VENTURES NEW: We were now in our third year at the Hall and our lives were always busy keeping on top of the weeds and general upkeep of the house. My dad expected us children to help as much as possible, which we hated, and much of our time was spent trying to hide from him to get out of doing the chores. But sometimes we didn’t mind and we happily pulled an old trolley into the woods every now and then to collect wood for the fires and sometimes as a family we would spend a day clearing pa...

MOTOR RACING DAYS: Although my blogs are about living at Hoar Cross Hall, I would just like to give a bit of background about my dad’s racing career in the years leading up to moving to the Hall as this will set the scene for later instalments of my story. As mentioned in my first blog my dad used to be a racing driver but he actually started off racing motor cycles. He had been a despatch rider in World War 2 in North Africa and after the war ended and he’d recovered from TB he decided to...

GHOSTBUSTERS! Later on in the year of 1973 a couple of professional ghost hunters asked to stay over one night to try and source the noises we heard in the attic. They brought cases full of recording equipment and set it all up in one of the attic rooms. Rather them than me I thought! Then I had a brilliant idea and went off to tell Gavin all about it. As mentioned in my first blog the attic and basement had a row of bells which the family used to summon the servants. Before the men arrived...

CALENDAR GIRLS AND FRONT COVERS: Occasionally people would hire the Hall and during the summer of 1973 a photographer from London hired the place for a day. He brought two models with him, one English and one German and they were taking photos for a glamour calendar. We were told to keep right out of the way as they were taking photos in the gardens as well as the house. Naturally we wanted to see everything that was going on and Gavin especially was very keen to watch – so much so that he ...

HUNTIN’, SHOOTIN’ & FISHIN’: As with most stately homes there was hunting, shooting and fishing. We participated in none of these but the Meynell and South Staffs Hunt used to meet locally to do a spot of fox hunting. They would all gather at different venues around the area and enjoy a drink before setting off. One of their usual places was the Meynell Ingram Arms Public House at the bottom of the village. In February 1972 they had their ‘meet’ at the Hall. We, as the host...