Presteigne: rogues in a country hotel

 

The Radnorshire Arms hotel in Presteigne, Powys, on the Welsh-English border, is rather old-school, comfortable and calm, but its history has included some colourful characters. The original building dates to the mid-16^th century, when the owner was Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor of England. He was also alleged by Mary Queen of Scots to have been a lover of Elizabeth I. Sir Christopher was one of the commissioners who convicted the Catholic Mary of treason.

The Radnorshire Arms

 

In 1616 the owner was an English Judge, John Bradshaw, President of the Parliamentary Commission that tried and ordered the execution of Charles I. Bradshaw died peacefully and was buried in Westminster Abbey, but Charles II ordered that his body be exhumed, hanged and beheaded.

 

A later proprietor, Sir Henry Vaughan, came to a far stickier end in the mid-1700s. Found guilty of ‘unnatural and repugnant acts’, Sir Henry was murdered by outraged locals and buried under a cherry tree in his garden.

 

Edward Jones opened the Radnorshire Arms hotel in October 1792. A network of tunnels under the hotel suggests that it may have been built on the site of the gatehouse of Presteigne Castle (destroyed in 1261). The hotel’s links with colourful characters continues in the room which we occupied: we slept in a four-poster bed purchased from Lady Alice Douglas, an actress who was expelled from thirteen schools before reaching her sixteenth birthday. Her second husband was convicted of holding up a North Wales post office with an imitation firearm.

Lady Alice Douglas' former bed

 

In 1875 renovation works revealed, behind wood panelling in what is now the residents’ lounge, a small concealed space in which the diary of a Catholic priest was found. It seems this was a priest hole where the diary writer concealed himself for two years: the space now holds a small selection of books for guests.

The priest hole, now a small library for guests

 

The diary is now lost, but in a plastic box close by are a number of account books that record the financial affairs of the hotel in the 1930s and 1940s. In May 1932 the largest source of income was Apartments and Attendance: £25 3s. 6d. in the week of 15 May, and exactly £18 the following week. Baths, on the other hand, brought in only 15s. and 6s. receptively: perhaps the guests were not as preoccupied with personal hygiene as their modern successors. In the first week fires were required to heat rooms on only one day, but the following week the charge for heating totalled £1 9s. 6d. Guests spent almost equally on breakfasts and dinners, rather less on lunch: perhaps they were out walking the Welsh hills. The great bulk of the alcohol consumption was of ales and stout, much less so on spirits and very little indeed on wine. Cigars and cigarettes accounted for as much as wine and spirits combined: presumably gentlemen withdrew for a smoke. A column headed Billiards was crossed out and replaced with Fishing. A column for Servant’s Board was empty, so presumably the guests were not of the wealthiest category, but they did spend a good sum on Stabling and Garage.

 

A book recording wages for staff in 1948 tells us that the hotel employed a waitress (aged 16), a scullery maid (56years), another maid (20) and “O.F.LO” (no idea what she or he did, but aged 54), a housemaid (19), a gardener (age not stated) and “extra help (also age not stated). By far the highest paid was H. Hines the gardener: £4 10s 0d; the lowest paid was the housemaid (£2 9s. 2d.), but she worked only 40 hours. None of the staff paid any income tax.

 

St. Anrew's church, Presteigne

 

 

 

 

St. Andrew's church, nave

 

Jan and I had a brief stay, at the Radnorshire Arms while visiting her brother and his wife to meet a new member of the family, born in Hong Kong just over four months ago. This visit allowed us a little time to explore Presteigne. The oldest building in town is St. Andrew’s Church, originally built by the Anglo-Saxons in the 9^th century. However, after the Norman Conquest, the church was much damaged during a Welsh attack, and rebuilt by the Normans. Traces of Anglo-Saxon arches can still be seen in the Norman church, which was much expanded in the 12^th-13^th centuries, and restored in 1889-1891. The church’s great treasure is a Flemish tapestry depicting Christ entering Jerusalem, one of three such tapestries made around 1510 (it was a gift to the church in 1737). A memorial in the church remembers Joseph Baker (17667-1817), an officer in the Royal Navy who mapped much of the Pacific Northwest of the USA and gave his name to Mount Baker, Washington state.

 

Presteigne is set by the River Lugg in Welsh hill country. Judging from conversations with other guests, walking is Presteigne’s main attraction, and in particular Offa’s Dyke, a 285km-long earthwork said to have been constructed on the orders of Offa, King of Mercia from 757-796. Our walk to Norton, where my brother-in-law lives, was only about 3 miles in glorious (if chilly) Spring sunshine, serenaded by ewes, new-born lambs and birds.