A Fine Old House

One of the most deeply felt losses we experienced after the fire of 2019 at Betley Court was realising that we’d lost the historic artifacts and materials that Professor Brown had collected over the years. As a historian, he was a voracious gatherer of information about the house and its place within the village. Housed in box files and battered black port folios, they contained all manner of research; photocopied images of historic figures, donated photographs, and maps and plans of Betley and its Court. It made for fascinating reading, for a self-confessed historical house geek like me, and an insight into Professor Brown’s meticulous research methods and passions. We were heartbroken to lose them.

As the completion of the first stage of the rebuild approaches, we recognise it is time to start rebuilding the Betley Court archives too.  Obviously, the fire is a key event in the history of the house and we would like to start the process of collecting photographs, videos and experiences of the fire to allow us to record this historic event. Both Nigel and I have attended a workshop from Staffordshire County Council’s Archives and Heritage department, so have been briefed on how to store them, and what publicly accessible collections take them. If you have any photographs or videos then we would appreciate copies. 

Contributions should be emailed to Nigel Brown at betleycourt.nwb@gmail.com.  Please confirm that you are happy for us to use your photos/videos. We will, of course acknowledge the contributor, as well as to store them for future generations.  If you have items which cannot be emailed, please send Nigel an email and he will arrange to meet to copy suitable material.

Bradshaw's Guide, a facsimile edition

One action we’ve been able to take already is replacing certain books that mention Betley Court. Fortunately, many books are now available cheaply as facsimile editions. One such book is Bradshaw’s Descriptive Railway Handbook of Great Britain and Ireland, 1863 edition. If anyone’s familiar with this book today, it is mostly likely they’ve heard about it through Michael Portillo’s TV show, Great British Railways. Portillo, he of brightly coloured shirts fame (as well as a former Conservative politician) used Bradshaw’s Guide as a basis for his travels on the trains around the country. The guides provided the Victorian traveller with a commentary on what they might expect to see on their rail journeys from the carriage, along with timetables, and useful information such as the location of telegraph and post offices. Essential information in an era before the internet and smart phones!

The introduction to Cheshire in Section III

In section III, as part of the introduction into Cheshire, Betley Court gets a complimentary mention;

“We next pass through the cutting of Bunker’s Hill in the occasional openings of which we see Betley and Betley Court, a fine old English Hall, at the top of a rising lawn, surrounded with woods and fields, and adorned with a large sheet of water or lake in front, forming one of the most pleasant views on the line.”[1]

I know the view described, and have scanned the horizon to catch a glimpse on the line from London Euston to Crewe. My only comment would be that Victorian trains went a lot slower than today’s engines, and you really have to know what you’re looking for and where! The new HS2 train line is currently being built along this very route, so future travellers will enjoy and even briefer glimpse of this ‘fine old English Hall’!

Looking towards Bunker's Hill from Betley Court, 2022

Professor Brown also looked for references to Betley Court in old travel guides, and in his book This Old House, mentions Osbourne’s Guide to the Great Junction (1838). Its written much earlier than Bradshaw’s, but the text is almost identical, adding that Betley Court is the seat of F. Twemlow Esq.

“We now come to a cutting through BUNKER’S HILL, where there is an opening to the right, through which we see BETLEY,, a very picturesque little village in the valley, a mile from the (rail) road; and BETLEY COURT, a fine old English hall at the top of a rising lawn, skirted with wood, abounded in front by a large sheet of water called Betley Mere. F Twemlow Esq. resides here. The following engraving is a sketch of this beautiful place.””[2]  

That version is also furnished with a reproduction of an engraving of Betley Court. Prof Brown notices this key difference,

“However, in 1863 the house did not look like the engraving. Nash in 1809-10 had added his central one-storey bow. Doubtless the compiler of the Guide had used a much earlier engraving without noticing that the house was not the same - such as the compilers of holiday brochures do not always use the most recent photographs in the travel literature. But we can be grateful to Osbourne for the mistake: his little picture illustrates how the house must have looked after the ‘improvements’ of 1783.”[3]

We are so lucky that Professor Brown collated many of his discoveries about Betley Court into This Old House. At least we had access to many of his thoughts and theories on the architecture of the house after the fire. The book was invaluable to our experts, like our conservation architect, Mark Evans, as he tried to make sense of the scope of the rebuild work that lay ahead. Shortly after the fire, Nigel broke the spine on our precious singular copy, and fed it page by page into a digital scanner. From those scans, we made a digital copy of the book that could be shared amongst demolition, structural engineers and construction experts. I managed to get the pages of last copy we had rebound at a local bookbinder, more used to binding university theses and dissertations together.

Incidentally, we do have facsimile copies of Professor Brown’s book for sale at the princely sum of £10 (excluding p&p). If you’d like a copy, email us at betleycourtgardens@gmail.com, and we’ll arrange to send one out to you! Might be a perfect stocking filler for someone this Christmas!

All best wishes

Ladybird Su

 

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[1] Bradshaw’s Handbook, 1863, facsimile edition, Section III, pp31, Old House, Oxford, 2012. ISBN-13:978 1 90840 202 8

[2] Osbourne’s Guide to the Great Junction, Edward Cornelius Osbourne, quoted from This Old House, Osbourne’s Guide available as a facsimile, Forgotten Books, 2018,                                                                          ISBN 10: 0282611584          ISBN 13: 9780282611583

[3] This Old House, GN Brown, pp20, Betley Court Gallery, Crewe, 1987 ISBN 095 12684