Was 29th March a day of retribution for a certain 14th-century lord….?

  For the past two/three years I have been grappling (off and on, so to speak) with some defiant dates. No doubt I’ve bewailed this particular problem before because my interest in the lord concerned is quite considerable. Not least because he may have had great significance for the House of York. So here goes…

Children? Or a litter of 14th-century what….?

  “….John and his elder brother, Richard, and younger brother, Edward, and their sister, Constance, were bred as children at Dartington….” Um, what else might they have been bred as? 🤪 I won’t identify the source – not fair, because people like me aren’t supposed to see it as funny!  

The Champernownes of Devon

The Champernownes (above), a Norman line whose alternative spellings include Chapman and Chamberlain, are surely Devon’s second family after the Courtenays of Powderham Castle, who hold the Earldom. From 1162, their (Domesday Book-cited) home was at Chambercombe Manor near Ilfracombe (middle right) but, by the early sixteenth century, this had passed to Henry Grey, Duke of…

Why bury a chest of books….?

Here is a puzzle, circa 1400. Why would a usurped king’s half-brother bury a chest of books in the ground at the church in his Devon estate? The usurped king was Richard II, the half-brother John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon (had been Duke of Exeter), the Devon estate Dartington. This was just before Holand joined…

Holiday in Morpeth Castle’s wonderful gatehouse….!

  I love to stay at places with history. Especially medieval history. That is why I so love going to 14th-century Dartington Hall near Totnes in Devon. Now I have found somewhere else I’d like to go, although it’s in the opposite end of the country – Morpeth Castle in Northumberland. Well, the castle gatehouse, to…

An angelic Tudor mystery in Devon….

The great hall at Dartington Hall, near Totnes in Devon, is a magnificent example of 14th-century architecture, but there is a little oddity that not everyone will notice. It concerns the supporting figures on the corbels supporting the five-bay hammerbeam timber roof. The figures are angels holding the heraldic shields of the families that have…

The Holand Dukes rose against Richard III? Wrong!….

For those of you who do not know, I am very fond of Dartington Hall. I read all I can about it, and its history, originally because of an intention to write about its creator, the first Holand Duke of Exeter, but now because I just plain love the place as well. These Holand Dukes…

Tales of a Ricardian Traveler – Debunking a Myth at Dartington Hall

Originally posted on RICARDIAN LOONS:
Lady on Horseback, mid-15th c., British Museum Dartington Hall, near Totnes in Devon and just southeast of Dartmoor National Park, represents a uniquely British form of historical contradiction. It is both medieval, having parts of a Grade I-listed late 14th century manor house, and modern, being the current home of…

On the trail of the House of York….

Here are eight places associated with members of the House of York. The first is Cerne Abbey, which Anne Neville visited in 1471. Included in the list is my favourite place in all the world, Dartington Hall in Devon. Read on…. http://www.historyextra.com/article/feature/trail-yorks-8-places-associated-richard-iii%E2%80%99s-family

Wishful thinking for a Christmas ghost or two….

A ghost story for Christmas may seem a little ill-placed, but nevertheless it has become something of a tradition. There was a time when BBC TV would not have been the same without something ghostly on Christmas Eve. Now we may or may not see anything like that. Dickens was greatly to blame, with Scrooge and…