geology, archaeology and history. They have some excellent articles on the legends and literature of the area and whilst I was browsing I came across an entire page on "The Herepath." This turns out to be an Anglo-Saxon term for Army Road and according to the article the greatest military activity near the Ridgeway in historic times was in the Anglo Saxon period because the Romans preferred to build their own army roads and did not use the Ridgeway. Indeed the road that runs from Wantage to Wanborough, along the northern line of the Downs but at a lower altitude than the Ridgeway was originally Roman in origin and called the Portway. This road, unlike the Ridgeway, was built along the spring line so that there was water available to travellers along the route. There was a Roman fort in the field to the south of Ashdown Park (which of course wasn't there at the time!) and a Roman villa was built into the Anglo Saxon site at Alfreds Castle and another only a mile to the west. These were rich lands for Roman agriculture, all part of the timeline stretching from the Bronze Age to the present at Ashdown.

Field of Dreams

2009-07-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

To the south of Ashdown Park is a walk that takes you straight back into history. It begins, prosaically enough, in a layby near the water pumping station where you go through a gate into what I call the Field of Dreams. It's a bit like the Secret Garden; on one side you're standing by the road to Lambourn. On the other you're in Deep History.

On your right the remains of the medieval Park Pale of the Ashdown deer park sweep down the hillside, still imposing after hundreds of years. The park pale was erected in the Middle Ages when Ashdown was a hunting chase belonging to Glastonbury Abbey. It consists of a bank and ditch and in places it is still five feet wide and several feet high. Originally there would have been a paling fence on the top too high for a deer to leap.

As you cross the field, the remains of what look like a small camp come into view on your left. Some antiquarian books record this as a Roman fort although I have never been able to discover any details about it or find it on any maps. It's true that there were a number of Roman villas scattered across this part of the Downs, one of which was built into the centre of the Iron Age hillfort at Alfred's Castle. The current road along the Downs beneath the Ridgeway, the Portway, was a Roman Road to the major settlement at Wanborough. So it's possible there might have been a small fort nearby. As is the case with Alfred's Castle, you can see what look like banks and gateways, ditches, entrances and possibly the outline of internal walls.

A little further away across the field is an enormous barrow with a sarsen stone on the top and a ring of what I at first thought were sarsens around the base. On closer inspection they turned out to be tree stumps that looked almost petrified and I wondered if this had once been a site like Waylands Smithy that the Victorians had prettified by adding a ring of trees to complement the rugged beauty of the stones.

As you walk on across the wheat field you have a magnificent view of the park pale ascending the escarpment of Ashdown Upper Wood, a mysterious and ancient woodland with trees up to eight hundred years old and abundant wildlife. The path leads directly to a line of three Bronze Age barrows on the top of the hill. This was a Bronze Age tribal boundary and there are actually four barrows but one of them was sunken and now it is a pool in the winter. As you stand on the top of the hill looking at the sun on the gold dome of Ashdown House you can feel the years roll back. This is a place to come to dream.

Elizabeth of Bohemia and the Gunpowder Plot

2009-06-01T03:42:00.001-07:00

In the UK current political climate where the scandal of MPs' expenses claims still rumbles on, newspapers have been drawing parallels with other historic political crises such as the Peasants' Revolt and the Gunpowder Plot. A lot of the comparisons aren't particularly valid - the Gunpowder Plotters, for example, may have planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament but they didn't have the support of the majority of the populace. It did remind me, however, of a connection to Ashdown House - and after all, that is what this blog is all about!

In November 1605, Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James VI and I, was nine years old and was living at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire (the house in the picture at the top), an estate which, coincidentally, the Craven family later bought. Lord and Lady Harington, staunch Protestants, had been charged with "the keeping and education" of the young Princess, as was the wont with royal children in those days. At Coombe, Elizabeth was taught amongst other things, French and Italian, music and dancing. King James did not approve of the education of women, stating that: "to make women learned and foxes tame had the same effect - to make them more cunning." However I think we may assume that by most people's standards Elizabeth was well educated.

In November 1605 strange rumours of a plot to overthrow the monarchy were circulating in Warwickshire, which was a stronghold of Catholicism. On 6th November 1605 Lord Harington was warned of a threat to the princess and Elizabeth was taken for her own safety to the city of Coventry, for it was suspected that she might be seized should a rebellion take place. She was lodged in the city with an armed guard. Later, after the gunpowder plotters had been arrested and tortured, it emerged that it had been their intention to kidnap "the person of the Lady Elizabeth, the king's daughter, in Warwickshire, and presently proclaim her queen." The plan had been to seize her from Coombe Abbey and carry her off to Ashby St Legers, the home of Lady Catesby, mother of one of the conspirators.

It is said that when Elizabeth heard of the plot she declared that she would rather have died with her father and brother than become queen under such circumstances. Of course the plot to blow up parliament failed and when Elizabeth did become a queen it was of Bohemia rather than England. How different matters might have been...

We stayed in Elizabeth of Bohemia's apartments at Coombe Abbey, which is now a wonderfully luxurious hotel. I didn't sleep a wink all night for fear (and excitement) of seeing her ghost!! There will be more about Coombe on the blog in future.

Below Stairs - The Life of A Victorian Servant at Ashdown House

2009-05-20T05:04:00.000-07:00

During the Victorian period the Craven family occupied Ashdown House on a permanent basis. This was the only time in the history of the house that it became a proper home and the nineteenth century census records give us fascinating details of both the family upstairs and the servants downstairs. This information is taken from a presentation I give about life at Ashdown in the Victorian period.

In fact the servants were not “downstairs” at Ashdown because the house was so small that there was no servant accommodation in the main building. During the Victorian period additional wings were added to the main house to convert it into the sort of dwelling suitable for a Victorian aristocrat and at the same time the servants’ accommodation was extended. The servants also lived in the two lodge houses and some had homes in Ashdown village. Others walked to work each day from Lambourn, Ashbury, Uffington, Idstone and the surrounding villages.

At Ashdown House the census returns for the nineteenth century illustrate beautifully how a Victorian servants hall would run. The upper servants were the steward or butler, the housekeeper, the cook, the senior lady’s maid and senior valet, the head gardener and the coachman. The steward’s room boy waited on them. They did not eat in the servants’ hall but separately in the butler’s pantry. There were two ladies maids, one for the Countess and one for her elder daughters. The ladies maids earned between £12 and £15 per annum. There were also two valets, one for the Earl of Craven and one for his brother. They earned more – naturally.

At Ashdown the butler’s pantry had cupboards for storage and a table for cleaning. The room was at the front of the house and it had a view of the approach to the house so that the butler could see visitors coming and open the door in advance. It was also his job to iron the newspapers in the morning! He was responsible for all indoor male servants except the valets. He was in charge of the silver plate (though it was the footmen who actually cleaned it), the drink and the table linen, and he was also in charge of the safe.

There were three footmen at Ashdown in 1871 plus one steward’s room man. The footmen waited at table at dinner. They also had duties outside including carrying in the coal, they trimmed the lamps and they stood around looking good! Servant tax was higher on taller servants and people often chose matching footmen because they looked elegant in their livery. They attended the family on outings in London such as to the theatre or opera, riding on the back of the carriage to stop children hitching a free ride. Footmen earned £15 - £25 and could also make a considerable sum in tips. At Ashdown we have a collection of footmen’s chairs from the eighteenth century which were designed so that the footman could sit down facing the back of the chair in order not to crush the tailcoat of his livery.

In the 1861 census the Ashdown House cook was male and French. This was extremely fashionable. He had three kitchen maids and one scullery maid to assist him and they worked in the South Lodge where the kitchen, bakery and brewery were situated. Having the kitchens away from the main house was ideal for the family because as well as reducing the fire risk it also kept kitchen smells away from the main house. Various cunning methods were employed to keep the food warm on its journey across the courtyard from kitchen to dining room. The kitchen and scullery maids at Ashdown were all in their teens or early twenties and they helped prepare the food and did the washing up. All the servants worked from 6am to 11pm. By the Victorian era the kitchen at Ashdown was quite advanced with complexes of roasting ranges, closed ranges, stewing stoves, boiling stoves, turnspits, hotplates and hot closets. Food was kept cold in boxes cooled with ice from the icehouse in the village behind the stables. Larders were kept cool by natural ventilation. There was also a specialised game larder at Ashdown because of the importance of shooting on the estate.

The housekeeper was in charge of the housemaids, of which there were three at Ashdown, and one stillroom maid. She was responsible for cleaning the house, looking after the linen, and providing, storing and preparing tea, coffee, sugar, groceries, preserves, cakes and biscuits. Afternoon tea (which was introduced in the 1840s) added to her responsibilities. She had a room of her own, was in charge of the stillroom, and also presided over a storeroom and closet. At Ashdown the housekeeper’s room contained the china cupboards and linen presses but was a parlour as well.

The housemaids were responsible for drawing the blinds and curtains – and closing the internal shutters at Ashdown - for bringing fresh water for washing before breakfast, at noon, before dinner and at bedtime, and for keeping the fires going. In 1850 the housemaids were paid between £11 and £14. They had a half-day off on Sundays, one evening a week free and one day off per month. Not exactly a generous allocation!

The census returns and estate records give a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the Ashdown servants in the Victorian era. In future pieces I will write more about the outdoor servants and their roles, and also about “Upstairs” – the life led by the Victorian Earls of Craven and their families. If you are interested in the role of Victorian servants drop me a line and I will be very happy to email this complete article to you.

The sale of Ashdown House - Another View

2009-05-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

In the last week there have been two articles on the UK national press regarding the sale of the lease of Ashdown House.

One was in The Times. The other was in the Daily Telegraph, complete with pictures of the interior of the house. Now, I'm all for Ashdown Park receiving coverage in the national press. I can think of nothing nicer. Anything that brings more visitors to this stunning National Trust property, to admire the peerless architecture, share the fascinating history and admire the peace and beauty of the countryside has to be a good thing.

Maybe that is why I am so disappointed in the articles I've read because they make no mention of those aspects of Ashdown Park at all. In fact the crucial point - that the house belongs to the National Trust and it is only the lease that is for sale - seems instead to be presented as something of an inconvenience to a potential buyer who might have to tolerate tour groups "straying" (according to the Times) or "parading through the house" according to the Telegraph.

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article6206028.ece

Excuse me? Am I missing something here? Here are the aims of the National Trust, taken directly from their website:

"The National Trust is a charity and is completely independent of Government. We rely for income on membership fees, donations and legacies, and revenue raised from our commercial operations. We now have 3.5 million members and 52,000 volunteers who gave 2.3 million hours in 2007/08. More than 12 million people visit our pay for entry properties, while an estimated 50 million visit our open air properties. We protect and open to the public over 300 historic houses and gardens and 49 industrial monuments and mills. But it doesn’t stop there. We also look after forests, woods, fens, beaches, farmland, downs, moorland, islands, archaeological remains, castles, nature reserves, villages - for ever, for everyone."

For ever, for everyone. National Trust properties are there to be shared. Visitors are to be welcomed. Those of us who have worked for the National Trust as volunteers at Ashdown House have been doing that for years, making the most of what the house has to offer with energy, enthusiasm, creativity. Wouldn't it be marvellous if the new tenants also shared the Trust's aims and aspirations - and our pleasure in welcoming visitors?

Down in the woods...

2009-04-25T01:33:00.000-07:00

Deep in the ancient woodland at Ashdown Park is one of the rarest plants in the country. Herb Paris is not closely related to any other British wildflower and grows in damp spots in limestone soil in old undisturbed woodland areas. Old folklore names for this plant are One Berry (yes, because it has only the one fruit!) and True Love, probably because it can be used as an aphrodisiac!

In olden times Herb Paris was much esteemed and used in medicine, the type of plant that Brother Cadfael would definitely have wanted in his herbarium. It is poisonous, producing nausea, vomiting, vertigo, delirium convulsions, profuse sweating and dry throat and proving fatal to children and, interestingly, poultry (which would swallow it when pecking about free range), according to the ancient herbal books. But in small doses it has been found of benefit in bronchitis, spasmodic coughs and rheumatism. It relieves cramp, colic, and palpitation of the heart and the juice of the berries cures inflammation of the eyes. A cooling ointment is made from the seeds and the juice of the leaves for green wounds and for outward application for tumours and inflammations. The powdered root boiled in wine is given for colic. One or 2 scruples can act as an emetic, and it was even prescribed for madness, so as you can see it is a very versatile medicinal herb. Another use it was originally put to was as an antidote against arsenic poisoning. These days it is still used in homeopathy.

At Ashdown Herb Paris nestles amongst the dog mercury, wood anemones and late primroses, another beautiful reason to go down to the woods today and proof that parts of the hunting chase are very ancient woodland indeed.

King Arthur's Castle?

2009-04-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

Although the history of Ashdown Park naturally focuses around the house that stands there today and the Craven family who built and lived in it, there are many other fascinating aspects of both history and legend in the local Ridgeway countryside.

The 200 years following the official withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain in 410AD are known as the Dark Ages, the least well documented in the recorded history of the British Isles. The inhabitants of Britain were Romanized to some extent, especially in urban centres but by blood and by tradition they were primarily Celtic. Under the Romans, local chieftains had played an active role in the government of the territory, and some of these leaders took up the reins after the Roman officials were gone. Vortigern, who declared himself Hugh King of Britain in 425AD hired Saxon mercenaries and granted them land in payment for their services. By 440AD the Saxons had rebelled and were demanding more land and territory. Tradition and legend have it that a succession of Romano-British leaders rallied the population against Saxon raids and that one, Arthur, succeeded in defeating them at Mons Badonicus, the Battle of Badon Hill.

Where was Badon Hill? There are no contemporary records about the battle and precious little legend other than that it lasted for three days and nights. The site has been located all over Britain but a strong contender is Baydon, four miles from Ashdown. For a start the clue is in the name. It is an uncommon name – there is no other place in England called Badon or Baydon. But was it called Badon as far back as the 5th century? A medieval reference to it in the Salisbury charters refers to it in the Latin form Beidona and states that the origin of the name derives from Old English “Beg-dun” meaning a down or hill once noted for the berries gathered there. Gildas, writing in the 6th century, also Latinized the name as Mons Badonicus and Bede followed him.

Then there is location. The Saxons controlled the Thames just as the Danes would do five hundred years later when Alfred the Great defeated them at the Battle of Ashdown. The hill-forts that had originated centuries before show archaeological evidence of occupancy in the fifth and sixth centuries, suggesting they were used to evade and hold off the invading Saxon tribes. If the Romano-British forces held the great Ridgeway forts of Uffington Castle and Liddington Hill, then Baydon, on a ridge of high ground between the two would be an ideal place to stand and fight. And the link with Ashdown Park? Just to the west of the park pale, within sight of the house, stands the Iron Age hillfort of Alfred’s Castle. It is equidistant between Uffington and Liddington and it guards the approach to the Ridgeway from the south, beneath the Baydon Ridge.

If Baydon was the site of Arthur’s Battle of Badon Hill, should Alfred’s Castle more properly be re-named Arthur’s Castle?

Things you CAN do at Ashdown Park!

2009-04-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

Ashdown House and Park opened for the 2009 season at the beginning of April and I'm looking forward very much to taking my first tour round on Saturday April 11th. Recently a number of people have siad to me that they had considered visiting Ashdown but decided against it because there wasn't much of the house that was open to the public. This got me thinking - Instead of emphasising all the things you CAN'T do at Ashdown, why not point out all the wonderful things that you CAN do, which all go to prove what a fabulous place it is for a visit. So here goes:

1. You can go on a guided tour of the outside of the house, the hallway, staircase, cupola and roof and hear the story of the Craven family, owners of Ashdown. Trust me, it's worth the tour for the view alone which is said to be the best in three counties. Also if you like dolls houses you have to see Ashdown - lots of dolls houses are modelled on it!

2. You can visit the information centre where there are, amongst other things, interpretation boards for the house and the estate, a costume display, a timeline, a wonderful album of the pictures taken by the pioneering photographer William, 2nd Earl of Craven in the mid-nineteenth century, and lots of knowledgeable guides who can tell you all about the fascinating history of the place.

3. You can view the very fine seventeenth century portrait collection on display in the house, the dreadfully uncomfortable footmens' chairs and... um... the fascinating collection of early carved stag heads!

4. You can stroll in the formal parterre and gardens or wander through the woodlands, which are the remains of the medieval hunting forest. There you may see a huge variety of wildlife - birds of prey and woodland birds, deer, foxes even badgers - and beautiful flowers - primroses and woodland anemones at this time of year, and carpets of bluebells in a few weeks time.

5. You can visit the "lost" village of Ashdown, once a thriving community supporting the estate, where the marvellous Victorian stables still stand on the village green with a very cute weather vane on the top sporting an earl's coronet!

6. You can climb Weathercock Hill and walk along footpaths that take you all over the estate, including past three Bronze Age barrows and along the medieval park pale, originally designed to keep the deer within the hunting grounds. You can also see the Sarsen Field, a site of special scientific interest where there are stones with holes in them that were created by the roots of palm trees... If only we had that sort of weather now!

7. You can visit Alfred's Castle, the Iron Age Hill Fort built on the site of an earlier Roman Villa, reputedly the site of the Battle of Ashdown where King Alfred defeated the Danes in AD 871. Some very friendly horses live there!

8. Nearby on the ancient Ridgeway is Wayland's Smithy, an impressive neolithic burial chamber and Uffington Castle, White Horse Hill and Dragon Hill where Saint George, the patron saint of England, allegedly slew the dragon. No grass has grown where the dragon's blood fell ever since. Local legend also states that on the full moon the horse comes down off the hill to graze in the valley below...

9. You can follow the Michael and Mary Ley Line which passes through Ashdown, making it part of the mystical landscape.

10. When you've done all that you can go to the Rose and Crown Inn in the historic village of Ashbury for a delicious cream tea!!

Oh, and don't believe the National Trust handbook when it says there are no WC facilities at Ashdown House - there are!! Now, you have to admit that sounds like a very nice day out, doesn't it!

The Bluebell Woods

2008-05-08T03:34:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday when I was working at Ashdown we had a grand total of six visitors who braved the rainy weather to come and visit! Yesterday, with temperatures in the seventies and glorious blue skies, we had a lot more people on the guided tour. All agreed that the highlight of the experience was the fabulous views from the roof of the house.

This is the time of year when the woods are bursting into leaf and there are carpets of bluebells under the trees. The deer come out to graze on the avenue in the early morning mist then settle to doze under the trees as the day becomes hotter. A pair of sparrowhawks are nesting in a tree close to the house and the Balleroy ponies at the nearby stud have had two adorable foals!

Ashdown House is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with guided tours at 2.15, 3.15 and 4.15pm. The woods are open every day except Friday. Come and visit us - we look forward to welcoming you.

Snow in April!

2008-04-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ashdown House opened for the season on 2nd April and on Saturday 5th I had the pleasure of showing about 30 visitors around the house. Whilst the first tour was looking at the views from the roof the herd of fallow deer came out from beneath the trees to graze on the North Avenue. There was one white hart in the herd. In Arthurian legend the white hart is a mystical beast pursued by the knights of the round table. It was also the heraldic symbol of King Richard II of England. I have only ever seen one white hart before, in the New Forest. This one was a young deer and scampered around with the rest of the herd before they settled to graze on the avenue in full view of the delighted visitors.

This morning we awoke to a blanket of snow and headed to Ashdown woods for our morning walk. The trees looked absolutely beautiful with snow on all the bare boughs whilst the primroses and early bluebells were hidden. As we walked along the Avenue we saw a barn owl coasting along the rides hunting. It followed us, dipping between the snow laden trees and adding another element to the magical atmosphere of the place. This was the heaviest snowfall of the "winter" at Ashdown this year and looked absolutely enchanting.

Mystic Ashdown!

2007-09-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Do you believe in ley lines and earth energy lines?

It has been revealed that Ashdown House lies directly on the "Michael Line," one of the major lines of earth energy on the planet. The Michael and Mary lines are two negative and positive, male and female energy lines that run from Cornwall to Norfolk, flowing through the centre of Avebury and other ancient sites. Earth energy currents are often misnamed ley lines. A ley line is a straight line that can be drawn on a map that connects four or more ancient sites, such as churches, stone circles, barrows etc. In contrast, earth energy currents are vibrant flows of detectable energy that weave their way through the ground. These currents meander like rivers and do invariably run through ancient sacred sites. The book 'The Sun and The Serpent' by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst explains how earth energy currents work.

With so many ancient sites such as Avebury, Uffington Hill Fort and Wayland's Smithy in its vicinity it is perhaps no surprise to find Ashdown House linked to this phenomenon. The church in Ashbury is St Mary's Church and it is said that there was once a stone circle in the field behind the church. Ashdown estate belonged to the Abbey of Glastonbury until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. The fields between Ashdown and the Ridgeway frequently have exquisite crop circles in them.

Intriguingly, the grounds at Ashdown were set out on a "masculine" plan as this was felt to be appropriate for a hunting lodge. It also fits perfectly with the idea of the male energy line. Come to Ashdown and explore this ancient landscape and feel the energy flow!

William, Earl of Craven - The Last Cavalier

2007-06-08T03:54:00.001-07:00

It was William Craven, Baron of Hamstead Marshall, Viscount Uffington and Earl of Craven, who had the present day hunting lodge built at Ashdown in 1661 - 1662.

Craven was a fascinating character largely overlooked by history. Born in 1608, William Craven was the son of a self-made man from Yorkshire who had been apprenticed in the cloth trade, made a fortune and became a money lender to the crown, married well and was Lord Mayor of London. When William Craven inherited his father's fortune and estates he was one of the nine richest men in Stuart England. He was also one of the most ardent royalists devoted to the Stuart cause.

Still in his teens, William Craven left England to serve in the army of Maurice of Orange and over many years he gained great distinction as a soldier. He fought alongside Frederick of Bohemia and his sons in their attempts to regain the ancestral palatine lands they had lost in the Thirty Years War and he supported Elizabeth, the Winter Queen, in her exile in the United Provinces.

All William Craven's estates, with the exception of Combe Abbey, were sequestrated during the Commonwealth and he was able to return to England only on the restoration of King Charles II. He started building on both his estates at Hamstead Marshall and Ashdown on his return.

Lord Craven lived until the age of 87. He was a friend and comrade in arms of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, and was the executor of Rupert's will and guardian of his daughter Ruperta. He remained a loyal servant of the Stuarts throughout his life.

Who lived in a house like this?

2007-06-08T02:22:00.000-07:00

Ashdown House is sometimes called "the house built for the love of a woman who never lived to see it." The lady in question was Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, daughter of King James I of England and sister of Charles I.

Elizabeth was born in 1596 in Scotland, before her father succeeded Queen Elizabeth I to the throne of England. She spent much of her childhood in the care of the Harington family at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire. It was from there that the gunpowder plotters planned to seize Elizabeth and put her on the throne as a puppet queen after blowing up her father and brother in the Houses of Parliament. Elizabeth's response to the failed plan was that she would rather have died alongside her father than been Queen of England.

She married at the age of 16 to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, a political Protestant match that nevertheless turned out to be very happy. Elizabeth and Frederick lived in Heidelberg in present day Germany before Frederick was offered the throne of the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1619. He ruled for one year only before being defeated at The Battle of the White Mountain by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor. It is from this time that it is said Elizabeth and Frederick gained their titles of The Snow King and The Winter Queen because they melted away before the spring came. Forced into exile, they lived in the Netherlands and raised their growing family there. Frederick campaigned unsuccessfully for the return of the Palatine lands and died in 1632.

It was during her exile in The Hague that Elizabeth met William Craven, who was to become one of her most ardent supporters. It was Craven who offered Elizabeth the use of his house in Drury Lane, London, when she first returned to England after the Restoration of her nephew, King Charles II in 1660. It is also said that Craven conceived the idea of building a hunting lodge for Elizabeth on one of his Berkshire estates. Work started on Ashdown House in 1661 but sadly Elizabeth did not live to see the finished house. She died in London in February 1662.

More about Elizabeth anon. But if she didn't live in a house like this - who did?

Invitation to Afternoon Tea

2007-05-29T23:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, the introductions are over and soon I'll start posting some snippets of history about Ashdown House, but first I wanted to issue an invitation to afternoon tea!

At the moment the Friends of Ashdown are busy planning tea on the lawn for next season but here at virtual Ashdown we are already up and running with our refreshments so sit back, relax and enjoy the atmosphere. Tea is served in the South Lodge, one of the two lodge buildings that you can see in the photographs. Originally the South Lodge was the kitchen, bakery and brewery for the main house and the original fireplace and bread ovens are still there. Whilst we're sitting here chatting, please do tell me your own favourite historic places to visit so we can all go on a tour!

Anyone for a pot of tea with scones, jam and cream?

Ashdown in Beautiful Britain Magazine!

2007-05-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ashdown House is featured in the Summer 2007 edition of Beautiful Britain Magazine!

The magazine, which is for everyone who loves Britain, calls the house "An Oxfordshire Gem."

Welcome to the Ashdown House Blog Site!

2007-05-26T10:24:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the site that celebrates the wonderful seventeenth century hunting lodge Ashdown House in Oxfordshire, UK. The Friends of Ashdown, a group of people who love historic houses, like Ashdown so much that they want to share it with everyone! On this site we will post information about Ashdown, its history, events taking place at the house and some stunning photographs. If you have any connection with Ashdown or the Craven family, or if you are interested in the history of the house and have research enquiries or if you love historic houses please post your comments or questions and we will do our best to answer them.

If you are visiting Oxfordshire on holiday in the UK or from overseas, the house is open on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons with guided tours at 2.15pm, 3.15pm and 4.15pm. We hope you will come and visit us for a warm welcome and a fascinating tour of one of the UK's most atmospheric and beautiful historic houses.