Over The County Line

And so to Beds. Venetia Hawkes is in hot pursuit of days out in that county and neighbouring Northants and Hertfordshire.

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

Just off a slightly more modern track than the Ridgeway, the M40 as it goes north from Bucks, is Canons Ashby. A Tudor manor house, it was built from the remains of a medieval priory whose monks were accused of preferring to go to the pub rather than church services. What can we say?

The house is presented as it might have looked in the Victorian time of Sir Henry Dryden. Sir Henry inherited Canons Ashby when he was 19; and vowed not to marry till he’d paid off the debts inherited along with the house. He was 47 before he finally married his sweetheart, 42-year-old Frances Tredcroft. They were delighted to have a child, Alice, the following year. At first though, Sir Henry railed against having a daughter rather than a son. Complaining there were too many women in the house already, he dismissed two kitchen maids. Lady Frances quietly reinstated them.

Sir Henry came to dote on his daughter, who shared his love of history and archaeology. Alice was also an early enthusiast for the new art of photography, boldly driving herself around the countryside in a pony and trap taking pictures.

Evidence of their passions remain in the house – copper photographic plates with ghostly images, book-lined rooms, chunks of old stone-work, a desiccated puffer fish in a jar.

Elsewhere the house has Elizabethan wall paintings, graffitied with a tiny 18th Century drawing, all hidden and forgotten for centuries under wood panelling, only rediscovered in the 1980s. The high-ceilinged kitchen, dressed with copper pans, servants’ bells and rabbits hanging up ready to be cooked, is a Downton-esque delight. A children’s booklet of activities gleefully prompts “draw your favourite pants” on finding the Cook’s bloomers hanging up to dry. Jugs of garden flowers adorn the house.