Why the Baron Ash story?

Hello glorious Positively Packwood readers. My baby brother got married last Saturday and what an incredible day it was so needless to say with the lead up to that and all the emotional and practical energy that was required I haven’t had a huge amount of time for writing. There is also a lot of ‘back line’ work going on at the moment with future blogs being planned and the logistics of this set up.

I was however (of course) at Packwood on Sunday, feeling slightly tired and emotional admittedly! I was meant to be doing a shorter day (Tea Relief – and who isn't relieved by tea!?) but I ended up staying on until after 5 pm – looks like I’ll have my 50 hours volunteering by the end of this month!

This week I was pleased to be covering Queen Margaret’s bedroom again (a favourite) and the Ireton Bedroom – the room with our fantastically ostentations Deco en-suite bathroom, with our famous antique Delft tiling. The Ireton bedroom also gives the opportunity to talk about some of the house’s earlier history as it is named for General Henry Ireton who it is believed slept in this room before the battle of Edgehill in 1642. Both the panelling and the bed are Jacobean and this week I was asked several times about the secret door…which I’d never spotted before and had to look up in the oracle!? In my defence…it’s very dark in there!? Not really an excuse haha I rather like that Packwood still holds some surprises for me!

Why the Baron Ash Story?

I thought I’d take the opportunity to also explain a question that we get asked a lot at Packwood. Why focus on its most recent owner and most recent history when the property itself dates back so much further?

The answer to this is two fold.

1. On the one hand we don’t…but it depends who you talk to! If you go on the tour of the property (outside) our guides will take you through all the changes to the house from it’s beginnings as a timber framed house of the late 16^th Century through the additions made by John Fetherston in 1670 to the more modern additions made by Baron Ash in the 1920’s and 30’s. They talk extensively about the Fetherston family who owned the property as yeoman farmers for over 200 years. Also certain rooms that remain mostly unchanged like the Ireton give more opportunity to talk about the house’s earlier history. Obviously I appreciate that those with mobility issues may miss out on both of these opportunities.
2. Part of the agreement the Trust made with Baron Ash when he gave Packwood to us in 1941 in memory of his parents was the ‘Memorandum of Wishes’ which dictates that the rooms are to stay as he had arranged them. It is also the reason why we have fresh flowers arranged in every room, every day. It is a credit to the Trust that we continue to display his home as he wanted it displayed ‘not the house he lived in but the house he felt should be viewed by visitors’.

You can see that this gives Packwood a unique quality – you are viewing a man’s home and in fact arguably his life’s greatest achievement in restoring this medieval manor house to its full glory using a conservationist view, bringing parts of other buildings and collections together here at Packwood. His ‘stamp’ is all over this property from the ‘new additions’ of the long gallery and Great Hall to the rooms made ready for his ‘Royal Visitor’ in Queen Mary’s bedroom and the drawing room that contains her teacup and the chair she sat in. 

However it does mean that to make sense of the house, its collections and its architecture we have to tell you his story. He makes sense of Packwood as you are looking at it now, made every decision about what is here...and what isn't. Perhaps he knew that by asking this of the Trust and in knowing they would honour their agreement he had found, as a man who died with no offspring a way of preserving his story long after he had gone. I always say Packwood was his baby and like any proud child, it tells the story of its father.