Pilgrims and Posies: Faded Beauty: A while ago we were at a fair in the midlands and took advice from a friend to take a diversion on the way home to go to see the church of S...
As a re-enactor, I'm interested in blogs about other re-enactors, and this one is interesting because of the focus on music and pilgrimage. This particular post caught my eye because it concerns Ashby St Legers, a village not far from Rugby. The church is rather wonderful, but there's more to the village than the church. I used to visit regularly, when visiting my in-laws in Rugby - mainly, I have to admit, for the pub, the Olde Coach House. In those days it was a very good real ale pub, and did good food - it may be that it still does, but be that as it may, it has a lovely garden to sit in.
Anyway, next door to the church was the manor house, where Catesby of the Gunpowder Plot once lived. In fact the room over the gatehouse was pointed out as the room where the plotters met. These were people so incompetent that they thought it was a good idea to have their portraits painted as a group before they put their plot in motion - and they also thought it was a good idea to dry out damp gunpowder by spreading it out in front of an open fire.....
There's a footpath/bridle path leading from the village that would have been the route they followed to head for the house where young Princess Elizabeth (who they wanted to make into a Catholic Queen) was living. There's a railway cutting across the line of the path now - when we followed it we imagined ghostly horsemen galloping across in mid air.
The rest of the village is charming too, full of thatched estate cottages designed by Lutyens.
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