A Cursed House? by Maggie Brookes

Could a house be unlucky? 

I'm not sure I believe in such things, but something prickled the back of my neck when I was researching the history of Forty Hall in Enfield, and I began to wonder...  

Things seemed to go badly wrong for just about every owner. There were so many deaths, plus gambling debts, childlessness, and connections to enslavement and the enclosure of common land, which caused misery to others.

Back in 1629, King Charles 1st was on the throne, and the bricklayers had just laid the foundation stone for a new country house for the wealthy merchant Nicholas Raynton (or Rainton.) He was the third son of a Lincolnshire farmer, who made his money importing silk and taffeta from Florence and velvet from Genoa. I picture him standing outside the building site, watching the sweating labourers bringing brick and tiles from the kilns on nearby Clay Hill, filled with glee at how far he had risen.

Nicholas and his family moved in to Forty Hall around 1632, which was also when he was elected Lord Mayor of London, and subsequently knighted. So it was a pretty good year for him! He must have felt invincible as he set off from his new home every day in his liveried coach, with coachmen and outriders, clattering through Enfield to the city of London.  As well as building the house, he began the gardens, possibly planting two Cedar of Lebanon trees and orange, lemon and myrtle trees in the green house. There are references to an orchard, and a garden of 2 acres enclosed by a brick wall. 

But as we know, wealth and fame don't always guarantee happiness. Sir Nicholas had no children, (which must have been a sorrow) but took care of his brother's son and five living grandchildren after his brother's death. So the house must have rung with children's voices, though by the time Sir Nicholas died in 1646, his wife, nephew, nephew's wife and many of their children had died. 

I hope that the gardens gave Sir Nicholas some comfort in all his losses. 

Forty Hall was inherited by the great-nephew he'd 'adopted', also called Nicholas Rainton. At this time  it was fashionable to enclose common land, creating elegant landscapes around country houses. This met with furious local opposition. In 1672 two local men drove a large flock of sheep onto Nicholas's newly sown crops on stolen common land, destroying 20 acres of produce. But of course they were seen as the criminals. 

Nicholas was also responsible for demolishing the remains of the great Tudor palace of Elsyng, said to rival Hampton Court, to create the great park of Forty Hall. 

But the second Nicholas also died without a son to leave the house to,  and it went to his grandson Nicholas Wolstenholme. 

Perhaps it's the ghosts of Elsyng or the beleaguered commoners who haunt Forty Hall?

The location of Elsyng Palace.

Nicholas Wolstenhome and his wife Grace decided to remodel the house, replacing the Tudor windows with fashionable Georgian sashes and adding an extension. Some of these works may have been carried out following a fire. These alterations were expensive, and the couple was also embroiled in a cripplingly expensive legal battle, so by 1707 they were heavily in debt. Nicholas was imprisoned in the Fleet prison, where he died four years later. Sometimes the history of Forty Hall seems like Hogarth's prints of The Rake's Progress.

A Rake's Progress - debtor's prison.

Mostly the women who lived and worked in great houses are invisible to history, but women had a big part to play in the history of Forty Hall in the 18th century. When Nicholas Wolstenholme died, his widow Grace remarried Lord Hundson, which hopefully solved her financial problems. Again there were no children to inherit, and when Grace died, the Hall passed to his nieces Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth married Eliab Breton, though her sister Mary continued to live at Forty Hall with them.

But Elizabeth too had a tough life. Three of her children died in infancy, which must have been a terrible grief, though two boys grew to manhood. Her husband died in 1785, and 2 years later Elizabeth was forced to sell Forty Hall owing to the 'misconduct of her offspring'. We don't know what that misconduct was, but possibly gambling debts or unwise investments? All we know is that she didn't leave them anything in her will!

In 1787 the house was sold for £8,800 to the self-styled 'Captain' Edmund Armstrong, who doesn't appear to have had any genuine rank, but appointed himself to the gentry. Armstrong had a wife and daughter who died – another sorrow for the house – but he remarried and produced two sons. At last, you'd think, some sons to inherit...

It wasn't to be. As we know, there are dark sides to the rise of these great country houses, and the worst of these was enslavement. 'Captain' Armstrong was in charge of charging a plantation tax on goods imported from Barbados plantations: the cotton, sugar and tobacco grown by enslaved people. remarried Perhaps in karma, or as payback for his own hubris, Armstong died with massive debts and his son was forced to sell the house.

As we've seen, as well as the evil of enslavement, the owners of England's great houses were guilty of enclosing common land and calling it their own. At Forty Hall this included the first two Nicholases, Lord Hunsdon who married Grace and is noted as having 'improved the estate,' and in 1800 Forty Hall was bought by James Meyer, who 'added land to the estate.' Enclosure of common land was fought in the courts and in pitched battles in the fields themselves, but of course the rich landowners won. Here the hardship was not in the house itself but in the cottages of neighbouring labourers who depended on the common land for grazing.

During the 19th Century Forty Hall continued to change hands. It was owned by a brother and then a nephew and another son of the Meyer family. Geoffrey Gillam's history of the house says that one of them married 4 times and 'produced' nine children. I fear that means four women had babies in the house, and three of the women died, possibly in childbirth. Is this the curse of the house striking again or just a sign of the times?  I wonder how many babies were conceived, born, and how many people died in this room?

At the end of the 19th century the house was bought for Henry Ferryman Bowles, who immediately began to carry out improvements. Water closets made it no longer necessary for the servants to scurry up and down stairs to empty chamber pots into cesspits. Running water was installed, so the poor housemaids no longer had to carry it from the wells. Candle light was replaced with electricity. 

Henry Bowles was a man of parts: a barrister, an MP, High Sheriff of Middlesex, and he became the County Commandant during WWW1.

Henry had no sons, but it is very likely that he encouraged boys and men from the house and estate to go and fight in the trenches. There are 40 names on the war memorial at Jesus Church, over the road from Forty Hall. This is an extraordinary number of deaths from a small rural parish without even a village. I am still investigating whether they were in a 'pals' regiment and all died together. We can only begin to imagine the grief of their mothers, wives, sweethearts in the house itself and all around the estate of Forty Hall.

 

Henry of-course survived. 

Between the wars, with Henry and his family in residence, it was still a grand house, with a butler, two footmen, a lady's maid, 3 housemaids, a cook, a housekeeper, a kitchen maid and a scullery maid. Outside the house there was a chauffeur, a handyman, two carpenters, a painter, head gardener, several assistant gardeners, a cowman, several farmhands and a gamekeeper. They had a dairy herd, a few sheep, some pigs and chickens.

 

In 1943 Henry Bowles – by then a Baronet – died, and the house was inherited by his grandson. But this is the final chapter in the bad luck of those who owned this house, because his grandson was 'not well enough' to live there. I'm guessing that's an early 20th century euphemism for having poor mental health, or perhaps a condition like epilepsy. 

In 1951 the Bowles family sold it to Enfield Urban District Council for £43,000. Thankfully, it is now thriving, and was beautifully restored with a Heritage Lottery Fund in 2012. 

 

It's fanciful perhaps (I am a novelist and poet!) but seems as though the house, gardens and land are happy to be back in public ownership. The gardens and woods are now open to everyone and the long gallery is alive with music and words to be enjoyed by all. The commons are finally restored to the people.

 

  

Maggie Brookes, author of The Prisoner's Wife and Acts of Love and War and Wishes, new and selected poems.

Refs:

Gillam, Geoffrey (1997). Forty Hall, Enfield, 1629–1997: house, courtyards, walled kitchen garden, pleasure grounds, park & home farm. Enfield: Enfield Archaeological Society. ISBN 0950187720

Forty Hall Estate 2018

Hunting for Hellfire by Maggie Brookes

 I felt as though I'd inadvertently stirred a hornet's nest when an Instagram / Facebook post I made about a chance visit to West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire was viewed more than 22,000 times. Some of the comments made me itch to investigate further.

My original post said, 'West Wycombe looks like a quiet English village until you spot the bizarre ball on top of the church tower, the Hellfire caves and the extraordinary mausoleum for the Dashwood family. They were all constructed in the mid-18th century by Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Dilettanti Society and co-founder of the Hellfire Club.' I suspect it was the hashtag '#hellfire club' which created the viewing frenzy. (Note to self ­– write a novel abut a licentious secret society!)

Fraser Whitelock of High Wycombe responded first: 'St Lawrence's was built on top of the hill, on a pagan site. Later extended and a crypt added said to be an exact recreation of Syrian Sun Temple. The Golden Ball was used as a messaging system using the sun's reflection, linked through buildings such as Crystal Palace, through line of site, (sic) linked across the channel to Paris.  The Hellfire Caves were dug to access underground water systems, the re routed to help flood and create the lakes in Dashwood's grounds, so he could stage epic battles between Spanish galleons he had transported to West Wycombe village.'

Anthony Mealing, also from High Wycombe and a Listed Building Consultant at Garret McKee Architects responded: 'The Dashwoods had two Spanish Galleons transported to West Wycombe, and rebuilt them for battle reinactment (sic) on his lake. Spanish galleons were being taken in Barbados by privateers, and pirates. Also although it is told that locals dug the tunnels, it was actually Cornish workers. The obvious connections between pirates, Cornwall, mining, and overwhelming Masonic connections in the village. Stokes the fire a little more.'

Fraser Whitelock came back: 'I used to knock around the village as a teenager.  The tunnels in the High Street exist. I've seen them.  Used to dare each other to go in them.  No one did....  Don't get me started on Templar history in Wycombe.....'

Head spinning, I set out to see what I could discover. 

The National Trust told me that there was indeed an Iron Age ('pagan') settlement on the hill, dating from the 4th or 5th century BC, and later, the Saxon village of Hæferingdune or Haveringdon. Sadly its population was decimated by the Black Death in the 1340s, and those who remained moved down into the valley to the current village, named West Wycombe. The medieval church of St Lawrence remained on the hill. 

Then, in 1723, the 15-year-old Sir Francis Dashwood inherited his father's estates and Baronetcy. As a young man he did the Grand Tour and developed a taste for classical art and architecture, and a reputation for wild behaviour.  In the 1730's he started the Society of Dilletanti, which his political enemy Horace Walpole said was a 'club for which the nominal qualification is having been to Italy, and the real one, being drunk.' Later Sir Francis founded the Divan Club, for men who had visited the Ottoman Empire. He liked to dress up. This painting was made in his Divan Club outfit.

He seems to have begun the excavation of the 'hellfire caves' to quarry chalk for a new road, and give employment to local men who had suffered three successive bad harvests. A long winding tunnel runs a quarter of a mile into the hill, with many passages and chambers leading off it, including a Banqueting Hall. The caves are said to be the largest man-made chalk cavern in the world.  The 'Inner Chamber' is reputed to lie directly under St Lawrence church, signifying heaven and hell.

Sir Francis continued to love founding questionable 'dining clubs'. The one which is now known as the Hellfire Club, wasn't called that by him.  He called it the Order of Knights of West Wycombe, or The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of West Wycombe. Not such a catchy hashtag! This painting of him by Hogarth shows him as 'St Francis' worshipping a naked Venus.

Members of the not-called-the-hellfire-club may have included important 18th-century figures including William Hogarth, John Wilkes, Thomas Potter and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, though no papers about the club survive. Benjamin Franklin was a close friend of Sir Francis who visited the caves on more than one occasion. The club motto is popularly believed to have been a quote from Rableais: 'Fais ce que tu voudras' (Do what thou wilt).

Horace Walpole (who we have to remember was the author of the first Gothic novel, as well as Sir Francis' political rival) wrote this, about meetings at Medmenham Abbey on the Thames, also owned by Sir Francis: 'Its practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighbourhood of the complexion of those hermits.'

The 'inner temple' of the Hellfire Caves.

But Sir Francis was more than a hell-raiser. He spent most of his life extending and converting the Queen Anne house at West Wycombe into a Palladian mansion with landscaped grounds full of follies. He bought pictures, sculptures and books. In 1732 alone, he purchased over £2700 in books from a bookseller in Amsterdam. 

In the 1750s he had the tower of St Lawrence's Church raised and crowned with an 8 ft wooden ball covered in gold leaf, possibly inspired by the Dogana in Venice. 

Dogana Da Mar, Venice

Various sources say the West Wycombe ball contains seating for six to 10 people. It was described by the author John Wilkes as 'the best globe tavern I was ever in'. 

Back to the comments about the golden ball on my Facebook post:

Craig Jay said 'I remember as a child you could climb the steps into it. I believed it to be a small card room for a select group of hellfire club members to illicitly gamble. Did the earl of sandwich bring a packed lunch?'

Adela Hollingsworth replied 'My mum went inside it when she was a child but it hasn’t been open to the public to enter for years.' 

 Sarah HR wrote: 'There are seats inside and they looked used to me when I looked into it 55 years ago.'

St Lawrence's church, West Wycombe

What about the signalling from the ball? A book about the Dashwoods published in 1987 reports a suggestion that Sir Francis Dashwood used a heliograph to signal through a porthole in the golden ball to his friend, John Norris (1721–1786), who had erected a tower, now known as the Camberley Obelisk, near his home at Hawley, Hampshire, 21 miles to the south. I haven't been able to find any evidence that signals continued across the Channel, and of course the Crystal Palace wasn't built till 1851, but it's a good story, and I love a good story.

The inside of the church was also remodelled in a classical mode, though perhaps not based on a temple at Palmyra. The painted ceiling, by Borgnis, was apparently an adaptation of Robert Wood’s drawings of the Temple of the Sun at Balbec. 

I also failed to find evidence of the two Spanish galleons, though the National Trust says that Sir Francis kept a frigate on the lake, using it to re-enact sea battles as entertainment for guests. Cannonballs dredged from the lake are on display in the house.

Not wanting to be forgotten, Sir Francis also built the Grade One listed  Dashwood Mausoleum on the edge of the hill.

In true Dashwood style, there’s an urn containing the heart of the poet Paul Whitehead, steward of one of Sir Francis's 'clubs'.  In the centre stands a pedestal and urn dedicated to his wife Lady le Despenser, who must have been a long-suffering woman. 

Unsurprisingly, the house and gardens have featured in many TV dramas and films, including Downton Abbey, The Crown, Bridgerton, Belgravia, adaptations of Daniel Deronda, Cranford, Little Dorrit and Howards End, episodes of Endeavour and Foyles War and movies A Clockwork Orange, The Duchess, I Capture the Castle, Bridget Jones' Baby and the one Sir Francis might have loved the most, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  

Alongside his secret societies and his collecting, Sir Francis was a politician, who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then the 11th Baron le Despencer, Postmaster General and finally the Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. 

I wondered where Sir Francis got the money to do all his renovations, rebuilds and to fund his wild parties? His father and uncle were successful merchants, who served on the board of directors for both the Royal African Company and the East India Company. As such, their investments were deeply implicated in Britain’s international slave trade. Although we don't know if Sir Francis owned enslaved people, his grandson received government compensation for emancipation of slaves.

 Back on my Facebook feed, Anthony Mealing wrote ' The Dashwoods were slave owners up until 1835 with the end of Empire Slavery (the empire territories) when they received government compensation for emancipation of slaves on three plantations they then had an interest in, Barbados Spring Plantation 161 Enslaved, Barbados Over Hill Plantation 109 Enslaved, Barbados Ashton Hall Plantation 83 Enslaved... From the UCL records.'

What about the link to the Knights Templar? A medieval manor house in what is now High Wycombe known as Temple Wycombe was owned by the Knights Templar from 1227. When they were dissolved it passed to the Knights Hospitallers, who held it until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Of course this was long before the Dashwoods of West Wycombe. A branch of Morrisons now stands on the site.

 Finally there's a mysterious comment from Robert Fox: 'Not forgetting the praying wall in the High Street, where you can see where people have knelt.'

So far my searches haven't turned up any other mention of this wall. I guess I'll have to return and take a look. If I dare.

Maggie Brookes, novelist and poet. Author of  historical novels The Prisoner's Wife and Acts of Love and War. As Maggie Brookes-Butt: Wish, New and Selected Poems.

Instagram: Maggie __Brookes 

Facebook: Maggie Brookes-Butt

Further reading about Sir Francis:  https://www.artandthecountryhouse.com/essays/essays-index/sir-francis-dashwood-connoisseur-collector-and-traveller   Jason M. Kelly is Director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute and Professor of History in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. 

Judging the Crowns by Maggie Brookes

Have you ever said yes to something without really knowing what you were agreeing to? I've just taken on a marathon, though it also resembles a sprint. I was honoured to be asked to be one of the 9 judges for this year's Historical Writer's Association Gold Crown award for the best historical fiction novel published between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025. Lots of lovely books to read, I thought. I've been reading historical fiction all my life. I've had two historical novels published world-wide by Penguin. I have opinions. How hard can it be?

The coveted HWA gold crown award.

Well, first of all, there are 131 entries, from more than 40 publishers, big and small. And I know that each one of those novels has been meticulously researched, painstakingly written and rewritten, edited, proof-read and finally published. I sympathise with all that effort, angst and joy. At a modest estimate of 2 years to research and write each one, that would be 250 years of work. A more realistic estimate of 4 years per book is a staggering 500 years of labour! It's a big responsibility, but also a opportunity to learn so much – about history, about publishers, about structuring and pacing narrative, about stories that jump out at readers, and also about what's being published right now.

The hard copy books waiting to be read.

The first thing I notice is gender. Judging by the first names of the authors, more than 95 of the 131 appear to be women (and perhaps some of the tantalising initials are women too.) History girls are alive and flourishing! Are women writers particularly drawn to history, I wonder? The judges are also predominantly female, with 8 out of the 9 of us being women. (Are women more inclined to agree to take on these kind of roles?? Answers on a postcard.) We are Louise Hare (Chair), Ellen Alpsten, Mark Ellis, Louise Fein, Alison Joseph, Amy McElroy, Carolyn Kirby, Linda Porter and me. Louise says: 'I love seeing how broad the category of historical fiction is, encompassing so many different genres. This is my third time of judging the Crowns and I’m always fascinated by the trends that emerge within each cycle. I see our role as vital in rewarding literary merit within historical fiction, but really it’s about celebrating great reads, those books you want to tell all your friends about.' Under her guidance, we  have until September to agree a longlist, October a shortlist, and November to choose a winner. Yikes!

Louise Hare, chair of judges, with HWA member Jim Burge at the award ceremony.

Gender is also noticeable in the protagonists of the novels. Taking a straw poll of the 93 books I've been sent so far in hard copy, there is a massive predominance of books about women, particularly pioneering women whose names have been forgotten, but also enslaved women, witches and detectives. Perhaps this isn't surprising when a Guardian article from 2019 says that women readers account for 80% of sales in the UK, US and Canadian fiction markets – far more women than men are literary festivalgoers, library members, audio book readers, literary bloggers, and members of literary societies and evening classes... and form book clubs.  

MA Sieghart's book The Authority Gap found that 'men were disproportionately unlikely even to open a book by a woman. For the top 10 bestselling female authors (who include Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood as well as Danielle Steel and Jojo Moyes), only 19% of their readers are men and 81%, women. But for the top 10 bestselling male authors (who include Charles Dickens and JRR Tolkien, as well as Lee Child and Stephen King), the split is much more even: 55% men and 45% women.  In other words, women are prepared to read books by men, but many fewer men are prepared to read books by women.'  I suppose that's just as well for male writers! Ian McEwan once wrote: 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.'

The books I've received seem to divide into four main sub-genres: 1) extraordinary women from the past, both real and imagined; 2) crime / mystery / thriller / gothic (some a mixture of those) ; 3) mythical re-tellings and fairy-tale inspired historical fantasy. And then there's 4) war, from the Trojan wars to the Napoleonic wars; WW1; the interwar years; WW2 and the cold war. I've written three novels about women in war not because I'm interested in war but because war brings out the worst and best in people, and that gives plenty to write about.  Writing about the past has always seemed to me to be a way of writing about the present.

There are also stand-alone stories from across the centuries, which can't be slotted into those categories. All human life is here.  Authors too, range from the ultra well known to debut novelists. Only three of the books I've received so far have been in translation, though many are set in other countries, from the Americas to Africa and Japan. I'm learning so much! There are several dual or triple time-line stories. The biographical fiction shows the historical range of the first 85 books I was sent in hard copy, from the first century AD to the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 18th and 20th centuries.  Many are about powerful women in royal families, perhaps because there is more about them in the historical record. Just one of these books has a male protagonist, although at school I was only taught history about men. The bias of history is being slowly re-written, page by page and book by book.

The HWA flag.

As I read, I bear in mind not only the effort of the writers, but also what it means to win these awards.
Elizabeth Fremantle, who won the 2024 Gold Crown Award with Disobedient, her extraordinary novel about Artemesia Gentileschi, says 'Disobedient, of all my novels, is closest to my heart, so it meant a great deal that it was the one to be recognised by the judges. I was truly humbled, and on the night utterly astonished, that my book was chosen from a short-list of such calibre.'

Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle

In 2022 AJ West won the Debut Crown award with The Spirit Engineer. He says 'Winning was a complete shock and – un-English as it may be to admit it – a source of proud vindication after years of struggle to get published. Recognition from the HWA prevents me from being too pessimistic when things feel heavy and impossible. It reminds me that, though I'm not yet a wealthy author, nor necessarily an author with his book in high street windows, nor even an acclaimed author, I am something much more smug and satisfying: an author who benefits every day from the support of his fellow writers, whom I admire in greater measure.'

And so I dive in. Eight weeks till the longlist. How hard can it be?

 Maggie Brookes, novelist and poet. Author of  historical novels The Prisoner's Wife and Acts of Love and War. As Maggie Brookes-Butt: Wish, New and Selected Poems.

Instagram: Maggie __Brookes 

Facebook: Maggie Brookes-Butt