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| Donna in the garden at Madresfield |
We were up bright and early on Wednesday morning to make the two hour drive from the East Midlands to the West Midlands. This was a day that we had really been looking forward to and was one of the highlights of our trip to England.
The first question that every one of Eric's family members asked us when they found out we were going to England was, "are you going to Madresfield Court"? We always knew that any trip to England would have to include a trip to Madresfield, as this stately home has been the home of the Lygon family (more about that spelling change later in this post) since 1450.
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| Madresfield Court |
We had seen pictures of this home for many years, but seeing it in person was so incredible. The home has been changed some over the years. In 1593 it was rebuilt, replacing a 15th century medieval building. It was again remodelled in the 19th century to resemble a moated Elizabethan house. In. 1806, William Lygon was made a baronet and subsequently ennobled as Earl Beauchamp in 1851. For six centuries, Madresfield has never been sold or bought, but simply remained in the hands of the Lygon family, being passed by inheritance since the 12th century. It is currently the home of Rosalind, Lady Morrison, niece of the 8th and last Earl Beauchamp.
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| Moat in front of home |
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| Madresfield from the air (stock photo from Google) |
Thankfully, Madresfield offers tours a few days of the week and we were able to purchase our tickets ahead online. We were actually the first to arrive (maybe a bit excited) of all the people in our tour group. When we checked in docents said, "Oh, the Ligons have arrived! We saw that there were Ligons on the list and looked forward to meeting you". They asked us how we pronounce our name and when we told them they said, "Oh good, you pronounce it the right way", LOL. Apparently, sometime after Colonel Thomas Lygon arrived in Virginia in the late 1600's. the spelling was changed to Ligon. They told us that most of the people they meet that spell it Ligon (like we do) pronounce the "i" as a hard "i" like in "ice". We pronounce it with a soft "i" as in "igloo" which is the way that Lygon is pronounced. We knew that Grandpa (Eric's dad) would be happy to know that his branch of the family pronounces it correctly!
The home sits on about a 4000 acre piece of beautiful property. Our tour guide told us that due to insurance purposes (they don't want people casing the house for potential robbery), we would not be able to take any photos inside, but we could take as many as we wanted outside. We spent some time wandering around outside while waiting for our other tour people to show up.
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| Beauchamp/Lygon Family Tree |
We didn't get to see all the rooms in the house, but what we did get to see was so impressive. The house is magnificent and the collection of items inside the house even more so. As well as amazing architecture, there are collections with a wide variety of English, French and German furniture and porcelain and an extensive collection of paintings and art objects.
We knew that the family was wealthy, but we didn't really realize how wealthy until our trip to Madresfield. Most of the family's fortune dates back to Reginald Lyon's wife, Susannah, in the 17th century. She inherited a considerable amount of wealth (about 70 million in today's money) from her cousin, William Jennens, who was the wealthy bachelor godson of King William III. It was this inheritance which formed the basis of the book by Charles Dickens, Bleak House, which revolves around the court case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce.
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| Austin Ligon in front of his ancestral home |
We were especially impressed by the use of the Beauchamp family crest throughout so much of the house. The crest is a mixture of the Bear of the Warwick family and the Swan of the Beauchamps. The motto is "Fortuna Mea in Bello Campo" which means "Fortune in Mine in a Fair Fight". The crest was woven into stained glass, engraved in the wood and even represented by bears and swans on the banister railings. Though we couldn't take pictures inside, I was able to find some online.
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| Family crest from the library (photo courtesy Madresfield Court online) |
Every room was incredible but my favorite two rooms were the library and the chapel. The library houses over 8,000 books. A couple of years ago, the local historical society came in and categorized all the book and taped up the bindings of some that were extremely delicate. I could just picture cozying up to the fire with these books!
Madresfield Court is widely reckoned to be perhaps the most thorough expression of Arts and
Crafts theory in Britain, and also possibly its most lovely. In the decoration of the Chapel,
which was commissioned in 1902 as a wedding present from the wife of the seventh Earl to
her husband, the movement’s most perfect union of the arts and crafts is thought to have been
achieved.
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| Chapel interior (photo courtesy of google) |
The frescoes were painted using egg tempera on dry plaster by
Henry Payne and three young assistants, Joseph Sanders, Dick Stubington
and Harry Rushbury, later Sir Henry Rushbury R.A. When
they started, one of these young assistants was 21; the other only 15.
The frescoes feature the seven children of the family amongst a profusion
of flowers in joyous but delicate colours
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| Chapel wall (photo courtesy of Google) |
When we were headed out of the chapel (the last room that we visited, the tour guide leaned over to Austin and said "makes you proud to be a Ligon, doesn't it?" Pretty cool! Now if only we could live there!!
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| beautiful windows |
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Eric and Donna at the entrance
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I could go on and on about how much we loved visiting this beautiful home but our day to the West Midlands didn't end at Madresfield. Stay tuned...
If you would like to know more about Madresfield Court, check out this website
