Traveling Tuesday: Britain’s Requisitioned Homes, Part 2

Traveling Tuesday: 

Britain’s Requisitioned Homes, Part 2

A couple of weeks ago, I shared about three of Britain’s country homes that were requisitioned by the government during WWII . Today I’m sharing about three more of these grand properties who as the English liked to say “did their bit for the war effort.”

Rufford Abbey is situated in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire and was already declining when taken over by the War Office for billeting troops. As its name indicates, the house began as an abbey, specifically a Cistercian abbey (a Catholic order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines). After Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, the property was purchases by George Talbot, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury. The house was expanded over the years as it passed to one descendant after the other. By the early 1800s there were 111 rooms. The home continued to hold its own until Lord Savile died. His heir was a minor, and apparently the trustees had little interest in dealing with the remaining debts and death duties. They sold off bits of the acreage, then the house was sold to manufacturer Sr Albert Bell who did little to it before selling it to a Frenchman who didn’t bother to live in (or managed) the property. By all reports the soldiers stripped the silk damask from the walls, used paneling as firewood, and ruined the floors with their boots. They also made off with tapestries, plasterwork, and carved chimneypieces. It didn’t help that dry rot had begun long before they arrived. Fortunately, the Nottinghamshire County Council purchased the house and 130 acres to create public gardens in 1952. The grounds were restored and developed into a public park and garden in 1969, and the house was renovated during the 1970s.

Woburn Abbey, also a former Cistercian abbey, receives hundreds of thousands of guests now, but in

1939 was considered one of the most secluded and private of all the “great” houses. According to John Martin Robinson’s book, Requisitioned, the reason was that Herbrand Russell, the eleventh Duke of Bedford and president of the Royal Zoological Society, had turned the property into a reserve for herds of exotic deer, Russian bison, Highland cattle, and other rare animals. He’d lost his wife two years previously in a flying accident. The house had been in the family since the reign of Edward VI (1537-1553) when the buildings were given to the first Earl of Bedford. Over the centuries, reconstruction and renovation occurred adding wings and changing architectural styles. Successive dukes were wealthy from London properties, tin mining, and well-managed agricultural estates, and filled the house with art treasures. The 11th had funded and run a military depot on the estate during WWI, so when the second World War appeared on the horizon, the duke again offered his property for us. The house was so enormous it was considered for use by multiple organizations such as a riding school, stables, and subsidiary housing, but the Propaganda in Enemy Countries department won out.

Bentley Priory originally founded in 1170 for Augustinian canons. This property was also given away after the Dissolution of the Monasteries and eventually ended up in the hands of James Duberley, an army contractor who did well during the Seven Years War. He built a brick home which he sold to John James Hamilton, 9th Earl of Abercorn in 1788 who’d made his money from large estates and coal mines in Scotland. The following year Hamilton was created first Marquess of Abercorn and conducted many renovations to the home over the next decade. At some point, Queen Adelaide, wife of King William IV leased the home and would pass away there in 1849. Fifteen years later, Sir John Kelk purchased the property and proceeded to redo their entire façade in a stucco Italianate style. In 1908 the house was sold to a girls’ school which remained until 1924 at which time the house and 40 acres were purchased by the Air Ministry, so when the second world war, it was a natural progression to use the facility and grounds as the headquarters for RAF Fighter Command. Lord Dowding and his team planned the Battle of Britain, and the Allied Expeditionary Air Force War Room took up residence in the underground bunker. On D-Day, King George VI and Prime Minister Winston Churchill monitored the landings in the bunker.

Photo Credits:

Rufford Abbey: By Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK - Rufford Abbey 4Uploaded by oxyman, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15628378

Woburn Abbey: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=716546

Bentley Priory: By David Marsden, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13797970

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About A Lesson in Love (Part of The Strength of His Heart anthology)

He thinks he’s too old. She thinks she’s too young. Can these teachers learn that love defies all boundaries?

Born and raised in London, Isobel Turvine knows nothing about farming, but after most of the students in her school evacuate during Operation Pied Piper, she’s left with little to do. Then her friend Margery talks her into joining the Women’s Land Army, and she finds herself working the land at a manor home in Yorkshire that’s been converted to a boys’ school. A teacher at heart, she is drawn to the lads, but the handsome yet stiff-necked headmaster wants her to stick to farming.

Left with an arm that barely works from the last “war to end all wars,” Gavin Emerson agrees to take on the job of headmaster when his school moves from London to Yorkshire, but he’s saddled with the quirky manor owner, bickering among his teachers, and a gaggle of Land Army girls who have turned the grounds into a farm. When the group’s blue-eyed, raven-haired leader nearly runs him down in a car, he admonishes her to stay in the fields, but they are thrown together at every turn. Can he trust her not to break his heart?

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3O3nuCW