Archive Bulletins Section You can read and download previous bulletins from John on this page. Find Last months bulletin below.

2012 - an important year for England, and also for Staunton Harold. It is the centenary of our 'Grand Plan'.

The tenth Earl Ferrers died at Staunton in 1911, and the title passed to his cousin, a practicing architect from Kent. During 1912, Walter the Eleventh Earl, set about making detailed plans, at one eighth of an inch to the foot, of the whole of this vast house. He noted the dimensions of every room, including the ceiling height, the direction of the flues within the walls, what each floor was made of and even which way the floorboards ran. The plan tells us the use of each room, - Lamp Room, Still Room, Servants Hall, - and Jacqueline and I find that we are sleeping in the 'Queens Bedroom.'

Walters' intention was to modernise the house, and some sheets show new bathrooms and stairways. But it was not to be; his predecessor had spent all the money. So for the years the Shirleys lived here and the war years as a prison camp, nothing was changed. From 1955, as a Cheshire Home, some changes were made, not always sympathetically. From 1980, as a Sue Ryder Hospice, more was done to suit its' new use.
Since we began the task of turning the hall back into a private house, nearly ten years ago, these plans have been our bible. Every time we have thought to make a structural change the sheets are rolled out to see what they can tell us. It must have been frustrating for the Eleventh Earl to do all that work and not be able to make use of it; I only wish he could have known how valuable it would be to his successors a hundred years later.

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John and Jacqueline Blunt