Ashby St Ledgers | |
---|---|
The manor house where the Gunpowder Plot was reportedly planned | |
Location within Northamptonshire | |
Population | 173 (2011 Census) |
OS grid reference | SP5768 |
• London | 78 miles (126 km) |
Unitary authority | |
Ceremonial county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | RUGBY |
Postcode district | CV23 |
Dialling code | 01788 |
Police | Northamptonshire |
Fire | Northamptonshire |
Ambulance | East Midlands |
UK Parliament | |
Ashby St Ledgers is a village in the West Northamptonshire district of Northamptonshire, England. [1] The post town is Rugby in Warwickshire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 173. [2] The Manor House is famous for being a location for the planning of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. [3] As of 2023, the property had been restored and could be rented for a fee. [4] [5]
The nearest large towns are Rugby, 5 miles (8.0 km) north west, and Daventry, 3 miles (4.8 km) south. The A5 road, following the course of the Roman Watling Street, passes about a mile east. Rugby has the nearest railway station on the West Coast Main Line, with trains to London Euston and several other parts of the country. It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) north via the A5 to the M1 London to Yorkshire motorway junction 18 and about 7 miles (11.3 km) south to junction 16.
Ashby St Ledgers was first mentioned in the Domesday Book, which gave the place name as Ascebi ("ash tree settlement"). In Norman times, a church was erected on the site, dedicated to Saint Leodegarius, from whom the modern-day name is derived.
The manor was given as a gift to Hugh de Grandmesnil by William the Conqueror and passed to various other occupants until 1375, when it passed into the Catesby family and became their principal residence.
The manor was briefly confiscated after the attainder and execution of William Catesby, one of Richard III's counsellors, after the defeat at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, but was later returned to his son, George. It passed down the male line to Robert Catesby's father, Sir William Catesby, who managed to hold on to the property in spite of massive debts caused by recusancy fines and years of imprisonment for his brave adherence to the Roman Catholic faith.
The manor's central location was convenient to the houses of the Catesbys' many friends and relations, which supposedly made Ashby St Ledgers a type of 'Command Centre' during the planning of the Gunpowder Plot. In the room above the Gatehouse, with its privacy from the main house and clear view of the surrounding area, Robert Catesby, his servant Thomas Bates and the other conspirators are said to have planned a great deal of the Gunpowder Plot. [7] Catesby was killed with some other plotters at Holbeche House, whereas his servant was executed in the following January.
Following Robert Catesby's death in 1605, the manor was confiscated by the crown as the property of a traitor. However, Lady Anne Catesby had a life interest in a large portion of the property, given her by her husband at their marriage. This preserved a portion of the estate from alienation, and though an attempt was made in 1618 to reverse that, the settlement remained. [8] In 1612, it was purchased by Bryan I'Anson (1560-1634), Sheriff of the City of London. [9] He was the father of Sir Bryan I'Anson, 1st Bt., of Ashby St Ledgers; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles I of England. [10] In 1703, Esther I'Anson (Sir Bryan's elder brother John's great-granddaughter) sold the manor to Joseph Ashley, a London draper. When his great nephew, also called Joseph Ashley, died in 1798, the manor passed to his daughter, Mary, who was the wife of Sir Joseph Senhouse. Their daughter, Elizabeth, married Joseph Pocklington in 1835, and the manor remained in their family until 1903, when it was sold to Ivor Guest, 1st Viscount Wimborne, [7] [9] who had previously rented it for hunting. [11]
Viscount Wimborne's grandson and namesake, Ivor Guest, 3rd Viscount Wimborne, sold the estate in 1976. It passed through a series of owners, including the British Airways Pension Fund, who separated the manor house from the rest of the estate. In 1998 the 3rd Viscount's son Ivor Guest, 4th Viscount Wimborne, bought the house, which had fallen into neglect, [7] and restored it over two years. [11] It was purchased by his cousin, Henry Guest, and his wife Nova. [7]
The original medieval manor house was gradually replaced by later buildings, starting with a new range probably erected by the Catesbys in the early Tudor period. The I'Ansons created the main façade and an adjacent tower in the first half of the 17th century, together with another freestanding building across the court from the surviving medieval building. After being widowed in 1828, Mary Senhouse took up residence in the manor and expanded it in Jacobean revival style; a lifesize oil painting on the cellar door of a "Herculean" figure brandishing a club dates to this period and presumably alludes to the Guy Fawkes association of the house. The house was further expanded throughout the 19th century and then under the ownership of the Wimborns extensively remodelled by Edwin Lutyens, who worked on it for 40 years, the longest commission of his career, while also carrying out other commissions in the village. He created a new garden façade and a new range with its own tower, and behind the Jacobean façade, new Edwardian rooms with the floor lowered to give added height to the interiors. Rubble stone was used for the new building to blend with the original cut stone; some salvaged antique building elements were also used, including a complete medieval house from Ipswich that had been on exhibit in London in 1908. [7] Lutyens' interiors were partially modified in the late 20th century, including demolition of the north wing, [12] but the house was restored by the 4th Viscount Wimborne at the start of the 21st century. [7]
The Baker family bought the 2,337-acre (9.46 km2) Ashby St Ledgers estate from the British Airways Pension Fund in 1982. It includes an organic dairy farm, a country sports centre and Chapel Farm, which 150 years ago was the home of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School. The Bakers sold the estate to The Crown Estate in 2005. [13] It will continue to be run as an agricultural business, but governed by its Rural Directorate.
The church is dedicated to Saint Leodegarius and has wall paintings showing the Passion of Christ ca. 1500, with 18 scenes, and the flagellation of St Margaret, ca. 1325. [14]
The village has a pub, the Olde Coach House Inn which closed in 2021.
Ashby Lodge, a house built by Londoner George Arnold in the early 1720s on the edge of the manor estate, was demolished in the 1920s. [7]
Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated in York; his father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic.
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against King James I by a group of English Catholics led by Robert Catesby who considered their actions attempted tyrannicide and who sought regime change in England after decades of religious persecution.
Robert Catesby was the leader of a group of English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Born in Warwickshire, Catesby was educated at Oxford University. His family were prominent recusant Catholics, and presumably to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy he left college before taking his degree. He married a Protestant in 1593 and fathered two children, one of whom survived birth and was baptised in a Protestant church. In 1601 he took part in the Essex Rebellion but was captured and fined, after which he sold his estate at Chastleton.
William Catesby was one of Richard III of England's principal councillors. He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Commons during Richard's reign. The Catesbys’ medieval wealth derived from livestock and the zenith of their political achievement came during his career.
Viscount Wimborne, of Canford Magna in the County of Dorset, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne, 2nd Baronet, DL was a British industrialist and a member of the prominent Guest family.
Ivor Churchill Guest, 1st Viscount Wimborne, KP, PC, known as Lord Ashby St Ledgers from 1910 to 1914 and as Lord Wimborne from 1914 to 1918, was a British politician and one of the last Lords Lieutenant of Ireland, serving in that position at the time of the Easter Rising.
Francis Tresham was a member of the group of English provincial Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to assassinate King James I of England.
Robert Wintour and Thomas Wintour, also spelt Winter, were members of the Gunpowder Plot, a failed conspiracy to assassinate King James I. Brothers, they were related to other conspirators, such as their cousin, Robert Catesby, and a half-brother, John Wintour, also joined them following the plot's failure. Thomas was an intelligent and educated man, fluent in several languages and trained as a lawyer, but chose instead to become a soldier, fighting for England in the Low Countries, France, and possibly in Central Europe. By 1600, however, he changed his mind and became a fervent Catholic. On several occasions he travelled to the continent and entreated Spain on behalf of England's oppressed Catholics, and suggested that with Spanish support a Catholic rebellion was likely.
Ambrose Rookwood was a member of the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant King James I with a Catholic sovereign. Rookwood was born into a wealthy family of Catholic recusants, and educated by Jesuits in Flanders. His older brother became a Franciscan, and his two younger brothers were ordained as Catholic priests. Rookwood became a horse-breeder. He married the Catholic Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, and had at least two sons.
Lower Catesby is a hamlet in the civil parish of Catesby, Northamptonshire, about 4 miles (6.4 km) southwest of Daventry. Lower Catesby is beside the nascent River Leam, which rises about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the south in the parish of Hellidon. The Jurassic Way long-distance footpath passes through Lower Catesby. The population of the hamlet is included in the civil parish of Hellidon.
Lyveden New Bield is an unfinished Elizabethan summer house in the parish of Aldwincle in North Northamptonshire, commissioned by Sir Thomas Tresham and now owned by the National Trust. It is a Grade I listed building, classing it as a 'building of exceptional interest.'
Thomas Percy was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. A tall, physically impressive man, little is known of his early life beyond his matriculation in 1579 at the University of Cambridge, and his marriage in 1591 to Martha Wright. In 1596 his second cousin once removed, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, appointed him constable of Alnwick Castle and made him responsible for the Percy family's northern estates. He served the earl in the Low Countries in about 1600–1601, and in the years before 1603 was his intermediary in a series of confidential communications with King James VI of Scotland.
Parliament Hill is an area of open parkland in the south-east corner of Hampstead Heath in north-west London. The hill, which is 98 metres (322 ft) high, is notable for its views of the capital's skyline.
Robert Keyes was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to assassinate King James I by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605. He was the sixth man to join the plot.
Weston under Wetherley, often known by locals as just Weston, is a small village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. It is on the B4453, 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast of the closest town, Royal Leamington Spa. According to the 2001 Census the village had a population of 454 living in 164 houses. The population taken at the 2011 Census was 468. The most notable buildings is the parish church of Saint Michael. Weston is unusual amongst settlements in the United Kingdom of its size in that there is not a single shop there, the last being demolished in the 1990s, nor a pub, which was closed in 2014.
Thomas Bates was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Ivor Fox-Strangways Guest, 3rd Viscount Wimborne was a British peer.
Sir John Spencer was an English nobleman who was widely admired, in his time, for his administration of the family estates. He inherited large estates in Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, and increased his lands and fortunes extensively. Spencer was also a politician, who served as member of parliament for several years, and was known for his support of Whig issues.
Sir Richard Clement of Ightham Mote in Kent, England, was a courtier to King Henry VII and to his son Henry VIII.