At Stanford...
A DELVE in the Echo archives often turns up some surprising and interesting finds and none more so than a series of articles by an author going under the pen name of “Heywood”.
During the 1930s Heywood contributed a number of pieces for the Echo looking at local country houses, churches and also local legends.
We know many readers have been enjoying the old legend articles we have been revisiting these last few months. Sadly we’ve now run out of Heywood’s tales, but now we are concentrating on his writings on local country houses.
We hope you enjoy his reflections 90-odd years on after they were first published
IN THE middle of the sixteenth century a certain Master Robert Raynes held the position of goldsmith to the house of Tudor.
Our banking system was not developed until a later date and the financial schemes of the period were all carried out by the goldsmiths.
It is probable that lending money to the Tudors was a delicate operation, and a doubtful privilege, requiring a nice combination of tact and firmness. Robert Baynes apparently possessed these qualities in full measure for he skilfully retained the favour of his exacting royal masters, and was eventually rewarded in the early days of Elizabeth’s reign with “the Manor of Stanford and all its appurtenances including the advowson of Stanford Rectory.”
At that time the Manor House stood in the field which is known to this day as the Hall Field. Practically no trace remains but about thirty yards north of the railway arches and a similar distance from the road to Loughborough across the meadows, a large hollow indicates the position of the cellar; here in all probability was a goodly store of that old and potent ale, the staple drink of Amyas Leigh and his valiant contemporaries.
Very few details of this ancient hail have been handed. down, but probably it faced south, and had a fair view of the Elizabethean Loughborough which we are told was a town “yn largenes and good building next to Leyrcester of all the markette towns yn the shire, with four faire strates or more, well pavid.”
Nearly a century later the grandson of Robert Raynes, maybe a sufferer from gout and rheumatiism, decided that a move to higher ground was desirable. He was “a thrifty man and built his house of stone on. the top of a barren hill,” in approximately the position of the present hall.
It was his ambition to move the “town” of Stanford to this healthier site, but this laudable wish was never fulfilled.
The familiar and sad history of so, many well known families was now repeated.
The great grandson of the prudent goldsmith was a spendthrift.
He entertained too lavishly his country neighbours and the gentlemen of Loughborough, and was eventually compelled to sell the estate, which was purchased towards the end of the seventeenth century by Thomas Lewes, a London alderman.
This honest merchant having, like Mr. Pendennis, transformed himself into a country gentleman, was henceforward a great man in the land, and in due course became high sherriff of the county.
His family endured 14, the male line for four generations until one of his great granddaughters, a coheiress of the estate, married Samuel Phillips, of Garendon, and for some years the two estates had a common owner. Anne, the younger heiress, married a cadet of the house of Dashwood, an Oxfordshire family, and on Samuel Phillips dying without issue the Stanford Manor passed into the hands of the Dashwoods.
Charles vere Dashwood, the eldest son of this marriage, was high sherriff of Nottinghamshire in 1780.
We may suppose that he was a young man who moved with the times, for it appears that ere long the old ancestral home was no longer adequate to his requirements. He must needs build himself a new house, and thereupon was sealed the fate of the old stone building, erected on the barren hill by the thrifty grandson of the old goldsmith.
The new Stanford Hall was begun in 1771, but a long and weary three years had elapsed before the building was completed. Here the Dashwood family for over a century lived the conventional lives of country gentlemen in a hunting district.
They were good landlords, very much loved and respected by their tenants and works people.
Samuel Vere, the grandson of Charles Dashwood was a “squarson,” and for many years held the family living. He married twice and had an exceptionally large family, ten sons and seven daughters.
He hunted with fair regularity, drove his carriage and pair, and was a familiar figure in the neighbourhood. He died in 1876, and a few years later Stanford Hall and estate passed out of the hands of his family.
The present Stanford Rectory was originally the Dower House, and was for many years the residence of Miss Boughton Dashwood, the sister of the hunting “square son.”
The farmhouse now, known as Tudehope Farm was the parsonage until fifty or sixty years ago.
In the Rectory field and also in the home field on the opposite side of the road there are two gullies running parallel to one another at a distance of about eighty yards. There is an ancient tradition in the village that a fierce and sanguinary battle was fought here, in the days when the bow was the national weapon.
This legend received unexpected confirmation when the Dashwood family vault was being extended, a number of skulls, apparently of young men, were disinterred and it has been suggested that a
party of soldiers was killed here.
It may be that the. Rectory Field was the scene of a desparate and final stand. After the battle it would appear that a pit was hastily dug and the bodies thrown in with scant ceremony.
Two incidents connected with Stanford are of considerable local interest.
In the reign of Queen Anne, one of the Miss Palmers, of was visiting friends in Nottinghamshire when crossing the ford at Stanford, at a time of heavy flood, the coachman completely lost control, the coach was taken rapidly down stream, and Miss Palmer, the coachman., and the horses were all drowned.
In 1645, when the Civil War was at its height, Charles I spent a night at Cotes as the guest if Sir Henry Skipworth.
An old story has been handed down which tells how the King and his host held a conference on matters of grave import underneath the magnificent yew tree in Stanford churchyard.
On the following day the King continued his journey southwards to superintend the siege of Leicester.
It was not long before the fatal battle of Naseby destroyed “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men,” and eventually ‘the faithful Sir Henry Skipworth paid. dearly for his unfailing loyalty, and was forced to sell his estates at Cotes and Prestwold.
The present owner of Stanford Hall is Sir Julian Cahn.