The Lucy family owned the land since 1247. Charlecote Park was built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style.
Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75ha), backing on to the River Avon. Allegedly, William Shakespearepoached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man and was brought before magistrates as a result.[1]
From 1605 to 1640 the house was organised by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Lucy who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons inherited the house in turn and it then fell to her grandchild Sir Davenport Lucy.[2]
In the Tudor great hall, the 1680 painting Charlecote Park by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is said to be one of the earliest depictions of a black presence in the West Midlands (excluding Roman legionnaires).[3] The painting, of Captain Thomas Lucy, shows a black boy in the background dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust's Charlecote brochure describes the boy as a "black page boy". In 1735 a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote.[3]
A closer view of Charlecote Park dating from the 1820s.
The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late 18th to mid-19th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (c 1850).[citation needed]
The "Lucy Deerskin" created by Edith Mary Hinchley
Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d 1845), who married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, from whose extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based upon. GH Lucy's second son Henry inherited the estate from his elder brother in 1847. In 1890 artist Edith Mary Hinchley worked on a family tree image on deerskin that involved the creation of 500 heraldic shields. She did the work because she was a genealogist and a friend of the family. The "Lucy Deerskin" is still at Charlecote Park. After the deaths of both Mary Elizabeth and Henry in 1890, the house was rented out by Henry's eldest daughter and heiress, Ada Christina (d 1943). She had married Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, (d 1944), a line of the Fairfax Baronets, who on marriage assumed the name Fairfax-Lucy.[citation needed]
Charlecote Park circa 1880
From this point onwards, the family began selling off parts of the outlying estate to fund their extensive lifestyle, and post-World War II in 1946, Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy, who had inherited the residual estate from his mother Ada, presented Charlecote to the National Trust in-lieu of death duties. Sir Montgomerie was succeeded in 1965 by his brother, Sir Brian, whose wife, Lady Alice, researched the history of Charlecote, and assisted the National Trust with the restoration of the house.[citation needed]
Today
The lakeThe brewery at Charlecote ParkParterre at Charlecote Park, July 2014
The Great Hall has a barrel-vaulted ceiling made of plaster painted to look like timber and is a fine setting for the splendid collection of family portraits. Other rooms have richly coloured wallpaper, decorated plaster ceilings and wood panelling. There are magnificent pieces of furniture and fine works of art, including a contemporary painting of Queen Elizabeth I. The original two-storey Elizabethan gatehouse that guards the approach to the house remains unaltered.
On display at the house is an original letter from Oliver Cromwell, dated 1654, summoning then-owner Richard Lucy to the Barebones Parliament. Also on display is a 1760 portrait of George Lucy by Thomas Gainsborough which cost Lucy the sum of eight guineas.[5]
A set of archives for the Lucy family at Charlecote is held by the Warwickshire County Record Office.[6] The house also has a display of carriages and a period laundry and brew room.
Charlecote Park has extensive grounds. A parterre has been recreated from the original 1700s plans.
The livestock at Charlecote includes fallow deer, Devon Red Poll cattle, and Jacob sheep which were brought to England from Portugal in 1755 by George Lucy.[7]
↑ Richard Cust, ‘Lucy, Alice, Lady Lucy (c.1594–1648)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 accessed 25 November 2015
1 2 Beyond the Grave, Alison Benjamin, 21 March 2007, The Guardian, Retrieved 26 November 2015
Stratford-upon-Avon, commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, 91 miles (146 km) north-west of London, 22 miles (35 km) south-east of Birmingham and 8 miles (13 km) south-west of Warwick. The town is the southernmost point of the Arden area on the edge of the Cotswolds. In the 2021 census Stratford had a population of 30,495.
Hampton Lucy is a village and civil parish on the River Avon, 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire England. The population of the civil parish as taken at the 2011 census was 566.
Sir Thomas Lucy was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1571 and 1585. He was a magistrate in Warwickshire, but is best known for his links to William Shakespeare. As a Protestant activist, he came into conflict with Shakespeare's Catholic relatives, and there are stories that the young Shakespeare himself had clashes with him.
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Rufford Old Hall is a National Trust property in Rufford, Lancashire, England. Built in about 1530 for Sir Robert Hesketh, only the Great Hall survives from the original structure. A brick-built wing in the Jacobean style was added in 1661, at right angles to the Great Hall, and a third wing was added in the 1820s.
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The Fairfax, later Ramsay-Fairfax, later Cameron-Ramsay-Fairfax-Lucy Baronetcy, of The Holmes in the County of Roxburgh, is a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 14 March 1836 for Henry Fairfax, in honour of his father, Vice Admiral Sir William George Fairfax. The second Baronet assumed the additional surname of Ramsay in 1876, which was the maiden name of his maternal grandmother. The third Baronet assumed by Royal Licence the additional surname of Lucy in 1892 after his marriage to Ada Christina Lucy, daughter and heiress of Henry Spencer Lucy. In 1921 he added by Royal licence the additional surname of Cameron, making this quadruple-barrelled name a notable example of the British tradition of concatenated surnames.
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This is a list of sheriffs and high sheriffs of the English county of Warwickshire.
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Sir Hercules Underhill (1581–1658) was the son of William Underhill of Warwickshire, owner of New Place in Stratford-Upon-Avon. William Underhill sold New Place to William Shakespeare in 1597, and Hercules Underhill confirmed the sale in 1602.
Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote Park, Warwickshire was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1614 and 1640.
Richard Lucy of Charlecote Park, Warwickshire was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1653.
William Clopton (1538–1592) was a member of the English gentry who inherited New Place in Stratford upon Avon, and in 1563 sold it to William Bott.
Alice Lucy or Lady Lucy, born Alice Spencer, was a British puritan gentlewoman who was known for her charity and piety. She married into the property at Charlecote Park which she ran after her husband died in 1640.
Charlecote is a village and civil parish 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Warwick, on the River Avon, in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, England. In 2011 the parish had a population of 194. The parish touches Wasperton, Newbold Pacey, Wellesbourne and Walton, Stratford-upon-Avon, Loxley and Hampton Lucy. Most of the village is a conservation area. The soil is rich loam and lies on gravel and sand.
George Hammond Lucy (1789–1845) was a British landowner, Member of Parliament and High Sheriff.
Charlecote Mill is a watermill in Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire, England, near to Charlecote Park and about 4 miles (6 km) east of Stratford-upon-Avon. It is a Grade II* listed building. Since the 1980s there has been a full-time business producing flour, and there are occasional open days.
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