Moseley Old
Hall is not an especially beautiful building, although its Elizabethan origins
and rustic setting do lend it a degree of charm. It's the centrepiece of a farm
which was expanded with the help of dowries amassed through prudent marriages,
thereby enabling the elevation of a once humble farmhouse to the more gentrified
status of a Hall. Somehow, perhaps because of its relatively remote location,
it survived intact for long enough to become adopted by the National Trust and
preserved as an example of life as it was lived in the rural heart of England
in the mid 17th Century. Last week a small party of us took a guided tour of
Moseley for a first-hand taste of that life which, judging by what I saw, would
have been uncomfortable, gloomy and sometimes dangerous. The 21st Century may
have its problems but I count myself fortunate to be here and now.
The French
Renaissance essayist, Michel de Montaigne, wrote "nothing is so firmly
believed as what is least known" - an observation on the human mind which explains
one or two things quite neatly. For example I had, through ignorance, firmly believed
that the expression "sleep tight" was a reference to keeping one’s eyes
tightly closed during sleep. Not so. Our guide at the Hall showed us an ancient
wooden bed-frame strung with hemp rope. She explained that, in order to ensure
a good night’s sleep, the rope needed to be kept tight by twisting some pegs at the side. At once I understood how knowledge
loosens the ties of belief.
When
exploring old houses every room may be seen as a potential treasure trove of
useful facts that can be used either to fascinate others of a like mind or to
bore those who prefer to remain unenlightened. Which reminds me: did you know
that the working classes of that period, if they were sufficiently civilized,
used square, wooden trencher plates to eat from and that this accounts for the
origin of the phrase "a good square meal"? This is just one of the
many insights revealed by our guide illustrating, if nothing else, the evolution
of household furnishing design and the failure of language to keep up with it.
But Moseley
is not all about domestic trivia: it is also the site of a headline historical
story as romantic as any episode from a Walter Scott novel. It seems the family
held to the Roman Catholic faith at a time when its practice was prohibited.
They defied the law and put their lives in danger by equipping the Hall with a
secret chapel for saying Mass and a priest-hole for hiding the evidence. So,
when fellow Catholic and would-be king Charles II turned up on the run from the
Republicans after being defeated at the battle of Worcester, they were well-placed
to accommodate him for a few days while he sorted out a plan B. On the first
night they put him in the priest-hole but he protested that it was too small (I
can vouch for that) so they did a risk-assessment and decided it would be safe
to upgrade him to a decent room with a double bed, fireplace and en-suite chamber-pot. This turned out to
be a wise move since he was enthroned nine years later, Cromwell having died
and the people having become disenchanted with his austere dictatorship as a
form of government.
When he
became King, Charles II swam against the tide by coming out in favour of
religious tolerance. Perhaps he had read M. De Montaigne, that pioneer of the
sceptic school of thought, whose quoted comment, was, on reflection, probably not
aimed at our perceptions of domestic furnishings.
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