There Are Just So Many Stories To Tell!

Susie Kearley chats to David Eaves, visitor manager at Kenil Worth’s Stoneleigh Abbey.

- Susie Kearley

DAVID EAVES was busy leading ghost tours in Coventry when a friend who worked at nearby Stoneleigh Abbey brought some news that changed his life. One of the guides there had suffered an accident, putting her out of action.

“I stepped in at short notice,” David said, “and quickly fell in love with the Abbey. I made some suggestions for improvements, and a year later, I was promoted to general manager. Now I look after the whole four hundred and ninety acres!

“There’s so much to say – so many stories to tell! With nine hundred years of history, it’s hard to do it justice in just over an hour.”

Stoneleigh Abbey was built in 1154 for a community of Cistercian monks. They made their money renting land to farmers and providing accommodation to travellers.

“Stoneleigh was quite a profitable Abbey, until Henry VIII dissolved it in 1525, leaving it in a ruinous state,” David explained. “The ruins and grounds were given to King Henry VIII’s brother-inlaw, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. It was then sold to a wealthy landowner, Sir Rowland Hill.

“His protégé, Sir Thomas Leigh, then aged thirty-one, agreed to marry Sir Rowland Hill’s heiress and niece, Alice Barker.

“The poor girl was just eleven years old,” David said. “But the partnership, a business arrangement, ensured that the Abbey would remain in the Leigh family when Sir Roland passed away.”