Berrington Hall

Dedicated to Richard and Ruth Lewis and their ‘passion’ for Downton Abbey.


















Do houses have their own peculiar curse? Robert Cecil, a thoroughly bad egg, invested a life of back-stabbing and ambition in Hatfield House. The building is magnificent inside and out, the Jacobean carving extraordinary in its artistry and detail. Walk inside and it takes your breath away, as it did for Cecil who died just before it was finished.

Sometimes bad luck can strike once and then it’s done. With other houses it’s a more drawn out affair.

















Berrington Hall with its own melancholy history is a case in point. It was built in 1778 by Thomas Harley, a wealthy banker and government contractor. The house was designed by Henry Holland. Capability Brown landscaped its parkland; and its interior, exquisitely proportioned, was opulent and warm. Thomas Harley had no sons. You can’t have everything, but his daughter, Ann, did marry the George, the son of the more famous Admiral Lord Rodney.




This man, whupped the Spanish, French and Americans? What were their commanders like? Seriously, Gainsborough reveals a lot in that face

















Lord Rodney had been a gifted naval commander who’d thrashed the Spanish, French and Americans in many naval encounters. He was also greedy, addicted to gambling and spent more than he owned – to the extent that he was forced to flee Britain in order to escape his creditors and spent some time in a French jail.

The Rodney family weren’t blessed with luck. Anne’s brother-in-law was lost at sea, and her three sons, the third, fourth and fifth Baron Rodneys died in 1842, 1843 and 1846 respectively. By the time the seventh Baron Rodney took up residence, Berrington Hall was the worst for wear and to make things worse he’d inherited the first Baron’s taste for gambling. Over the years Berrington was stripped of its farms and much of its treasures. The house was sold in 1901 to Frederick Cawley MP who’d made his wealth in the cotton industry.






















For a time everything went right for them. Frederick Cawley had patented a pure black dye and when, in 1901, Queen Victoria died, a nation went into mourning and clothed itself in black crepe. And Cawley became even richer. In 1906 he was made a baronet and Berrington hall prospered under his enlightened and energetic ownership.

Then in 1914 tragedy struck. World War One. Within a few months of war their son, John Stephen, was killed in action. He was thirty four. The family were still grieving when in 1915 their second son, Harold, died at Gallipoli. The youngest son, Oswald, was killed in 1918, just three months before the war ended.

It is well worth reading the link, describing each brother’s death.

The house has a small room where pictures of the Cawley family hang. They show faces that are down to earth and decent. Good men died and the parents never recovered. On the wall is a personal, handwritten letter from Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, commiserating with their grief. The letter is intimate and sincere on first reading.

But Captain Harold Cawley’s death is not without mystery. Initially he was Aide-de-Camp to General Sir William Douglas and enjoyed relative security in Divisional Head Quarters. From there he wrote a series of uncensored letters to his parents, describing in detail the poor calibre of the recruits from the Northern towns of Lancashire. More significantly he went on to describe, in caustic detail, the short comings of General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton, Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston, and Major General Sir William Douglas, who he described as ‘peevish willie. The brunt of his criticism was that Generals were sacrificing men without reason but through sheer stupidity. Were their consequences?

The official line is that Captain Harold Cawley requested to be posted to the front - "I have always felt rather a brute skulking behind in comparative safety while my friends were being killed." He was granted his wish and two weeks later was killed.

A descendent, Charles Cawley, perhaps expressing a family tradition, has a different line. Harold’s letters were addressed to his father who was in the cabinet. More significantly they could be interpreted as criticism of Churchill who had masterminded the Gallipoli campaign. In Charles Cawley’s words :

“As a consequence, (Harold) left the general staff and went straight to the front line. The inevitable happened. It is more than possible that he knew exactly what he was doing and this was an act of virtual suicide.” Confronted with Churchill’s handwritten letter and the story as told by Charles Cawley, it is hard to be certain of where truth lies. But the grieving father was made a full baron, and money continued to roll in with a nation in mourning and the increased demand for black dye.

Harold Cawley
















During World War II Berrington Hall was turned into a hospital but the new Lord and Lady Cawley still dressed for dinner every night and retained stiff upper lips when the Americans arrived and churned up their park in their jeeps. When Lord Cawley died in 1957 a grateful nation charged death duties of 80% and they were forced to sell up, bequeathing their house to the Treasury and ultimately the National Trust. Lady Cawley was allowed residence there until she died, though she lived longer than anyone expected – dying a centenarian in 1978.





















Even then a degree of controversy lived on

Waking up slowly

The morning begins slowly. Three strong mugs of tea and solitude. I don’t count the radio, murmuring the news, telling me what to think for the day and the rest of my life. Sometimes I will sit in a green gloom with curtains closed. On good days I will draw the curtains wide and stare through the conservatory at a giant damson tree, its leaves furiously break-dancing, feeding on air.

The tree is a slow measure of the seasons, a dense green throughout summer, gold and brown then ragged as autumn progresses, and finally bare, showing the hills beyond.

Today I realised I was stroking a hair just below my bottom lip.

I hadn’t shaved; my face a mess of stubble. I realised at the same time that I always fingered this particular hair. Short and stubby just below the bottom lip. This was an errant hair following no particular grain, an oak amongst hairs. I still had two cups of tea to go, so plenty of time to work this one out. My hand coursed across both cheeks and jaw line. It was like feeling sandpaper, coarse uniformity. Not one hair drew attention to itself. If I arbitrarily chose one I immediately lost it when trying to find it again.

My finger returned to its old friend, pushing it from side to side, enjoying the tense tingle to the skin around it, feeling the urge to shave it hard, knowing it would grow again and be waiting for me as perky as ever the following morning.
Reassured, I drained my final mug of tea and woke up my wife. A new day begun.

You Gotta Serve Somebody

Just standing in St. Materiana’s church in Tintagel immerses you in an intense and magical peace. St. Materiana herself is most interesting because the Church has so little to say about her: "A Welsh or Cornish widow. No details of her life are extant, but some Welsh churches bear her name." Had she been martyred, no doubt the record might be more fulsome.

Scraps from myth and old Celtic records associate her with Modrun, a refugee in North Wales, a Queen of Gwent and a Cornish saint, which leads some to say she was an extremely busy lady or an amalgam of more than one Modrun. Others suggest she was a Christian invention covering over an older pagan cult (Matrona/mother goddess) which accounts for her name popping up in so many places.

Young British men, some little more than boys pop up in even more varied places. One of the melancholy joys in exploring old country churches are the wall memorials to fallen soldiers and seamen who lost their lives in forming an empire. All over England, in the most obscure hamlets, ancient churches record the deaths of ensigns, and lieutenants – some as young as seventeen – who died where they had no right to be. How in God’s name did a boy from an unknown Welsh village die in the gulf of Tonkin in 1673? What was he doing there?

Reading these memorials stirs something in the soul. They died for something greater than themselves. In our culture the individual is glorified; by sleight of hand deluded in to believing they are beholden to no one. The reality is different and the result is a growing subculture of the infantile and selfish, aspiring to riches or fame without effort.

And yes, I know a glorious con trick was played on our forbears. Many acted without choice. And ‘That something greater than themselves’ invariably enriched those who ruled them in church or state, often both. But does that demean or cheapen aspiration, sacrifice or nobility? Are the works of Michelangelo tarnished because he worked for the Medici and two corrupt Popes? The sacrifice of a warrior less so because he was there without choice? In the words of Bob Dylan everyone “Gotta Serve Somebody” And you're more likely to find yourself serving others than serving yourself.

And may St. Materiana look over you.

The mystery of strangers

It is a source of deep regret that I have now reached an age that leaves me no time to sample every whisky in the world. To try would hasten my inevitable demise and I can find no way round this particular Catch 22. But there is another, deeper regret. Even in a lifetime it is impossible to know everyone that you might like to know. And this has its own ‘Catch 22’. It’s not something you’re likely to think about as a teenager. Whisky, maybe, sex yes, but not people.

I was on the train to Gerard’s Cross when an elegant, middle-aged lady sat next to me. She wore Rive Gauche and her voice was low and attractive when she asked whether the seat next to me was taken. Immediately I wanted to know more about her, and I wondered why that was.

What made her different from anyone else who might have chosen to sit next to me and who I might not have given a second thought? Okay, the perfume, the low attractive voice but it wasn’t just that.

From early on I’ve always been attracted by a person, more so than his or her body. Probably true of most people. A person can crackle with energy or exude something more subtle, glimpsed in a smile, a glint in the eye, voice, and that something hard to define so I’ll call it a life-force or soul.

A soul you intuit and you want to know more. A bee has no inhibitions nosing from flower to flower. Pollen, though indispensable, is more mundane than the soul, but nevertheless the bee devotes a life in its pursuit. We have more important things to do.

And yes, pollen is food but we are spiritual creatures. What is it that prevents us from exploring others?

Selfishness?

Inhibition?

Alcohol loosens the tongue, opens doors and closes them. Have sympathy with the overtures of drunks. For a moment in time they are wanting to know. Inhibition removed, they’re responding to the same urge that made me want to know more about that woman on the train.

A writer – okay, a nosy bugger - stares out the window at a darkening Buckinghamshire countryside and imagines who the woman is, where she is going, where she has come from. He will never know, and he will never know all he’d like to know, or drink all the whisky in the world.

Tintagel

We emerged from the mist like melancholy sheep, wraiths in anoraks. This was more like it. Morose but content. The Keytons on holiday. Overlooking the sea indistinguishable from the wetness around us, we picnicked at Tintagel and ruminated on Arthur. If this was his Camelot no wonder the Knights of the Round Table came to their dismal end. Arthur must have been terminally depressed; probably threw himself on Mordred’s sword just to get away. There would be sunshine in Avalon, and he had chain mail to protect himself from midges. I understood then why Isolde had fled her husband in favour of Tristan. Mark never stood a chance. “It’s not you, dear.” And she probably meant it. Tintagel.

We chewed our cheese sandwiches and contemplated the rock, grey in mist but rearing high in the clouds. The climb looked formidable and I thought back to Canillas de Aceituno, and the expats we had met. There was a guy that could make you drunk on his breath. Flies died from alcohol poisoning. This was his solution to sunshine and loneliness; another who had imbedded himself in the Spanish community. He was opening a convalescence home for seriously ill children, and his own child attended a Spanish school. He seemed the exception.

They reminded me of Crusading knights each in their villa - tiny castles on alien hills - each with their pool, their glorious sunsets, their satellite dish, and most important of all, a fast internet connection to home. They were immensely hospitable, some cheerful and at peace with the world, others lost like ghosts in a landscape that didn’t belong to them. It reminded me of the importance of roots and that relationship with others that even plants, with their very different senses share. I chewed on my sandwich.

“What are you thinking of?” my daughter asked.

“Richard of Cornwall,” I said. “His brother Henry III gave him Cornwall as a birthday present. He built the castle – what you can see of it - in 1233.”

“Not Arthur then.”

“Not Arthur, though the site itself was important to the ancient Cornish kings.

“So he may have been here.”

“Have a cheese sandwich.”

Canillas de Aceituno

Fresh from the experience of 'Macbeth' in a storm – well, to be honest some years after but the memory was strong – we booked a holiday, our only criteria being somewhere hot and dry, and with a pool. We settled on Canillas de Aceituno in the mountains of Andalusia.


















The patio overlooked deep valleys and a turquoise but diminishing lake. Mountains surrounded us; very Wagnerian, the mosquitoes less so, whining Valkyries that fed on the living.

I didn’t anticipate problems. Swallows dived from azure skies, and we had a pool. Even our very own fig tree.


















So Canillas de Aceituno was two miles away. We could do that. We thought. What we hadn’t realized was that this two miles involved a vertical trek. The town was perched even higher than we were! 40 degrees centigrade heightened the experience.






















I lost weight.

Not in the normal way.

Mosquitoes and a whole host of voracious insects took great chunks from my arms and legs and neck. My face turned volcanic, a deep Martian red. The flies followed soon after, settling on each and every itching wound. "Laying their eggs," my son said gloomily, as though considering what his reaction would be when I writhed with maggots and exploded in flies.

I didn’t expect over-much sympathy. Never do. As things stood, the whole family walked ten paces behind me, reluctant to be seen with the leper. My name became 'Belial, Lord of Flies.'

No one else in the family was touched, just me, the sacrificial goat. It was good to get back to Monmouth. No mosquitoes yet, just the pleasant charm of quiet eccentrics.

Macbeth in a storm

In 2001 we saw an open air production of Macbeth in the grounds of Llancaiach FawrManor. It starred Abigail Hopkins, the daughter of the more well known Anthony. It also rained. Not just ordinary rain. Wales doesn’t do equatorial. Not often. Fate – I pictured her as a malevolent Welsh woman with a watery grin - waited for us to choose our seats, open our sandwiches and then without warning covered us with the Atlantic and some of the Pacific.

It poured down, turning cheese sandwiches into a cold fondue, and here is where a weird, British perversity kicked in. We tightened our hoods, unfurled our umbrellas and raised our feet as the ground turned to mud and pools grew into lakes. As the performance went on, our chairs slowly sank into the morass, but still we remained…and, equally weird, so did the actors in a strange, symbiotic relationship: as long as an audience remained, they would perform, and for as long as they performed we would remain. Besides, they’d probably factored in the curse of the play that must not be named.

And maybe they were enjoying skidding across a greasy stage and sometimes coming off. Abigail Hopkins surely did. As Hecate she with the other witches were perched up a metallic tree, silhouetted against a lowering sky when suddenly lightning flashed and thunder rolled. This was SFX with attitude and I’ve never seen witches so terrifying, or terrified. Alas, all good things come to an end, our applause muted in rain.

But a decision was made. Our next holiday would be taken in sunshine. Be careful what you wish for. Be very careful:)