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Baddesley Clinton

Baddesley Clinton was the home of the Ferrers family for 500 years.

 

Much of the house you see today was built by Henry Ferrers, a lawyer, diarist and antiquarian, in the late 1500s.

 

The house was a sanctuary not only for the Ferrers family, but also for persecuted Catholics who were hidden from priest hunters in its secret hiding places during the 1590s.

 

In 1438, John Brome, Under-Treasurer of England, bought the manor, which passed to his son, Nicholas. Nicholas was responsible for the extensive rebuilding of the nearby parish church dedicated to Saint Michael, done as penance for killing the parish priest, a murder reputed to have taken place in the great house itself. The house from this period was equipped with gun-ports, and possibly a drawbridge. When Nicholas Brome died in 1517, the house passed to his daughter, who married Sir Edward Ferrers (High Sheriff of Warwickshire) in 1500. The house remained in the ownership of the Ferrers family until 1940 when it was purchased by Thomas Walker, a relative of the family who changed his name to Ferrers. His son, who inherited it in 1970, sold the estate in 1980 to the National Trust, who now manage it.

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Uploaded on July 23, 2015
Taken on July 19, 2015