Episode Transcript
[00:00:21] Speaker A: The Tudor History and Travel show is a podcast that brings Tudor history to life by exploring Tudor places and artefacts in the flesh.
You will be travelling through time with Sarah Morris, the Tudor Travel Guide, uncovering the stories behind some of the most amazing Tudor locations and objects in the uk.
Because when you visit a Tudor building, it is only time and not space which separates you from the past.
And now over to your host, Sarah Morris.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Tudor History and Travel show with me, Sarah the Tudor Travel Guide.
Before we get going on today's show, I do have quite an exciting announcement to make and that is that in conjunction with my co founder of Simply Tudored Tours, we at Simply Tudor Tours are running a giveaway. And that giveaway is for a free, free space on our Rise and Fall of amberlynn tour in September 2026. In fact between the 8th and the 14th of September 2026. And yes, I did say a free place. This is a mammoth giveaway and I'm really excited to be able to tell you all about it.
So there are terms and conditions and if you check out the links and associated with this podcast you can a find out where to enter and all you need to do is to submit your email address. That's it my friends, simple as that.
And also you'll be able to find a link to the terms and conditions you will need to get yourself to and from the start and end point of the tour. And also pay for your insurance and any incidentals. But, but all your accommodation, the travel during the tour, all the main meals, they are all paid for.
Wow, this is big. I hope that if you've ever wanted to come on tour but you thought.
[00:02:30] Speaker C: Oh I don't know whether I'm going to be able to.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: This might be your big chance. So do check out the links in the description with this podcast.
Okay, that's the only announcement I need to make today.
If you have been following this podcast over the last couple of months, you will know that we have been enjoying time in the north west of England. And in last month's episode I visited Horton Hall.
Well, we stay in the Northwest for this month visiting a very very different building, perhaps one more typical of the region.
This is probably one of the most visited places on any Tudor time travellers itinerary. If you're heading to that area and it's Little Morden Hall.
Little Morden hall is an impossibly beautiful, incredibly quaint, timber framed black and white building of which you will find several very fine examples in this area, this really is such a wonky building that when you look at it, it's surprising that it's even standing.
Anyway, knowing how popular it is with other followers of the Tudor Travel Guide and lovers of Tudor history in general, I was keen to include this on my itinerary when visiting the Northwest.
And so, pop along I did. And I met with our expert guest today, Caroline Schofield, who will accompany us around and talk to us about the history of, of the house, both the architecture and of course, the family that lived there.
So let's not wait any longer. It's time to buckle up, get time travelling. And so with that, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Little Moreton Hall.
[00:04:31] Speaker C: Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of the Tudor History and Travel Show. Well, this month you still find me in the north west of England, but I've travelled southwards across the border from Lancashire and into Cheshire to come to visit a real gem, an architectural gem associated, of course, with the Tudor period. And I know that for many of you, when you think of the Northwest, the one property that you will come to visit or think about visiting will be Little Moreton Hall. And that's where I am today.
It's been a good, oh, I don't know, 10 years since I was last here, so I'm very excited to make a return trip and of course do a deep dive with our expert of the day, who is standing right next to me, Caroline. Caroline Schofield. Hello and welcome to the show.
[00:05:20] Speaker D: Hi, thanks for having me.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: Oh, thank you for having us.
So, in typical tradition for the Tudor History and Travel show, of course, before we start talking about the story of this amazing place, we'd love to hear about you. And what's your association with Little Moreton Hall?
[00:05:35] Speaker D: Well, I'm a cultural heritage curator working for the National Trust and Little Moreton hall is a National Trust owned property. Since 1938 it's belonged to the Trust and I've worked for the Trust for about 12 years. I have a small portfolio of properties that I work with and support and Little Morton's one of them. So I've had the pleasure of coming here many a time.
[00:05:57] Speaker C: Oh yeah, and what a pleasure that must be. It's a real gem. As you come down from the visitor car park, you pass by the trees on your left hand side and suddenly you. What you see is this really incredible black and white timber framed Tudor building. I think it's got to be. And you're probably a bit biased, but I think I can, I'm safe in saying, I think it's one of the most spectacular.
[00:06:21] Speaker D: Yeah. And I think if you were to Google Tudor buildings, probably Little Moreton hall is going to come quite high up on the. On the search, the results.
It really is a kind of what you would think of as an iconic Tudor building.
It's. It's a really interesting structure because it exists on three levels. So you've got this wonderful long gallery at the top and it looks as though it might almost topple over into the moat.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: Yes, I think that's the crowning glory, isn't it? And all that beautiful glass in the long gallery. And actually, while I'm talking about the visuals, it's probably a good time for me to say, as I usually do, dear listeners. And of course, there is a show notes page associated with this podcast and we'll be taking some images throughout our visit here at Little Moreton Hall. So if you want to get some visuals associated with our audio description here, then make sure to click on the link associated with this podcast.
Well, I'm a girl who likes to start with the big picture and setting the scene.
I've already said that we're in Cheshire, so. So if I was visiting Little Moreton hall, this area, in the 1600s, what would I have encountered? What kind of.
Is it very agricultural? Are there any major towns or cities near here? Can you give us some of the broader context?
[00:07:42] Speaker D: Yeah, well, we're not a million miles from Manchester and also Chester, which of course would have been an extremely important city at the time, but really Little Moreton is quite rural and it would have been a very much an agricultural area.
This part of Cheshire is extremely flat, and the name Moreton really kind of reflects the fact that this was a farm on a marsh, and that's where the Moreton name derives from. The Moretons we know were here from around the 1300s and they were gradually establishing themselves. So they started off as farmers, essentially, but we think that they probably were able to acquire land after the Black death in the 1340s, and that they also went on to acquire land during the dissolution of the monasteries, and eventually they ended up with about 1360 acres across the area.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: So that's actually, you know, that's a really interesting point because I think that was quite a common pattern, wasn't it? People who survived the Black Death profited from the, you know, the poor fortune of so many people. There was land, there was work, there was opportunity to be had on the back of such a tragedy. And then you come to the next great opportunity to build wealth, which is the dissolution. So they were that scenario a little bit like. I'm thinking of the Berlins in Norfolk. They start off as yeoman farmers, but they managed to gradually accrete wealth and land and graduate, in terms of Tudor society, to become one of the gentry.
[00:09:26] Speaker D: That's right. And I think what you see with the Morton family is that they're at that kind of cusp where they. Will they or won't they make it? They're kind of on the edge of making it and they're building this wonderful house. So we think there was probably an earlier house on this site, if not a couple of earlier versions, but we don't exactly know the detail of that. But this house began to be built in 1504 and was gradually added to over that century.
And the Moretons were really trying to establish themselves as important people in the region, but they were very much starting from that background of being farmers and working their way gradually sort of in terms of their status.
And although you can't see it today, we're in a very flat landscape, and around us we're just on the edge of the Pennine Hills. So in the distance in the east, over in that direction, we've got Malkop, and actually we're quite near the point where Derbyshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire all meet.
So it's really quite an interesting place. Very flat, very rural, very agricultural. But we're also quite near to the town of Congleton, which at the time would have been the nearest big town, and the family had quite a lot of associations with Congleton.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Okay, so who is you mentioned? 1504 is the key date for the current house, when we begin to see the development of the current house.
Who is the Morton responsible for the development and the commissioning of this beautiful building?
[00:11:05] Speaker D: This is William Morton, who died in 1526, and William began the building of the house in 1504 with an H plan.
So that kind of very traditional scenario where you've got the great hall in the centre of the building and two wings radiating off at either end.
And then it was added to quite quickly afterwards with an extension, which built in a rather lovely parlour and a chapel, and then the house evolved again later in the century. So it started with William, who we sort of lovingly refer to as William I. There were quite a few Williams in the family, I see.
[00:11:43] Speaker C: Yeah, it gets confusing.
So we're going to go inside and obviously start exploring the interior of the building. But the outside, as we've already mentioned is pretty spectacular.
Can you try and give us a description of what we can see directly in front of us?
[00:12:00] Speaker D: Well, we've got the timber framed house which is very typical of Tudor architecture in Cheshire. Cheshire is renowned for its timber frame buildings, but this goes to a whole other level in many ways.
It's on three floors with very elaborate timber framing with diaper patterns and wonderful quatrefoils and all sorts of geometrical designs in the woodwork.
And then this amazing long gallery at the top which is highly glazed, as you might expect. We think there are about 30,000 little lozenges of glass within the hall. And then on the top of that is a very, very heavy grit st. Stone roof which would have been quarried in the local hills and the timber would have come from oaks in Cheshire which you know, round about the house. And the house sits on a moated site. So you've got this lovely moat with a little stone bridge which takes you across and through a porch way.
And when you look at the house it has very traditional decoration which you would expect in the Tudor period. But you can also see some little flourishes which are a nod to the Renaissance. So it's the family really showing their knowledge and their interest in the wider world.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: And you're referring to some of the carvings on the pillars?
[00:13:23] Speaker D: That's right. You've got some interesting carving and on the inside of the porch you've got a couple of figures.
And whilst you've got sort of traditional carvings of earlier centuries, you've also got these motifs which are more Renaissance inspired. So they're kind of trying to flex themselves and show that they know know about these things and they're interested in them and they're using them in their house.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: Well, maybe we can walk over them. This is such a cute little bridge. I imagine little Moreton's been on film and tv, hasn't it?
[00:13:55] Speaker D: It has, yes. I think the, probably the most memorable was when it appeared in Mole Flanders with Daniel Craig some years ago. Unfortunately I wasn't here then, but yeah.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Shocks.
It's a cute, cute. As pretty as a picture, this little bridge leading over into the gatehouse with beautiful carved oak posts on either side. But as we walk over towards the building, can I ask you about these windows? You've got the glazed windows, but over there there's a couple of windows that just have wooden slats. They clearly were open.
[00:14:27] Speaker D: Are they.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Are they leading into somewhere like a food storage area?
[00:14:32] Speaker D: Yeah, I think different parts of the house have been used for different things over time. But you've got some areas which are quite open to the elements and obviously that would allow the influx of clean air, fresh air. And it was very important to the Tudors in terms of their understanding of the humours and the health of the body, that things like airflow were allowed and so forth. But, yes, we've got a mixture of glazing and actually, whilst there is some original glazing, there's also a lot of replacement glazing that has been done over time because it's an extremely old house.
Yeah.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: I was going to ask you how much of this glass is original Tudor and how do you tell, actually? Because glass is quite difficult, isn't it?
[00:15:19] Speaker D: Yeah. I think it's about the kind of colour of the glass, the inclusions, whether it's crown or blown glass.
[00:15:27] Speaker C: What do you mean by that?
[00:15:28] Speaker D: Well, as in a bubble of glass that's blown into a shape and then it has a sort of crowned moulding on the bottom because of the way it's been produced.
Or it could be then blown into a cylinder, which is then cut and flattened out. But you'll find when you get the opportunity to sit within the bay windows in the hall and you look out into the courtyard, you can see all sorts of little ripples and colours and inclusions in the glass which give it texture and an interest and really sort of reflect the light in interesting ways.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: Associated with the older original glass. So that the later glass is more. Even less.
[00:16:11] Speaker D: That's right. More transparent. As techniques become.
Become more polished, then the. The glass literally becomes more polished, I suppose.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: Okay, so we're at the front door.
[00:16:24] Speaker D: Here we are, this beautiful heavy oak door which we're going to go through. And there is actually a little door within this which would have been used by the gatekeeper to.
As a means of getting in and out.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: It's a tiny little door.
Sa Sam.
Okay, so having come through the. The oak door, we're now emerging into the courtyard and thankfully the sun is coming out because it's another very changeable weather day here in the northwest. And. Wow.
So please describe what. What we see in front of us.
[00:18:10] Speaker D: Well, we're looking directly towards the north of the house, which was the original part. So that was built in around 1504, but actually much modified. So what we're seeing is the great hall, but in front of that are two amazing bay windows which were built in the 1550s by a carpenter called Richard Dale. And the family were clearly quite impressed with his work because they allowed him to sign an inscription which records the fact that Richard Dale made the windows above the timber work. So that's really quite a nice thing to have.
But we're looking towards the Great hall and that original H plan building.
So the. The Great hall is. Is in front of us to the north and you can see the west wing coming off at an angle to that. And then on our. On the east side of the building, we've got a range of. Of other rooms which were added later on. So by 1508 we had extended the building towards the chapel here. And the chapel existed at the end of the building, obviously with the altar to the east.
And as. As was traditional, it was sited at the end, which I suppose was a. Was done for religious reasons and also reasons of access. So. Sorry.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: And was this gatehouse range always behind us? I presume that was.
[00:19:44] Speaker D: No, actually that was added in the 1560s. Oh.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: So that was one of the later pieces.
[00:19:48] Speaker D: So this is part of the later architecture. And here when you look back towards the south of the building and the south range, you can see some of the Renaissance style decoration that was applied which really showed that the family were interested in, not were well read and were interested in what was happening in the wider world. And that's quite a theme with the Morton family. They were very interested in looking out at the wider world.
And actually, though they were Cheshire family, they had contacts and connections with the wider world, even as far as the Far East.
So a really interesting family. But I think probably in a lot of ways of their time, you know, the Tudors were looking outwards, they were exploring, they were finding interesting things in the world.
So we've got these motifs around the door frame which are sort of taking their inspiration from Renaissance architecture abroad.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: So before we leave the courtyard and head on inside and go and explore the great Hall, I can't help but noticing this. So sweet. Is that a little dog kennel that's kind of carved into the house?
[00:21:03] Speaker D: It is, yes, exactly. And I suppose that would have been quite important. I mean, part one of the Morton's signifiers was that was the greyhound and you see that dotted about the decoration of the hall. So. So clearly they were interested in dogs. But I suppose it would have been quite an important aspect of security to have a dog on site. Yeah.
[00:21:26] Speaker C: This is. Wow, look at this.
It's perfect. Little dog kennel.
Yeah, great. You can imagine this courtyard, just a buzz of activity, of people coming and going and servants, you know, running the household.
[00:21:39] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And this part of the Courtyard was for use by the family. And then we think there was probably more of a kind of domestic court on the other side of this little wall to our the west side of the courtyard.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: So another smaller courtyard. So in a way, a double courtyard house. Yeah, the principal courtyard and then an adjacent.
[00:21:58] Speaker D: And a kind of working area. Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:01] Speaker C: Okay. Shall we go into the great hall and maybe you could tell me a little bit more about the family? I think we don't really know where they kind of originated from, but we do know, as you were saying outside, that they were a family on the rise, trying to climb their way up through the very rigid strata of Tudor society, from yeoman farmers to gentry. And so can you tell us anything more about what they were doing to try and promote themselves?
[00:22:33] Speaker D: Yeah, well, we know that they were using the house to entertain, so in that way they were entertaining their peers and local people to sort of signify their status. And the great hall, which we're in now, was really the kind of centre of all of that at the start of the Tudor period when the house was first built.
So you've got this wonderful great hall which originally had a louvre in the ceiling, which indicates that there would have been a central hearth. But we think quite quickly after that that this wonderful stone fireplace on the north side of the hall was put in. And that would have been fairly early.
And you can imagine that the table would have sat at the far end of the room, and that was the place where the master of the house and his most important guests would have sat. And then as you got further away from the board, the main table, the lesser important people would have been seated.
We also know that there had been a minstrels gallery above the great hall, which was later enclosed, and that at the west end of the hall would have been the buttery and pantry and kitchen, whereas at the east end of the hall would have been the more important rooms of the house.
And the great hall was important to the family as a place for entertaining for quite a long period.
But styles changed and evolved and families started to use smaller, more intimate spaces for entertaining later on.
So the Mortons had other rooms in the house which they then began to use. And you can just see evidence in the structure of the building that there are doorways at first floor level going into other parts of the house. There's one here and here, and the remnants of the ends of joists, which you can see. So we know that sometime probably in the 16th century, but possibly 17th, a few a upper floor was put In. And that would have made the room more cozy and perhaps more intimate.
[00:24:45] Speaker C: So there would have been a ceiling above us, in fact.
[00:24:48] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: And this whole area, which is quite lofty now, would have been sealed off and. And the doorways led into that particular room.
[00:24:56] Speaker D: Absolutely. And that would then have joined the rooms within that kind of H formation across the width of the great hall.
So it was really a kind of signifier of the.
Of the change in style and the change in emphasis in terms of entertaining. Yeah.
[00:25:15] Speaker C: It's actually a great space for this because it's got all the features that you want of a great hall with the screens, passage and the doorways, the pantry and the buttery and through at the high end. Was that the original staircase that went up to the.
Do you know if that was the original one?
[00:25:31] Speaker D: I'm not actually sure, but the staircases have been inserted at different times. In the hall, although we talk about Little Moreton, as though it were a time capsule of the Tudor period. Actually, during that period, it evolved quite a bit.
So you get the insertion of staircases where there hadn't been before, as rooms change their use and as new rooms are added. So it's very much a building that has morphed over that period in lots of different ways.
[00:25:59] Speaker C: And you can see that, can't you, with. You were saying that this bay window, which is such a prominent feature here, was actually the 1550s.
[00:26:05] Speaker D: Did you say that? 1559. So you really get the impact of. You can imagine this space when it was just a rectangular space, and then the addition of this wonderful bay window which juts out into the courtyard, and the inclusion of all these beautiful little lozenges of glass in all these geometric, sort of square, diamond, rectangular patterns.
It must have really sparkled on a bright day. And with candlelight, it would have been incredible. And, of course, glass was very expensive. So the Mortons are showing off. You know, they're showing off their wealth and status.
They're going from a farming family and they're starting to become wealthier and wealthier and they're really showing off their status.
[00:26:50] Speaker C: You can imagine the finished product and the master of the house going, yes, I'm very happy with that, thank you.
[00:26:54] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: I must admit it's lovely in here, but you've got it laid out as if there's a feast going on. But I think your tea room must be not far away because there's lovely scents of food, which actually adds to the atmosphere of the room quite nicely.
[00:27:08] Speaker D: It does. And the family, although the family didn't live here in later centuries. We know that it was opened as a sort of visitor attraction quite early. People were visiting and the family who tenanted here were giving cream teas and so forth. So that kind of continues. Continuation of sort of supplying visitors with food and entertainment. It's really lovely.
One nice thing just to point out in this room is that there is this wonderful refectory or board table, which is one of only three pieces of furniture that came with the house when it came to the National Trust. So whereas lots of National Trust houses have lots of collection, we only have very limited few things which we're able to say were definitely owned by the Mortons. And this is one of them. This is one of them. And it's really nice.
[00:27:57] Speaker C: What an interesting design, with these sort of spokes on the underside of the table. I presume they channeled you to sit in your place.
[00:28:05] Speaker D: Exactly. Well, you would have thought so, yes. It kind of restricts the legs so that you have a limited amount of space and actually, yeah, I mean, it's.
It's a kind of all. Whether deliberate or not, it seems rather deliberate and you would think it's sort of all about that kind of hierarchical system. System of, you know, knowing your place and.
But, yeah, I'm not overly comfortable, I wouldn't have thought.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: It's actually got big dress on. That's quite a lot of dress to squeeze into.
Okay, so where do we need to go from here?
[00:28:37] Speaker D: Well, I think we'll go into the little parlour, because, though when the great hall sort of fell out of use as that kind of main entertaining space, it was still used, possibly more as a kind of means of getting to all the parts of the house. But the little parlour and the neighboring great parlour became places where would have entertained their guests.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: Sam, I feel very privileged because we're now leaving at the high end of the hall. So back in the 16th century, we were being. We would have been being invited into the family's private space for conversation, who knows, discussion of the local gossip.
[00:30:27] Speaker D: So.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: Oh, my word. I've just turned around. We're in. I can see because it says we're in the little parlour, but gosh. Please describe what's on the wall in front of me.
[00:30:36] Speaker D: Well, we have a series of wall paintings in quite vivid colours, and these were discovered in the 1970s behind the oak paneling in when some building work was being carried out. And these are a remnant of a scheme that we believe was implemented by John Morton around 1580.
And this is.
The top panel, depicts a biblical story, and we know that that was painted onto paper and then applied to the wall. And the lower panels are a kind of. Of depiction of wall paneling picked out in lots of kind of decorative detail. So you've got individual panels which were highly coloured, the background is an ochre colour, and then over the top you've got a kind of traceried outline of woodwork with lots of detailed decoration in the form of sort of circles and adjoining squares. And those are really quite decorative. The panels themselves, we know, are painted, picked out in alternating shades of a kind of dark red and green. And then you've got this wonderful text at the top of the wall, which is in English, which shows that kind of transition which was happening in the Tudor period from Latin and the Catholic Church over to the Protestant church and the use of English in terms of sharing the Bible and the stories of religion with the congregation.
So you've got a biblical text around the top of the wall, which is the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Apocrypha. And the story goes that Susanna was the wife of a wealthy merchant called Joachim, and she was bathing in the garden of their home, and a couple of village elders came to visit and saw her bathing and tried to seduce her. And when she rejected their advances, they accused her of adultery, and she was tried and was going to be executed, but was then saved by Daniel, who had investigated and proved her innocence.
So it's really quite a strange and macabre sort of story, really. But I wonder why they chose it.
[00:33:06] Speaker C: You know, because often things were picked for a reason, weren't they?
[00:33:09] Speaker D: Well, yeah, and in actual fact, we don't really know, but the story of Susannah and the Elders is one of a number of stories which were popular at that time.
So we're moving away from that kind of period when in Catholicism, places were decorated with sort of images of saints and sort of iconography of the Catholic Church, perhaps, you know, quite macabre scenes of death and doom and so forth, to more a kind of more didactic approach, you know, sort of moralistic tales about how to behave.
And it perhaps seems quite strange to us, but I think was probably relatively commonplace in big houses like this, but it would have been extremely colourful. And this space was a space for dining, both for the family and for the family to entertain their guests. And we know that, you know, each of the William Mortons and John Morton who were here during the 16th century, they had large families, the latter three having 10 children, of which many were girls. So you can kind of imagine that this is a kind of, you know, a bit of a tome about how to behave and conduct yourself, which would have been given a story both to the family and to their servants and to their visitors.
[00:34:37] Speaker C: So I hadn't appreciated just how beautiful your wall paintings are here, actually.
They're really magnificent. And I do urge people to have a look at the show notes page to appreciate Caroline's very accurate description and detailed description of them. There will be some images there for you to enjoy.
So where do we go from here then, Caroline?
[00:35:00] Speaker D: Well, we're going to the great parlour, which is the neighbouring room.
It's just through here.
[00:35:08] Speaker C: Oh, it's flooded with light in here, isn't it? And the first thing you see, apart from the gorgeous paneling. Oh, there's lots of things to appreciate in here, isn't there? Gorgeous panelling, great big bay windows and then a wonderful fireplace. So tell us about the fireplace.
[00:35:24] Speaker D: Well, the fireplace depicts the arms of Elizabeth I.
So once again, you're kind of getting that the family are nailing their allegiances to the building, literally or sort of figuratively.
So we know that William Morton, the second William Morton, was a commissioner on the, the committee for the Royal Visitation, which, after the act of Supremacy, when Elizabeth was made governor of the Church of England, this was a group of people who would go around the country checking out the churches and the congregations to make sure that they were kind of complying with the latest regulation, if you like.
So by this time, the second William had that kind of role within the state system.
So he's establishing himself as someone who is quite important and he's obviously a kind of Protestant patriarchal figure in the area.
And so, yes, he's applying Elizabeth's arms to the fireplace in here.
And then you've got wonderful stained glass which is depicting references to the Morton family. So you can see the greyhound courant in one of the stained glass panels there, which was a symbol of the Mortons and appears on their arms. And then you've got a little rebus in the glass on the far right hand side, which shows a wolf's head with a ton barrel beneath it and the initials of William Morton. And this is a play on words. The moor of the wolf's mouth and the tun barrel referring to the Morton name.
[00:37:19] Speaker C: I love those reavises. They're wonderful.
Actually, you brought up something there that I'm quite interested in because in last month's podcast we were at Horton hall and that family there were very Catholic and remained staunchly Catholic.
Same at speedcall yesterday, which I visited along our travels here in the Northwest. But you said this family became Protestant, so I understand that generally speaking, so far from London, so far from the Reformation, this part of the world largely remained Catholic. And yet you have this family switching over to Protestantism. Did that happen at the Reformation? What do we know about that evolution for the family?
[00:38:02] Speaker D: Well, it's difficult to say because there's very little in the way of written information about the family at that time. A lot of the archive material that exists, exists for the 17th century Mortons, but you can sort of make. You can sort of theorise about it, I think is probably the best way to put it. And as we learn more about the family, more becomes obvious. But if you imagine that they were a family that were trying to make their way in the world and they were trying to establish themselves, probably it would make sense for them to sort of go with the prevailing religion and they were moving with the times. So I suppose they could see that Protestantism was the way forward and perhaps the way to help them rise in their status. And although, you know, it would have been quite early in Elizabeth's reign when they were making quite a few alterations to the house, perhaps after a long period of upheaval and religious turmoil, they were hopeful that finally there was something there that they could stick with and perhaps enjoy some period of sort of security and safety and benefit from.
[00:39:16] Speaker C: I'm sure it didn't go unnoticed at court because again, we were looking at Burghley's map of the area and how he had marked various properties with an ex if they were Catholic.
[00:39:28] Speaker D: Right, okay.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: And even at Horton hall, because the family there, that the owner of the house had gone on the run overseas, he'd mark fugitive. So, you know, Burghley had his eyes over everything. So a very sensible decision for the family.
They saw, as you say, which way the wind was blowing and decided to cut their cloth accordingly.
[00:39:49] Speaker D: Yeah. And they were really trying very hard to kind of make their way and establish themselves.
So you can see that they might have had to be a little bit pragmatic in their choices. But it's very hard to get your. It's very hard to know exactly what they were thinking because there is nothing where they're actually setting out what their beliefs are. But what we have is the evidence in the building and we know that that points to them being strongly Protestant and.
And as they are on the rise, that Protestantism is helping them to rise.
[00:40:27] Speaker C: And it makes me think. Cause you mentioned outside about that, you know, they were outward looking and they had connections far and wide. Clearly they must have got hold of Protestant books from somewhere.
[00:40:37] Speaker D: Yeah. And of course there was a trade.
[00:40:39] Speaker C: Coming in from continental Europe.
So it makes you wonder. This is a rhetorical question, I don't expect you to answer it. But it makes you wonder who were their contacts and what were those contacts overseas that allowed them to. To get hold of some of these new fangled religious ideas.
[00:40:56] Speaker D: Yeah. And actually we know we're slightly straying away from the Tudor period, But in the 17th century we know that the children of William Morton III, as we call him, who died in 1654, his children, he was keen to establish them in roles outside of Little Moreton Hall. So his eldest son went to Cambridge, didn't do particularly well, was a bit of a black sheep and actually was eventually disinherited. His second son went to sea and ended up traveling across the oceans to many different parts, including Java and the Far east, but ended up in Virginia, in America, where he was sort of in penury, basically in tatters. He didn't do particularly well.
His third son, Edward, who inherited, went into the church.
Peter went abroad to the continent and ended up as an agent in Turin and Philip was a lawyer in London.
So all of these family members he was establishing in roles outside of Little Morton hall and they were all sending news back to William. So although it's outside the Tudor period, we know that it would have been a really interesting time. And far from being a really sort of provincial place, Little Moreton would have been a place which was a buzz with news of the wider world.
[00:42:30] Speaker C: Very interesting connections. Wow. Well, I love this room. And oh my goodness, those ceiling rafters are absolutely gorgeous. I could give them a hug, they're so beautiful.
[00:42:40] Speaker D: It's a lovely room.
[00:42:40] Speaker C: Great. It's a lovely atmosphere, isn't it?
[00:42:42] Speaker D: It is, it is warm and it's, it's.
[00:42:44] Speaker C: I don't know, it's welcoming. Yeah, very welcoming.
[00:42:47] Speaker D: And obviously you've got beautiful oak paneling around the room. The ceiling is, is entirely made of oak with beautiful coffered wooden structure.
And you can see the floor laid over it is immediately the floor of the room above which is the great parlour chamber.
And we've got in this room evidence of some of the apotropate marts which exist in the house. And one of the best examples is this fantastic little daisy wheel which sits right at the top of the ceiling in The Great Parlour.
It's a round feature so drawn with a compass and then within you've got all these sort of interlocking petals. So it's that idea that spirit is drawn into the circle of the daisy wheel and then because it's a continuous line, it gets trapped within the space and it can't get out. So it's really quite interesting.
[00:43:40] Speaker C: I love daisy wheels. They're actually my favourite. Absolutely my favourite.
[00:43:44] Speaker D: So you've got that kind of really interesting collision of. Of sort of old and new religions and old and new sort of superstitions in this building, which I'm sure happens at lots of other houses where you have sort of daisy wheels and burn marks and other things around the building which are the family sort of endeavoring to sort of keep themselves safe from evil spirits and so forth.
[00:44:11] Speaker C: And I would just say dean listeners, I see suspect if you follow this podcast, you will have listened to our podcast at Horton hall last month where we went into some details about apotropaic Mark. So if you want to know more about them, listen to this podcast as. Listen to last month's podcast as well as this one. Okay, I feel we should move on.
[00:44:29] Speaker D: Where should we go to next? Well, we'll. We'll head through the next two rooms and out to the chapel.
[00:44:34] Speaker C: Okay.
Okay, so we've come back out into the courtyard to go.
After you, Caroline.
[00:46:01] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:46:01] Speaker C: What a gorgeous little door. Beautiful old timber frame door with a classic Tudor.
[00:46:09] Speaker D: I love this space. It's so intimate and it's. It's only small, but it's really rather beautiful, very simple.
[00:46:17] Speaker C: It really is, isn't it? So we've got kind of larger, I.
[00:46:22] Speaker D: Don'T know, I suppose the nave, I.
[00:46:23] Speaker C: Suppose, I suppose it's all in miniature, isn't it? Imagine a church in miniature. You've got the nave, the seating area and then there's a screen and then the smaller chancel area where you've got the high altar. It is very intimate in here, isn't it?
[00:46:37] Speaker D: It is, yeah. And we know that the chancel was added later on, probably sort of towards the 1560s.
So originally it was even smaller than it is now.
Probably highly decorated and very colorful. At one time, like a lot of the house would have been, but now very simply whitewashed, which is obviously a reflection of the transition from Catholic sort of highly coloured and decorated period to the Protestant more sort of puritanical form of decoration.
The stained glass window is much, much later, but you can see within the chapel that the walls are Painted with text, which is biblical text.
It's very degraded. We do conserve it and it was recently conserved, but it's very degraded, so it's quite hard to read. And we're actually hoping to do that with a student from Glasgow University soon to understand what the text says and be able to tell our visitors more about that.
[00:47:40] Speaker C: Because you get a lot of students, don't you, coming and doing their PhDs on various aspects of the house, which must be great for you because you get a lot of new research coming through.
[00:47:48] Speaker D: It's fantastic. We've been able to work with three PhD students fairly recently who've done studies on various different aspects of the history of the house.
And, yeah, I mean, to be able to tap into their expertise and knowledge and get really in depth research done is fantastic. And it's a real.
The trust is really driving towards that kind of collaborative research.
[00:48:14] Speaker C: Yeah, great.
[00:48:15] Speaker D: Brilliant.
[00:48:16] Speaker C: So do we go upstairs next?
[00:48:17] Speaker D: Yes, let's go up to the long gallery.
[00:48:20] Speaker C: Oh, yes, let's. I can see a fabulous wonky staircase through a doorway from the courtyard. All of these staircases are the original oak staircases, are they?
[00:48:33] Speaker D: That's right, yes. And you can see this wonderful newel post here, which I think rises to about 7 meters in height.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: And it's so. It's. It's shiny and darker as everybody's, over the centuries, has run their hand.
[00:48:45] Speaker D: And it's been sort of chamfered, so it has little angles on it, which is, I suppose wood is both decorative but also helps you to grip it, grip onto it. It's a little bit like being in a ship. At Little Morton Hall, I always feel a little bit as though I've been drinking when I come here, because the floor's so uneven and you almost feel as though you're on a ship that's rocking on the sea.
[00:49:06] Speaker C: Now, I take it that it's become uneven over time, or do you think that there was this level of wonkiness when it was originally built?
[00:49:15] Speaker D: It's definitely moved. It's very much a kind of almost a living building in the sense. Sense that it flexes and moves with the seasons and it will always have done because it's very open to the elements.
But even though it's glazed, you get a lot of air circulation and changes in the temperature and moisture levels.
[00:49:35] Speaker C: You were saying it's in a very cold house in the winter.
[00:49:38] Speaker D: Extremely cold. I think of all the houses that I've worked with, Little Morton is the coldest.
[00:49:43] Speaker C: Do you think it's because of all these walls and the glass. I mean, obviously they would have had fires roaring all the time in the winter.
[00:49:49] Speaker D: Yeah, I think as well the setting, I mean, it's very flat. It's quite. I mentioned that Morton reflects the fact that it's a farm on a marsh. So it's quite a damp landscape enclosed by hills.
So I think it's just the kind of local conditions, basically.
[00:50:09] Speaker C: This is such a.
An amazing space, isn't it?
[00:50:14] Speaker D: It is. And this, the long gallery was added quite early, we think about 1560 that we've had.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: 60.
[00:50:21] Speaker D: 1560, yes. Yeah. We've had dendrochronology done on some of the key timbers in this part of the structure.
So it's been dated to then, which would have been during the ownership of the second William Morton, but towards the end of his life when his son John Morton was starting wanting to take over.
And we know that John was responsible for a lot of the polychrome decoration in the house. Not personally, but for employing people to come and do that for him.
And the long gallery, it's created quite a lot of problems for the family over time because it's built slightly narrower than the rooms that are below it. So it doesn't sit directly on the outer walls, it's sits within them. And that's caused quite a lot of structural movements. So you can see here that there are metal tie bars going across the.
The span of the room to try and hold everything together. And if you imagine on top of this is a grit stone roof which will weigh many tons. It's quite incredible that it's still here.
[00:51:27] Speaker C: I must admit, I do always feel like, obviously I've only been to Little Morton hall once before, but it feels like the galley of a ship, you know, with that sort of. It does with the windows slightly sort of sloped inwards and this really uneven. I almost feel like it's just going to start to sway from side to side.
[00:51:44] Speaker D: It's hugely atmospheric. And you can see that the floor undulates quite a lot as well. You've got sort of ripples and undulations everywhere and it's. It's a real antidote to kind of modern building styles. You know, you get these very sort of plain contemporary buildings. Well, this is the exact opposite. Very organic, very.
[00:52:03] Speaker C: And I must say, dear listeners, if any of you love your architecture, I think one of the things that struck me about my little sojourn around the northwest is a. You've got some of the most beautiful timber frame, black and white timber frame buildings I think in the country. But if you love your architecture particularly, it's such a great area to come to. And this building in particular does just fascinating.
[00:52:30] Speaker D: Yes, it's really beautiful. It's a sort of tapestry of textures and wonderful sort of decorative features. At either end of the long gallery, you can see that there is some decorative plaster work which we believe was taken.
The inspiration for these was taken from Robert Record's book the Castle Of Knowledge, which was published in 1556.
And again this, the motto within these plaster pieces of decoration refer to the wheel of Fortune and the Spear of Destiny. So it all goes back to the fact that the Mortons are trying to establish themselves.
And it's a kind of moral tale that the wheel of fortune, whose rule is ignorance. So if you rely on fate and you don't make an effort, then you're kind of casting your fate to the winds. Whereas if you rely on knowledge and you make effort, then you can be rewarded with good fortune. So it's all part of that kind of Protestant work ethic? Yes.
[00:53:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you ever now have any music or dancing in here, or is it just too fragile?
[00:53:42] Speaker D: Yeah, well, music is played in the house, especially at Christmas time. So the team at Littlemorton are keen to kind of evoke the sense of what the house was like when the family were here.
And obviously at different times of the year, like Michaelmas, Christmas, Easter and Lammas time, and harvest time, there would have been celebrations. So often musicians will come in and play music of the period.
We also know that this space, as we were talking about the fact that the great hall had once been that kind of centre of entertaining. And then the family started to use other spaces within the hall, like the little parlour and the great parlour. The long gallery was another space where the more would bring guests and they would entertain them. They would be able to sort of parade about in wet weather.
They would have. We know that they would have played games in here.
Behind the paneling was found a number of little tennis balls which date from the 17th century.
So you can imagine them running about and really enjoying the space. But also, as you can see, it's glazed on three walls, so you've got extensive, though quite cloudy views because of the nature of the glass and the fact that it's leaded out to the wider landscape. So it's another example of the family looking outwards, just across their own land and across the wider landscape.
And it must have glittered on fine days when the sun was out. It glitters.
[00:55:20] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:55:21] Speaker D: So a really sort of important space for the family to show off their wealth and status.
[00:55:27] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:55:28] Speaker D: And then off the. Off the long gallery, we've got this very wonky floored space which is the gallery chamber, which has at different times had a bed in it and other things. Things, but would have been a kind of breakout space from the long gallery. So that if you were in that room and it was getting a bit noisy and you wanted to go into a quieter space, you could come into the long gallery chamber and you could get away from all of the noise.
And in here you can see there's a fireplace which again, was once highly decorated. And this depicts coat of arms, which reflects the marriage of one of the 14th century Mortons, John de Morton, who married into the Macclesfield family, the Damacklesfield family. So it's a kind of reference back to a much earlier time, I suppose, kind of trying to establish them as having long roots in the area.
So we've got that one.
[00:56:30] Speaker C: I mean, it's very beautiful and unexpected. I think it looks like it's been drinking a bit too much.
[00:56:37] Speaker D: And in actual fact, the mantle we know is straight. So the rest of the room is wonky.
[00:56:47] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's not the fireplace that's wonky, it's the rest of the room.
[00:56:51] Speaker D: It is. And it goes off at quite an angle. So you can imagine if you were in a bed in this room and you got out in the morning, you might have a tendency to roll towards the south of the room to the window, because it's so very, very angled. It's really quite like. Lovely. Eccentric.
[00:57:09] Speaker C: Yeah, very eccentric. Be lovely and cozy in here, though, with that fire roaring away.
[00:57:13] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:57:14] Speaker C: Very nice, Sam.
Right, so we're leaving the long gallery and heading down the staircase, this spiral staircase with wonky floorboards.
And where are we heading now, Caroline?
[00:58:30] Speaker D: Well, I'm going to show you a quirky feature of the hall, which is actually, again, another status symbol.
So around the house we have a number of garderobes, which were the Tudor toilets, essentially.
And we've got them dotted around the building.
These. There are two here, back to back, and. And we have open mullions here, for obvious reasons.
[00:58:59] Speaker C: Keep it nicely ventilated. We've got fresh air pouring into small little. You probably hear about a change in the acoustics. We've now come into the garderobe or the toilet and we've got the classic wooden loo seat with just the hole.
[00:59:16] Speaker D: A hole in the centre and it literally drops down Straight into the moat. But what a convenience for the family when. At a time when the alternatives were even more primitive. So actually quite a modern thing and quite a high status thing to have.
[00:59:32] Speaker C: Absolutely. And to have your own private space as well.
[00:59:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:59:36] Speaker C: I'm thinking of the Jakes at Hampton Court palace, you know, where there's a whole rows of toilets just next to each other. Here you've got your own private loo.
[00:59:43] Speaker D: Exactly. With your ventilation.
[00:59:45] Speaker C: Very nice.
[00:59:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
Wonderful.
[00:59:48] Speaker D: And then just outside of the space. We don't know exactly, but we think that possibly the family may have hung their clothes here because there was a belief that the odour of urine was actually a repellent to moths. So it was quite a good space to hang clothes, which at the time would have been relatively.
We wouldn't have had a huge wardrobe. You would have had very few items. Items of clothing. And it was really important to look after those very carefully. So we think that this was used.
And. And actually then you can sort of see the root of that word eventually morphing into the word wardrobe.
[01:00:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, you can. I mean, it's just today it's just a space, isn't it? It's just a sort of a square space. It's empty. But they may have had clothes, not presses. I don't know what. They can't remember what they were called. They were just for. Because they often laid their clothes.
[01:00:40] Speaker D: Clothes flat. Didn't. That's right, yes. I think until the 18th century, clothes were often put into cupboards in a flat way. But equally they might have been hung on hooks or.
Or sort of freestanding rails.
[01:00:53] Speaker C: Interesting.
[01:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:55] Speaker C: And I've never thought of Garner Oak.
[01:00:57] Speaker D: Wardrobe.
[01:00:58] Speaker C: Wardrobe, yeah. You can see how it might have morphed, as you say, using your words.
[01:01:04] Speaker D: So we're going down the wonky stairs again. And outside.
[01:01:16] Speaker C: There we go.
She'll definitely be partaking of your tea room when we finish.
[01:01:25] Speaker D: You need a cream scone.
[01:01:27] Speaker C: Something about it.
[01:01:28] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:01:31] Speaker C: So you might hear, my friends, that we've come back outside.
And the lovely tinkling of birdsong. Hopefully you can't hear too much of the nearby motorways. It's a very densely populated area generally now, isn't it, the northwest? So you do get a lot of main roads going through it.
[01:01:48] Speaker D: It is. And unfortunately there's a Road. The A34 is right next to the house, which does slightly detract from the atmosphere at the hall.
It's screened by a big bank of beech trees. So that helps a little bit.
[01:02:01] Speaker C: Yes. You certainly can't see it, but we have a mound in front of us and I know you wanted to talk to us about that because you've been doing a bit of research.
[01:02:08] Speaker D: Yeah, we don't know as much as we'd like to know about the gardens at Little Morton. And over history, over the recent history, since the National Trust took Little Morton over, they have made an attempt to kind of create a garden here by inserting a knot, which is based on a Leonard Meagher description of a knot garden from his publication in the 17th century.
But we wanted to know a little bit more about how the gardens have evolved. And through a recent project with Manchester Metropolitan University, we were able to get some archaeological investigations done.
And for a long time there was this suggestion that came out in the 1970s, 80s, I think, that the mounts, there are two mounts at Little Moreton and there was a suggestion that they may have been made up really of sort of dredgings from the moat which surrounds the property.
And we didn't think so, but we wanted to be sure.
So with the help of Manchester Met, we were able to do some archaeological survey work. And Bernad was their lead researcher and lead leader on archaeology there, bought a small team and they did some GPS survey work and we were able to establish, or they were able to establish that the two mounts here at Little Moreton are sort of contemporary with the building of the house, certainly 16th century.
And within the structure of the mount there is actually a sort of revetment which is a structure that would hold the mount into a particular shape.
So this one we think was more rectangular, whereas the outer mount was possibly circular and stepped. So that's really quite a nice thing to be able to establish and obviously to have a mount within the garden. Garden was.
It was a place to kind of view the house, but also view the wider garden.
But the motorcycle can be divided into quarters with the house occupying the south east corner of the site.
And on the west side you have an open grassed area with the inner mount occupying the north west corner.
So the garden we think was quartered, which was quite a sort of traditional thing at the time, quite a fashionable thing at the time.
And. And the mount.
From the mount you can look back towards the house and you can observe and look at the beautiful decoration, but you can also look down on the other parts of the garden and we know that there were fruit trees planted here. So it was both productive but also beautiful. So the Moretons would be able to come and observe the kind of growing produce within the motor site. But they could also look out to the wider landscape, which was probably quite open when they were here. There's a big stand of beech trees here now, but they were planted much later and the hedges are quite high. But we think that probably they had quite a clear view of the wider landscape.
[01:05:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's sometimes hard, isn't it, to imagine what the landscape would have looked like if you bring down all the trees and just how far reaching the view might have been.
But I'm minded with the. I know I've done podcasts at Sudeley Castle, they've done a big archaeological project with the garden there and they have mounts and.
Very popular during the, I think the Elizabethan period in particular.
[01:05:40] Speaker D: Yes, yeah. And into the 17th century as well.
Yeah. And there's very little in the way of evidence and information about what was growing in the garden. But we almost certain that they would have been growing herbs and we know that they were growing vegetables, so it was a very productive space and obviously they would have been using herbs medicinally and also to flavour food and to put into pomanders and to stew around the floors of the house, perhaps at different times.
So those things were really important. It's quite a sensory space. It must have been filled with the smells and sounds of the countryside.
[01:06:22] Speaker C: Lovely. Absolutely lovely. How many people would have serviced a house like this? Do we have any records from little Moreton that tell us about the household staff?
[01:06:31] Speaker D: No, not really. And again, I suppose this is the kind of. This is the frustrating thing that, you know, the records don't really exist in the 16th century. We've got more evidence of.
Of what the family. We have more archival information about the family in the 17th century, but that was a time when the house was in decline.
The family fell foul of the Parliament in the Civil War and because they had nailed their allegiances to the monarchy, they eventually the house was sequestered and only two daughters, the family were allowed to live here for a long time. And after that, towards the end of the 18th, 17th century, the family moved away and the house was tenanted.
So really you've got that kind of brief period of about 150 years when the Mortons are here and they're trying to establish themselves and trying to establish their status and climb the greasy pole.
And then unfortunately, things transpired again.
They fell into debt and really then.
[01:07:41] Speaker C: The wheel of fortune changed.
[01:07:43] Speaker D: Exactly.
[01:07:44] Speaker C: The Civil War had a big impact on the family. Then it did a big impact on the kind of the end of the Morton story here it did.
[01:07:52] Speaker D: And I think from research that we know about, we think that they kind of went into the Civil War already indebted.
So you can see from account accounts of the 17th century that William the Third William Morton is spending a lot of money trying to establish his children in different roles outside of little more so that they can make their fortune essentially.
But he's spending a lot of money. He has inherited the property from his father John, who has just completed the work to, to build the south range and the long gallery.
So they've spent a lot of money and so they're going into the Civil War already in quite a bit of debt. And I don't think it was unusual in the Tudor period. People were borrowing money and lending money willy nilly, you know, not willy nilly, but they were, they were lending and borrowing money from friends and family and further wider acquaintances because there was no sort of banking system.
So a lot of people were in debt. But as they went into, into the Civil War period, they were not going in in a very firm financial situation. So the Civil War really kind of finished off their ambitions for greatness at Little Morton. But the wonderful thing about that is that after that period, not very much happens to the house.
Any major alterations really finish around 1610 when the brewhouse and bake house were added and the house essentially kind of stays as it was in the. Between the 1504 and 1610 with very little alteration.
[01:09:31] Speaker C: That's a really good thing about the sad story for the family is that we all benefit, don't we, that there was no later wealthy Georgians and Victorians to come along and molest it.
[01:09:43] Speaker D: Yeah. Although it, by the end of the 19th century the, the house belonged to Elizabeth Morton. And what by that? We know that in the, in the late, in the, in the 19th century people are starting to visit little Moreton and see it as quite an interesting antique piece of architecture and it's influencing the work of local architects. John Douglas is one who, who was designing houses in Chester and he was taking his inspiration directly from places like Little Morton in the kind of timber framing elements. And we know that an architect old had created designs based on Little Morton and built Whittock Manor, for instance, which is in the Midlands near Wolverhampton. So this kind of architecture was very appealing to people in the Victorian period who were harking back to that kind of earlier generation and illicit. Elizabeth Morton, when she owned the house, was doing a lot of work to kind of stabilize the structure and then her successor the same and then The National Trust? The same.
[01:10:51] Speaker C: I was going to ask you because it must have fallen into some degree of disrepair. I was going to ask who was the savior of the house, but we've got a few people.
[01:10:59] Speaker D: Yeah, I think we can say Elizabeth and then her nephew, Bishop Abraham.
And then, obviously, in order to really make sure that it was maintained to the best that could possibly be, it was handed over to the National Trust and the National Trust continued to care for it.
[01:11:21] Speaker C: Well, I think that's a great time, actually, just to bring our journey through time to an end. But maybe ask you about where people go to find out more about the house and particularly visiting, because I don't think you're open all year, are you? You?
[01:11:34] Speaker D: No, we're not open all year. The house closes towards the end of October, but it'll reopen again at Christmas time. And there are lots of wonderful things happening at Tumborton and you can find out all about them at the National Trust website. So please do have a look.
[01:11:48] Speaker C: We will do. And of course, we'll put a link in the description. I think you reopen in February time.
People are wanting to plan ahead for a visit and I absolutely do encourage you. There are a number of properties, properties in this area that you could spend a lovely two or three days just losing yourself in Tudor architecture and Tudor history here. So please do check out the link in the description. So all remains for me to say thank you so much, Caroline, for being our guide today. It's been wonderful story.
[01:12:16] Speaker D: Oh, thank you for coming. It's been great to share it with you and I hope lots of people come to visit and see it for themselves.
[01:12:21] Speaker C: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Sam.
[01:13:05] Speaker B: So that concludes our tour of Little Moreton Hall. I hope you enjoyed it and you have been inspired to visit or revisit.
Like myself. It's been a few years since I was there, as you heard in the recording, Living.
It's always a worthwhile place to visit and there are a number of other beautiful properties in the area, including Speke Hall, Bramhall, Ordsall hall and Old Rufford Hall.
But I just want to conclude by giving a massive thank you to Caroline for being our guide today, and also to the National Trust, of course, who made all this possible and who look after Little Morton hall and keep it all alive and well for us to enjoy.
Do check out the appropriate webpage about visiting times and we'll, of course, as ever, put that in the description associated with this podcast.
So moving on, actually, next month we start the first of a series of three podcasts.
This series of three will cover the final years and in fact the death of one of the most popular characters in Tudor history, Queen Catherine of Aragon, in November. Next month we'll be visiting Buckden hall to hear about her exile from the Tudor court.
There won't be a podcast in December, but in January it'll be a bumper month because we'll be publishing two.
The second will be on the anniversary of her death at Kimbolton Castle. And yes, I did go along and visit Kimbolton to hear about her final days at the castle prior to her death in early January 1536.
And then towards the end of January, I'll be following her funeral cortege to Peterborough. We'll hear all about the burial of Catherine of Aragon and visit her tomb.
So I hope you will look forward to that. It will be a fabulous journey in time that will connect three of the most important locations associated with the final years of Catherine.
Okay, well, that's all from me.
Stay well, my friends, and I'll see you on the road again soon.
[01:15:39] Speaker C: Foreign thank you for tuning in to.
[01:15:46] Speaker B: Today'S episode of the Tudor History and Travel Show. If you've loved the show, please take.
[01:15:53] Speaker C: A moment to subscribe, like and rate.
[01:15:55] Speaker B: This podcast so that we can spread the Tudor love.
[01:15:59] Speaker C: Until next time, my friends.
[01:16:01] Speaker B: All that remains for me to say.
[01:16:03] Speaker C: Is happy time traveling.
