|| 26 March 2015

More about Cotterstock Hall

Anne Shares More Information About And Memories of Cotterstock Hall.

Sunday (22 March 2015) we had Tea at Cotterstock Hall, a 17th century historic property in Northamptonshire. A place I enjoyed visiting in the early years of the 300-year-old house’s restoration by an English cousin of my father-in-law. Cotterstock Hall, the site of the filming of the 2012 movie The Woman in Black, is still for sale. Thanks to Karen in Rosemount who sent the link, you can view more photos of Cotterstock Hall on the KingWest realty website.

In my opinion, these 17 KingWest photos give you a better sense of the property as I knew it than the Daily Mail article photos for which you previously had a link with the 5 o’Clock Tea posting. The KingWest photos show more outbuildings and gardens. There is a larger view of the Dryden Room in which you can see more details of that beautiful old 17th century paneling.

But I need to say a word about the furnishings in the photos.

I feel certain most of the furniture you see in the interior photos of Cotterstock Hall on both sites are not those that decorated the house in the decades that Cousin Lewis and his wife lived there. (They certainly were not there in the days I visited.) Lewis and Avril had very conservative tastes, and their furnishing were older, family things. A good many pieces you see in those photos look as if they came straight from the furniture showroom — note the bright colors and the shiny newness even of the “antiques.”

Cousin Lewis and his wife did have some fine old antiques that had been in Lewis’ family for generations. (And those items showed the wear that comes from long use.) I am quite sure neither would have allowed those elephants flanking one of the fireplaces, nor the artificial flowers in front of the fireplace. And I know Cousin Lewis NEVER would have bought a pink velveteen covered recliner! Not that dignified and conservative London barrister! That stuffy high court lawyer would as soon pirouetted around Trafalgar Square in a tutu.

Cousin Lewis was in his 70s in the 1970s when I was visiting Cotterstock Hall. Avril was some years younger (by my calculation she would today be late 80s or early 90s). Whoever decorated the house as you see it in the photos may be a subsequent owner — or, for the photos, the realtor who hauled in furnishings that he thought would make the place more appealing to buyers.

In fact, the only decorator item I see in the photos that I know positively is from the days of Lewis and Avril is that portrait of a woman under the light in the library (3rd photo on KingWest). That is Louise, Cousin Lewis’ grandmother — and my great grandmother-in-law.

And I do not see my favorite of the family antiques that used to grace the drawing room where we had the tea I wrote about in 5 o’Clock Tea. It was a fireplace screen done in needlepoint, surely by 19th century hands. In the days when those old stately homes were heated only from the wood or coal burned in the fireplaces, it was necessary to sit close to the fire to enjoy the warmth. But ladies must, of course, protect their complexions from the drying heat of the flames. So these little personal screens stood between the fire and the lady and protected her face.

Speaking of heat, in the days that I visited Cotterstock Hall the only heat in that drafty, damp 17th century stone house was wood-burning fireplaces and those funny little coal burners you can see sitting inside the fireplaces in several of the photos. I never became adept at feeding coal burners — an act my son at age four described as “throwing rocks in the fire.” Even though he is now in his 40s, if you say “Cotterstock Hall” to him, he says, “Cold, cold.”

Did you notice that among the photos on the Daily Mail and KingWest sites there were none of the kitchen or bathrooms at Cotterstock Hall? During the years I was visiting Cotterstock Hall, the bathrooms were still in their Victorian state. The tub in which I bathed was enclosed in dark varnished wood and over by shelves were horizontal heated drying rods over which one hung damp bath towels. A necessity in a house as cold and damp as Cotterstock in the days the only heat was fireplace heat.

Looking at the floor plan for Cotterstock Hall on the KingWest page, I see a kitchen on the main floor. During the days of my visits, there were two different temporary kitchens, neither in the location shown in the floor plan for the house today. In these kitchens that reminded me of kitchens in French apartments, Avril turned out the most marvelous meals. Her cuisine was as French as her name. But I was impressed that there was no need for a refrigerator at Cotterstock Hall. Even in summer, those old cellars left over from another structure built on the site in the 13th century were so cold that the “refrigerator” was some shelves inside the entrance to the cellar on which the milk, cream and other items requiring refrigeration were kept.

I suspect there is still nothing in Cotterstock Hall resembling the modern kitchens that many people today who could afford a £2 million ($3 million) house expect. Lewis and Avril were products of an era that did not require a lot of gadgets. In any case, they had no children and the arrangement was that after their deaths the house would go to one of those entities that oversees historic houses. Cotterstock Hall would be open to the public for visiting. There would be no need for a ultra modern kitchen, nor for a bathroom for each of the seven bedrooms.

Changes Regarding English Historic Houses

But in recent years, both the laws and the organizations overseeing historic houses in England have changed. As to why Cotterstock Hall is on the market instead of being administered by an historic building organization as was the original plan when restoration began, I can only offer you clues to possible explanations in two articles — one recent and one from 2009.

Who holds the keys to our mansions? on BBC site

English Heritage to sell off historic house at £5m loss in The Independent

Cotterstock Hall photos on KingWest realty site

be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone

image at top of page: Cotterstock Hall 1970 back view © Anne Barone

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