To the Manor Drawn Page 6
Chapter 9
Ghosts are where they find you
Email To: Bill
From: Mother Ship
Date: 21 February
Subject: Dinner plans?
Hi Sweetheart,
Fancy having dinner out? We could take a drive first and amuse ourselves by playing ‘count the whites of their eyes’. It’s a full moon tonight so the animals should be howling. I made a reservation at the Crown for 8 pm which will give us plenty of time for hide and seek.
How was your day? It couldn’t have been as exciting as mine. This morning we had another power outage, then a bird flew into one of the drawing room window panes rendering the poor thing unconscious. This afternoon when I left the Hall a cow was sleeping near the road. The farmer said she would never wake up.
Come home as soon as you can. The full moon is making strange things happen.
Love,
Your Country Girl
Night sounds inside a 400-year-old building were like nothing we had ever known. Even more disturbing were the night sounds emanating from outside the windows. Some evenings the wind could be so fierce it actually rattled the inside shutters. At other times, it felt as if the rain was pelting the building from all four sides at once. Owls particularly enjoyed the inky-black hours of the night in which to conduct their family business, sorting out territorial disputes and resolving domestic quarrels. Even cows, like children, didn’t always sleep through the night without a whimper or two. It was no use opening the shutters for a peek outside on a moonless evening as there was absolutely nothing to see other than our own breath and reflections in the window.
I’m sure women have a built-in alarm system that can be activated by the sound of a pin dropping. When our house seemed to want to shift and move about a bit in the middle of the night, groaning as it tried to stretch and get a good scratch, I knew I was the only one to hear it. Even the sound of a twig falling down the chimney in the bedroom could break the silence of sleep. Eventually, the reality that nothing could actually harm us set in. Night sounds became as comforting as a distant train whistle.
Stocken Hall has a distinguished, yet hardly heroic, history that includes a tip of the hat to the spirit world. Originally built by John Brown in the early 1600s, it was sold to the Heathcote family then eventually let to various tenants, one of whom was General Thomas Grosvenor. As Master of the Cottesmore Hunt, General Grosvenor kept hounds and horses at Stocken, breeding the Duke of Wellington’s horse, Copenhagen, his mount at the Battle of Waterloo.
Finally, in 1907 the entire estate passed to Major Fleetwood Hesketh who lived there with his family until the Second World War. It was during this period of occupation that Peter, the second son of Charles and Anne Fleetwood Hesketh, recorded in his own hand Recollections, a childhood account of an idyllic time between 1907 and 1918 at Stocken Hall. Peter described his privileged life as a young man brought up by a governess, nursemaids and sundry servants. At that time, the estate comprised several farms and covered over 3000 acres including 600 acres of primeval forest. There were cottages for all the farm families, the chauffeur, the joiner, head keeper and bailiff. Inside, the Hall housed a platoon of household staff to maintain the kitchen, nursery, schoolroom, sewing room and private apartments. For recreation as well as relaxation, the family had an enormous south-facing lawn that cascaded into several terraces until it reached the park where herds of fallow deer roamed.
Peter recalled with humour the mile-and-a-half Sunday morning walk to the Stretton church where his mother played the organ and his father read the lessons. Apparently when the sermon overran the allotted ten minutes Peter’s father, who always sat in the first pew, would remove his gold watch and place it in full view of the vicar as a gentle nudge to draw the message to a close. The temperature in the church was so cold that vapour from the mouths of the congregation would fill the room as the pious huddled together to sing hymns. Sadly, nothing has yet changed to warm the bodies of today’s parishioners.
The old Hall must have been a fantastic place for Peter and his siblings to play hide and seek on rainy afternoons. The numerous corridors and hidden passages provided hours of unfettered entertainment during the day until the evenings turned these same hallways into spooky tunnels of darkness. The Hall, known amongst the townsfolk to be haunted, played havoc with their young, eager minds.
Recently, I came across an article in the Rutland Magazine & County Historical Record that referred to the ghosts of Stocken Hall. It was written over one hundred years ago and recounts the stories of three apparitions. First, a woman in black was reportedly seen gliding down the long corridors at night. This was possibly linked to the vague legend about a girl having been strangled in the tower. The second involved a small white dog, a phantom that produced a ‘burning chill’ on the skin when brushed up against. The third spirit myth concerned the figure of a man, possibly a sheep rustler, who was hanged from an oak tree on a hill near the Hall. Each of these incidences shared a striking resemblance to the tales orally passed on to us when we moved in.
You would think the darkness of the night would be the best time for ghosts to make their presence known but, like bears, they are where they find you. Early on, we heard tales from the builders about the foreman’s dog wandering around the Hall, stubbornly refusing to enter the tower block, supposedly the haunt of the veiled woman. Likewise, our new neighbours told stories of a headless rider galloping across the fields and a chambermaid who fell down the wine cellar steps to her death. Regrettably, we have not yet been formally introduced to any of them.
Somehow, one of these tales recently made it into a national newspaper which brought the Ghost Buster brigade to Stocken Hall to witness the return of the phantom sheep thief who was hanged centuries before. Apparently, he appears like clockwork on the anniversary of his death at precisely 2.45 pm. The spook patrol staked out each of the three oak trees on our property in order to get a glimpse of the departed, but the only thing they reported seeing was an ‘eerie condensation dripping from the boughs’ of one of the trees. Poking around the neighbourhood still further, they met a mother who claimed to have seen a stranger sitting on her young son’s bed. When she approached the man, he vanished. Another neighbour told the team that she had recently made a delivery to one of the flats only to find no one home. As she turned around a man was standing behind her. He, too, quickly disappeared.
Many people believe in a fourth dimension for wandering souls, claiming the spirit world has nothing to do with good or evil. I keep thinking our time will come and although I can’t be certain, of course, I feel I may have had a brief encounter with ‘something’ one evening while preparing dinner. At the limit of my peripheral vision, almost behind my head, I caught sight of movement in the hallway. It was so startling that I dropped my mixing bowl and spoon as I turned around to look. Although I saw nothing, I felt a void, if it is possible to sense one. It was warm, not cold, rather like breath from a long, deep exhale. I suspect we shall meet again.
Part 3
‘MULTUM IN PARVO’
Chapter 10
So much in so little
Email To: Esther Marie
From: Leslie Ann
Date: 27 February
Subject: Big fish—little pond
Dear Esther Marie,
I remember my father asking me when I was a little girl what I wanted to be when I grew up. Did I want to be a little fish in a big pond or a big fish in a little pond? I think I have chosen to live in the smallest pond in England! It’s okay if I don’t try to swim too far in any direction.
Small ponds are safer too. You can still see old lock-ups or wooden stocks in some villages and this week the ‘Bobby’ who patrols Stamford turned a blind eye to my illegally parked car. He thought I was a tourist and gave me the benefit of the doubt. Come to think of it, a small pond isn’t so bad after all.
Love,
Leslie Ann
That old chestnut question, ‘What brought y
ou to Rutland?’ could be anticipated in any pub conversation. In truth it was more blind good luck than plucky vision on our part. We can, however, credit our now local newspaper the Rutland & Stamford Mercury for one inspirational piece of journalism that happened to get our attention while visiting the area several years back. On the third page we noticed the Crime File. It recorded the week’s shenanigans, usually, and not surprisingly, dominated by the antics of young males. One particular notice was eye-catching for its utter simplicity and honesty.
The story read, ‘A middle-aged man was spotted in Safeway putting a packet of chicken breasts into his coat pocket. If you have any information contact the Oakham police.’ Now this was a crime we could live with.
Bill and I were extremely sensitive to offensive behaviour having once been the victims of thugs in London, which put us at the mercy of a police force with little ability to do anything other than write up a report. Although Rutland was not crime free, government statistics indicated the county only needed three policemen to patrol the entire region. Growing ever more cynical in an increasingly violent society, we considered that to be good news.
Keeping a watchful eye for further reported crime, I noticed another heinous deed mentioned in the same newspaper. With all seriousness, it recounted the following events. ‘A doorbell was broken and a milk bottle was stolen from a house in Oakham. The doorbell was valued at £14 and the milk bottle at £1. Anyone with more information is asked to contact the police.’ This must have been what life was like when I was a child. When homeowners never locked their front doors and car keys were left dangling from the ignition. We had come to a place in the country not out of step with the rest of the world, but in step with values and old-fashioned decency.
One evening Stretton had an unusual brush with the underbelly of society when four joy riders in a stolen car ran out of petrol on the motorway close to the village. They entered the community in search of a new getaway car when three residents spotted them. One called the police, one set out on foot in pursuit and one became the unfortunate victim of a punch-up. The police apprehended the offenders as they were leaving the village, but sadly apprehension does not always lead to punishment. A price England is just learning to pay. The local newspaper characterized our brave menfolk as ‘have-a-go heroes’ which I thought was most unfair. Putting oneself in harm’s way for the safety of others should be praised, not condemned.
Unlike in London, where a car or house alarm can ring unnoticed for hours, in Rutland if you park an unfamiliar vehicle too long on the street or make a U-turn in a village someone will notice. What could be deemed nosy is really the buddy system in action. The ‘twitching curtain’ contingent is less formal than Neighbourhood Watch, but is nevertheless an effective deterrent to petty crime.
In the good ol’ days, every town and village had stocks or lock-ups as a means of taking care of ‘yobs’, a term that comes from the singular of the word ‘boy’ spelt backwards. Curiously, this form of punishment is still listed on the Parliamentary Statute Books, but needless to say has passed into the annals of history. Possibly, the reason this form of discipline has died out has more to do with rotten and decaying wood than to morality. Had stocks been made of a more permanent material we might still see them in use today on occasions other than village fetes, when they are used to hold hapless detainees while spirited onlookers pelt the restrained with wet sponges.
Examples of stocks, a contraption in which malcontents were forced to place their feet between two locked blocks of wood, or pillories, where local drunkards and thieves had their heads and hands padlocked in similar shackles, are still centre stage on many a village green. In the spring, daffodils often grow in profusion around the base of these curios. Photographers and day-trippers can’t get enough snaps, while little kiddies enjoy them as quirky jungle gyms. Still with a role to play in village life, they have not entirely lost their effectiveness to fascinate.
‘Multum in parvo’ which translated means ‘so much in so little’, is the well-deserved motto of Rutland. The ‘much’ could be the fifty-four villages and an almost equal number of churches. Gastronomically, the area has developed an outstanding reputation for great food. No less than twenty-five inns have been listed in The Good Pub Guide and four establishments have received Michelin Guide awards, an almost piggish number in relationship to the size of the area. The county can also boast of having one of the largest man-made reservoirs in Europe at more than 3000 acres, with 250 species of birds and over 20,000 visiting wildfowl. Rutland Water is a haven for firm, Lycra-clad bodies participating in anything that requires wind, water or air. Canoeing, windsurfing, dinghy racing, fishing, sailing and jogging are all magnets to the physically fit.
The ‘little’ could be that Rutland is the smallest county in England, confined to only 15 square miles with a well-dispersed 37,000 tax payers within her borders. Uppingham and Oakham, two market towns of distinction, provide consumer and cultural needs as well as first-class educational facilities. To adapt one of Winston Churchill’s pearls of wisdom, Rutland is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Most people know of the county, some can even find it on a map, but those who know it well seldom share the secret.
Local stone, part of the ‘Great Limestone Belt’ running from Dorset to Eastern Yorkshire, has been quarried here since Roman times. It was used to build substantial parts of Cambridge as well as the Palace of Westminster, the renowned seat of British government. Formed over 160 million years ago as the floor of an ancient sea, limestone is soft and easily shaped until it is exposed to air when it hardens to become an excellent building material. What makes it so appealing is the colour. Because of the iron content, the stone can vary in tone from honey-gold, to soft grey to pearly white. The shade also changes with the light which makes churches and cottages charming when juxtaposed against the flush of foliage.
Rutland is also home to the Cottesmore Hunt, one of the oldest and most prestigious foxhunting clubs in England which can trace its origins back over 300 years. With all these amenities, the county is still one of the best-kept secrets in England. In fact, the Department of Tourism has designated ‘Rutland: Secret England’ as her official slogan. ‘The Cotswolds without the crowds’ is also mentioned in the same breath. Set in the centre of what is popularly known as the rolling Shire Counties, Rutland is surrounded by Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and nearby Nottinghamshire, of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest fame. Having been a county in its own right since the twelfth century, the bureaucrats decided to redraw the map of Britain in 1974 allowing Rutland to be swallowed up by neighbouring Leicestershire. This was as popular with the locals as banning Christmas.
Protests against the government’s decision were rather innocuous yet effective. Leicestershire signposts were simply removed. Offices, museums and even the regional paper continued using Rutland as a moniker, while the hard-core locally born and bred refused to remove the name Rutland from their postal addresses. After twenty-one years of fighting to regain her independence, the government finally had a rethink and declared the county once again free, thus putting the question back into the game of English Trivial Pursuit, ‘What is England’s smallest county?’
The surrounding landscape is so classically English—typified by thatched cottages with lace curtains, church spires and hills and vales stitched together by lanes and hedgerows—that Oakham was selected as the perfect setting for the filming of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations in 1998. The unspoiled town of Stamford was the backdrop for the BBC’s production of George Eliot’s Middlemarch and the recent lavish period drama Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Dame Judi Dench. The grandeur of nearby Burghley House was used for the Oscar-winning 1981 film about the 1924 Olympics, Chariots of Fire, as well as the more recent movies The Golden Bowl starring Nick Nolte and Uma Thurman, and The Da Vinci Code. Yet the overall feeling of the region is one of simple pleasures rather than grand quests. Sipping a steamy
cup of tea from a thermos while sitting in the car waiting for a winter rainstorm to pass or lying on the grass in the sunshine watching a county cricket match is as good as it gets.
Chapter 11
Like a good chardonnay
Email To: Emma and Rheanna
From: Leslie Ann
Date: 21 March
Subject: Spring isn’t here!
Dear Darling Emma and Rheanna,
March 21st is the first day of spring, but not here. Instead, a terrific storm blew through last night leaving us without electricity for thirty hours! We had to bring down the camper stove and lanterns from the attic to heat up the study. We sat there for hours playing cards and drinking brandy looking like muggers with our hoods pulled over our heads to keep warm. Eventually, we had to go to a nearby inn for the night.
I wish Sussex wasn’t so far away at times like these. Please come up to see us as soon as you can. You are always missed.
Love,
Leslie Ann
Stamford, part of a cruet set of towns equidistant from our home, is like a good chardonnay discovered by accident; once found, it’s not forgotten. It is remembered for a distinctive quality, a honey-coloured mellowness, compatibility and affordability. It has agreeable packaging and a pleasant bouquet. As the sign reads on the outskirts of town, ‘Welcome to Stamford. Stay awhile amid its ancient charm.’ And so we did.
This bijou Georgian gem, located in the adjoining county of Lincolnshire, but adopted by Rutlanders as one of their own, immodestly claims to be ‘the finest stone town in England’ and it very well may be. Although not built on a grand scale like Bath, the terraces and squares, small and irregular, have a certain charm. The pattern of twisting medieval streets are so full of saints’ names—Saint Mary, Saint Leonard, Saint George and Saint Peter—the locals feel blessed before they ever venture out of their homes. Even Jessica Fletcher could be enticed away from Cabot Cove to sleuth through an old clock shop or have a gossip over a cup of tea with a knowledgeable mapmaker while in search of another villain in Murder She Wrote.