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Our great country houses... | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
The most familiar, yet intriguing, sights Britain has to offer. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:09 | |
Standing like sentinels in the landscape. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
Hundreds of thousands of us visit them every year, but not all are open to the public. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:20 | |
I've been granted the privileged opportunity | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
to pass through the portals of six of our greatest country houses | 0:00:23 | 0:00:28 | |
normally hidden from public view. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
They've seen five centuries of British history, up close and personal. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:38 | |
The families who built these houses played their part in great affairs of state. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:45 | |
Central to their dreams, the great house - | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
the ultimate status symbol. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:53 | |
But all too often, also, the ultimate money drainer. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
Few of these families went the distance, but their houses did, with their secrets intact. | 0:00:57 | 0:01:03 | |
This is their story, but it's also our story, | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
for these houses offer a guided tour of our nation's hidden history. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:14 | |
Back in the Middle Ages, | 0:01:31 | 0:01:32 | |
it would have been madness to build anything so fanciful, | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
so ostentatious, so open to attack, | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
as a beautiful, undefended country house. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
They owe their birth to two primal forces. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
Peace, after decades of war, and to the all-too human desire to show off. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:52 | |
It began in England, 500 years ago. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
Country houses were a creation of the Tudor age, taking root across the landscape. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:06 | |
I'm on my way to explore one of the earliest... | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
..South Wraxall Manor. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:14 | |
This house, and the power-hungry family that built it, | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
the Longs of Wiltshire, | 0:02:19 | 0:02:22 | |
brilliantly embody the spirit of late medieval and Tudor England - | 0:02:22 | 0:02:26 | |
ruthless opportunism, new money, social climbing. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:31 | |
This really is one of England's most special and secret homes. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:38 | |
It didn't just spring into the world fully formed, as you see it today. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:41 | |
Its origins lie in this early 15th-Century Great Hall, with its projecting porch, and then, | 0:02:41 | 0:02:48 | |
over the next 180 years or so, the house grew to reflect the expanding fortunes of the Long family. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:55 | |
Beginning as a kind of medieval starter home, | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
just a few small rooms clustered round a central hall, | 0:03:00 | 0:03:03 | |
South Wraxall blossomed into one of the most beautiful homes in Wiltshire. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:07 | |
It's a hidden gem, with its lush interiors, exquisite decoration and wealth of sumptuous fireplaces, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:18 | |
all perfectly preserved through the centuries. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:22 | |
But Wraxall also stands as a monument to the Long family's ruthless rise to the top. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:28 | |
Simple country folk, who reinvented themselves as a hard-nosed dynasty of national statesmen. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:35 | |
The house was an extension of their personality - | 0:03:37 | 0:03:41 | |
ostentatious, but brutal and determined. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:45 | |
Its beauty masks a darker tale of violence, even murder... | 0:03:45 | 0:03:49 | |
..a darkness hinted at above the front door itself. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
Up there, on the oldest part of the house, is a startling series of gargoyles. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:02 | |
One shows a beast - a lion or a dog - devouring a naked man, head first. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:11 | |
Another shows a man being devoured feet first, or perhaps, vomited up. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:18 | |
What can these mean? | 0:04:20 | 0:04:21 | |
Are they warnings? Or are they declarations of intent? | 0:04:22 | 0:04:27 | |
Wraxall's hideous beasts seem to be saying to all who approach, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:32 | |
"Don't mess with me". | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
These terrifying gargoyles were probably the brainchild of Robert Long, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:44 | |
the man whose fierce ambition gave birth to this house, where he ruled as its first lord of the manor. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:51 | |
Oh, this is tremendous. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:56 | |
It's like going back in time. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
This is a stupendous medieval great hall, the beating heart of the home. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:07 | |
It's so well preserved - a magnificent relic of our ancient past. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:13 | |
Look up here, there's a terrific traceried window and, then, | 0:05:13 | 0:05:18 | |
my word...the roof timbers. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:21 | |
This mighty truss up here and, between the trusses, these delightful cusped panels. | 0:05:23 | 0:05:31 | |
All of this, of course, was to do more than keep the rain out. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
It was to be seen and admired - to express status, taste and power. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:42 | |
This is very much a medieval design statement. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:46 | |
A statement of Robert Long's enormous egotism and drive, | 0:05:50 | 0:05:54 | |
for he was both a new monied hotshot lawyer and a Wiltshire MP, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:58 | |
the first of over 70 Longs who made their way into Parliament. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:04 | |
On high days and holidays, he'd have wined and dined | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
distinguished guests here, holding court in his own private fiefdom. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:13 | |
In the centre of the hall, just about here, would have been originally a roaring open fire, with the smoke | 0:06:13 | 0:06:21 | |
curling up past the roof timbers and leaving through a hole right up there. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:26 | |
People sitting here would have seen, through the smoke, | 0:06:26 | 0:06:30 | |
strange beings. Now, in a church in this period, | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
those beings would most likely have been angels, but here, they are smirking, | 0:06:34 | 0:06:41 | |
impish apes or monkeys. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
Seems to me there's an anti-clerical joke going on here, because in that corner is a carving of a monk. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:58 | |
So there's a pun. Monks are monkeys and monkeys are monks. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:05 | |
Long clearly had a wicked sense of humour. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
But it wasn't just Robert Long's sense of humour that was wicked. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:16 | |
The story of Wraxall and the relentless rise of the Long dynasty | 0:07:16 | 0:07:20 | |
is a tale of generations of double crossing and dodgy dealing. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
Here, you've a copy of the Longs' family tree, compiled in the 17th century. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:32 | |
At the top is Robert Long, who died in 1446, | 0:07:32 | 0:07:37 | |
but of course, families do not spring from nowhere, and we now understand | 0:07:37 | 0:07:43 | |
that Robert Long's father was a chap called Long Thomas, | 0:07:43 | 0:07:47 | |
a man embroiled in the rustling of livestock. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:51 | |
So clearly at this stage in the 15th century, the Longs have a rather chequered history. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:58 | |
More detail is provided by the History of Parliament. "Robert Long, | 0:07:58 | 0:08:04 | |
"the founder of an important Wiltshire family, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
"though he was apparently of quite lowly origins, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
"and Robert was set up by one of the old Lords Hungerford" - | 0:08:11 | 0:08:16 | |
a big local family - "and indeed, through this connection, | 0:08:16 | 0:08:20 | |
"he became wealthy, he became a man of prestige and a man of power in his own right." | 0:08:20 | 0:08:27 | |
Also we know that he used that power, when he felt like it, in a very unscrupulous manner. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:34 | |
It says that here as well. He would abuse it. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:36 | |
"He could fleece clients of their fees." So there we have it. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:41 | |
This beautiful house | 0:08:41 | 0:08:42 | |
founded on a fortune made in the most corrupt manner, | 0:08:42 | 0:08:49 | |
by a most conniving fellow. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:51 | |
But don't just take my word for it. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
To get a bigger understanding of how this combative, upwardly mobile family forced its way to the top, | 0:08:58 | 0:09:04 | |
I'm off to meet one of their modern descendents, Sara Morrison. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:09 | |
Well, we are surrounded by portraits of generations of Longs. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:14 | |
What do you think it meant for them, South Wraxall? | 0:09:14 | 0:09:16 | |
Their background is, well, shall we say chequered? What do you know about that? | 0:09:16 | 0:09:21 | |
Well, it always struck me on what one heard, | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
probably apocryphal stories as a child, that they were | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
the most frightful cads and, probably, | 0:09:27 | 0:09:32 | |
quite classy thieves, cattle thieves in particular. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
I think that's rather an honourable origin. | 0:09:36 | 0:09:38 | |
I mean, that's a perfectly good learning curve for any family. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
Robber barons have a great history in this country. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
I always fancied that the original Long was such a classy cattle thief | 0:09:46 | 0:09:52 | |
-that he was eventually rewarded by being given his pile of grey stones called the Manor House. -Yes. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:59 | |
My Long relations still existed when I was a child, pooh-poohed it, because they liked to think | 0:09:59 | 0:10:05 | |
they were more respectable than that, but certainly, as a child, it seemed to me | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
that the right way to start in life was stealing other people's cows. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:13 | |
And they seem to have been involved in law and Parliament, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:19 | |
almost professional members of Parliament. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
The perfect beginning for maximum mischief-making on at least a county scale, if not a national scale. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:31 | |
To be lawyers and politicians and hand in glove with local business is a very good mixture, | 0:10:31 | 0:10:38 | |
for either making a great deal of money or going to jail, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
and I should think they probably did both in equal quantities, | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
but I think all of them had a pretty devious self-serving touch, | 0:10:44 | 0:10:49 | |
most particularly when it came to choosing who they married. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
I think they enriched their genes quite profitably, | 0:10:53 | 0:10:57 | |
-literally and metaphorically, at almost every stage. -Mmm. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
They were efficient breeders, efficient marriers | 0:11:00 | 0:11:05 | |
and efficient self-serving...individuals. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:10 | |
In 1490, Robert Long's nephew, Thomas, inherited Wraxall Manor. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:17 | |
In a mere 50 years, the Longs had become contenders in aristocratic circles, enabling Thomas to marry | 0:11:17 | 0:11:24 | |
Margerie, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Darrell, the wealthy owner of the nearby estate of Draycott. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:31 | |
Wraxall was becoming a showpiece for a family on the make - | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
hungry for recognition, climbing the social ladder. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:41 | |
Thomas's main contribution to the fabric of South Wraxall is this splendid symbolic gatehouse. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:49 | |
It's very much tangible evidence of the new luxuries and freedoms | 0:11:49 | 0:11:52 | |
of the English country house and very different to gatehouses of earlier periods, | 0:11:52 | 0:11:57 | |
which are serious bits of defensive architecture, with battlements, moats and watchtowers. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:03 | |
His gatehouse was a reflection of the huge changes in English society, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:10 | |
brought about by Henry VII's reign and the dawn of the Tudor era. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
The old feudal order gave way to peace and prosperity. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:19 | |
No need now for the castellated fortifications of a war-like age. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:23 | |
It was goodbye to the drawbridge, hello to the welcome mat. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
So the gatehouse was no longer a place to repel enemies. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
It was more of a porter's lodge. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
The porter would come here and look through the little squint windows | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
to see who was coming and report back to the people in the main house. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:45 | |
All, really, I suppose the early, very early, 16th century equivalent | 0:12:45 | 0:12:49 | |
to a modern-day video surveillance system. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
Visitors passing through Thomas's gatehouse would have been struck by one particular detail, | 0:12:56 | 0:13:01 | |
a carving of a fetterlock, an ancient padlock used to shackle prisoners. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:06 | |
The fetterlock was the ancient ancestral crest of Draycott, | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
the estate Thomas eventually inherited through his marriage, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:15 | |
so he just nabbed it as the Longs' first badge of honour. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:19 | |
At the time, only high-class families could display heraldic devices, so by putting the fetterlock | 0:13:21 | 0:13:28 | |
on the gatehouse, Thomas was making it clear to all people that the Longs | 0:13:28 | 0:13:33 | |
had arrived, that they'd been elevated in stature and grandeur. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
Elevated, in fact, into royal circles. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:45 | |
In 1496, Thomas helped Henry VII to capture the treacherous pretender to the throne, Perkin Warbeck. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:53 | |
He was knighted at the wedding of Prince Arthur, the elder brother of the future King Henry VIII. | 0:13:55 | 0:14:01 | |
And with Henry VIII's reign came a frenzy of country house building. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
Throughout England, the newly rich, with their huge disposable incomes, | 0:14:13 | 0:14:18 | |
built trophy homes that boasted of wealth, taste and social aspiration. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:23 | |
Henry was obsessed by building. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
He initiated a vast programme, that resulted in the purchase, | 0:14:27 | 0:14:32 | |
the building or the remodelling of 55 palaces and large houses. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:37 | |
He promoted the idea that a fine building was the badge of a fine man. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:43 | |
Few Tudor royal homes survive. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
This is one of them, Hampton Court. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
Inside, it holds a fascinating painting | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
that captures the Tudor's mania for showing off through building. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:03 | |
This is The Field of the Cloth of Gold, a celebration held in 1520 | 0:15:04 | 0:15:09 | |
to forge an alliance between Henry VIII and King Francis of France. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:16 | |
This was status architecture gone crazy, | 0:15:17 | 0:15:20 | |
where pavilions were actually clad in fabrics woven from pure gold. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
It's brilliant, it's like a cartoon, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
really, or one of those graphic novels today, | 0:15:28 | 0:15:30 | |
where you can see everything happening all at once, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
-and the golden tents give their name to the whole occasion. -Yes. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
-It's called The Field of the Cloth of Gold. -Yes. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
It was this party town they constructed outside Calais, and in the top tent there, | 0:15:39 | 0:15:45 | |
that's the meeting of the kings, as brothers. They're friends at this point. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:48 | |
-It doesn't last. -That's right, a celebration of peace that doesn't last. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:52 | |
No, they're at war just a few years afterwards again. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:56 | |
And in order to show their friendship, | 0:15:56 | 0:15:58 | |
first they embraced and later on, they jousted and they danced and they had a wrestling match. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:05 | |
And this pavilion here is a sort of welcome area, and it shows | 0:16:05 | 0:16:10 | |
a lot of the main features of Tudor party architecture, | 0:16:10 | 0:16:15 | |
-so it's very highly decorated. -Everything's ornamental. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
He's got statues on it, he's got the royal coat of arms. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
It's got HR for Henry, it's got the Tudor roses, | 0:16:21 | 0:16:23 | |
and the splendour of a court doesn't just lie in the buildings, it lies in the people, | 0:16:23 | 0:16:27 | |
the richly-dressed masses of people, and if you were a Tudor courtier | 0:16:27 | 0:16:34 | |
you had to invest an awful lot in your appearance, so to buy a suit fit for wear at court, | 0:16:34 | 0:16:38 | |
just a plain suit, cost the same amount of money as the rent | 0:16:38 | 0:16:41 | |
-on a London townhouse for the whole year. -Really? | 0:16:41 | 0:16:44 | |
So being one of the king's men at the Cloth of Gold meant you had really made it into the elite. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:54 | |
This was a pivotal turning point in the fortunes of the Long family, | 0:16:56 | 0:17:01 | |
for one of Henry's courtiers at the pageant was the man who inherited | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
South Wraxall in 1508, Sir Henry Long. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:10 | |
Henry Long gets knighted by Henry, and he was here at the party, so he may be one of these | 0:17:11 | 0:17:16 | |
-little figures in the procession, or maybe watching the jousting. -But also I believe the Longs, | 0:17:16 | 0:17:22 | |
I mean, Henry's here, but his son, of course, gets involved in the royal household, doesn't he, Robert Long? | 0:17:22 | 0:17:29 | |
Well, Robert Long gets a significant position at court in the royal household, | 0:17:29 | 0:17:33 | |
because he's made a Squire of the Body to Henry VIII, which means that he has a very significant job. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:38 | |
-He helps the king to get dressed in the morning. -Yes. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
This is a position of enormous privilege, because if you were an assassin, this was your chance. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:46 | |
You had to have really trustworthy people doing this job. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
Clearly the Longs were trustworthy, they were trusted? | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
They were given very, very intimate access to the king? | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
-Yeah and that means in a great position to ask for favours. -Yes. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
There's a record, in fact, that the best time to ask the king | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
for a favour was when, after he'd had wine in the evening, when he was seated upon his closed stool. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:06 | |
OK, you approach him with his codpiece. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:09 | |
-He was then relaxed. -Got no defences, yes. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:12 | |
I think what your guys, the Longs, tell us about the Tudor age | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
-is that it's an age of mobility. -Yeah. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
You can see them rising up through the ranks, | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
entering royal circles, becoming part of royal circles. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
As the ferociously single-minded Henry became | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
the highest-ranking Long so far, so his influence rose across Wiltshire. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:35 | |
The county was his for the taking, | 0:18:36 | 0:18:38 | |
because Henry VIII had opened up amazing opportunities for land ownership. | 0:18:38 | 0:18:44 | |
When he broke with the Roman Catholic Church in 1534, it launched the Reformation | 0:18:45 | 0:18:50 | |
and, ultimately, led to the dissolution of the monasteries. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:54 | |
Land that had been sacred for centuries fell into the hands | 0:18:55 | 0:18:58 | |
of people like Henry Long - | 0:18:58 | 0:19:00 | |
ruthless capitalists, who didn't miss a chance. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:04 | |
Henry's royal connections paid huge dividends at the time of the dissolution, | 0:19:05 | 0:19:10 | |
when he acquired large amounts of former monastic land from the Crown, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:15 | |
including St Mary's Priory, near Kington St Michael, and Bradenstoke Priory, here in Wiltshire. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:22 | |
Many of the old monastic buildings were turned into sumptuous private homes. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:29 | |
Others were looted of the materials, to build new country houses. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:35 | |
Bradenstoke itself is now ruined, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
barely even a shadow of its former self. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
But poking around in the dark, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
dank undercroft provides food for thought. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:50 | |
It's a sobering reminder of how the king's sweeping reform | 0:19:50 | 0:19:55 | |
brought untold reward to greedy, material folk, like Henry Long. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:59 | |
Probably not rendered since the dissolution of the monasteries. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
The dissolution was a blaze of destruction. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:11 | |
From its spoils, Henry could fund his own programme of construction. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:17 | |
Back at South Wraxall Manor, Long, now a profiteering landlord, | 0:20:24 | 0:20:29 | |
filled the house with a sophisticated decor the Tudor age expected. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:34 | |
He modernised many parts of the building, adding all the mod cons of the early 16th century, | 0:20:36 | 0:20:43 | |
such as fireplaces to all the rooms. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:46 | |
As a man who had lived it up at The Field of the Cloth of Gold, | 0:20:48 | 0:20:52 | |
Henry doubtless had a taste for the finer things in life, | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
summed up by one writer of the period as, "stately and curious workmanship". | 0:20:56 | 0:21:02 | |
This is "stately and curious workmanship", indeed. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
Look at this wonderful frieze up here. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:09 | |
Carved acanthus leaf. Lovely. Very modish for the time. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:16 | |
And below, | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
a lovely linen fold carved oak panel. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:22 | |
Really very, very high quality. Lovely. | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
In this room, you can best see what Henry Long did to South Wraxall, very much in the spirit of the time. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:31 | |
He wanted to increase its sense of privacy, comfort, convenience and luxury. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:37 | |
He added this wonderful fireplace, in what was perhaps, once a larger room. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:42 | |
He wanted to sit here, away from the noise and bustle in the Great Hall. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:46 | |
Like I say, be private, be comfortable. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:50 | |
And it's a lovely fashionable design, this, | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
classical corners up here, the Tudor arch very much the theme of the moment. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:59 | |
Also this fireplace tells a particular romantic tale. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:03 | |
Look here in this corner. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:05 | |
Initials... | 0:22:05 | 0:22:07 | |
HL - Henry Long. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
Then we go along here... There's a wonderful carving, I think, of acanthus leaves | 0:22:10 | 0:22:14 | |
and vines, commemorating what would happen in front of this fireplace - a good glass of wine. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:20 | |
Then we get across to this side. Other initials. H, again - Henry. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:25 | |
E - Eleanor, his second wife, and these initials are linked by a lover's knot. How very lovely. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:32 | |
So this fireplace commemorates, in stone, their love, for eternity. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:38 | |
The Tudor enthusiasm for exquisite decoration was meant to say, | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
"I am a man of culture and refinement." | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
But Henry was a Long, through and through. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:56 | |
Perhaps his improvement to the house was simply a smokescreen for a much darker personality. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:01 | |
Local historian Tim Couzens knows all about his wicked ways. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:08 | |
He was quite a complex character. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:09 | |
I think you can call him quite unscrupulous, overall. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:13 | |
He has this, sort of, veneer of respectability. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
He has a brother at court, who is in daily contact with King Henry VIII, | 0:23:16 | 0:23:23 | |
so, very high powered connections. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:25 | |
And they kept that influence over a very, very long period of time. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:30 | |
There's a great quote of him being called "a usurper", "a tyrant" even, | 0:23:30 | 0:23:37 | |
and all sorts of disputes over land, | 0:23:37 | 0:23:42 | |
where he could actually pack courts and have magistrates and juries | 0:23:42 | 0:23:47 | |
that would just come down in his favour and, if they didn't, he actually locked them up. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:53 | |
And if they still refused to come down in his favour, he actually wrote to King Henry VIII | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
and it was directed, "I'll take your names and give me the names of the people that are not | 0:23:57 | 0:24:03 | |
"acting in favour of Sir Henry Long in Wiltshire and we'll obviously sort them out in some way." | 0:24:03 | 0:24:08 | |
You can imagine them being shipped off to the Tower. | 0:24:08 | 0:24:11 | |
It's, sort of, kind of, a picture of a lawless world, where they were | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
judge and jury, and they would stop at nothing, really, to achieve | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
their ends, whether it's, sort of, about, you know, getting property, getting power, getting riches. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:24 | |
Really, really, really an alarming world, isn't it? | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
Yes. Within the county of Wiltshire, it's almost | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
total power of being able to control how things were happening. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:36 | |
Over a period of time, they're using the house to put the veneer | 0:24:36 | 0:24:41 | |
of respectability on top of that and, of course, through time, that takes over, but in Wiltshire | 0:24:41 | 0:24:47 | |
they were using their role as the sheriff to basically act as the law. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:52 | |
South Wraxall Manor passed to Henry's son, Robert Long, in 1556. | 0:24:56 | 0:25:01 | |
By then, Robert was the head of an enormously powerful dynasty. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
The Longs now owned nine estates across Wiltshire. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:11 | |
But Robert had a novel plan for cementing the family's greatness, through building. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:16 | |
He saw no point in spending any money doing up the manor, | 0:25:16 | 0:25:20 | |
since only select guests would ever see inside it. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:24 | |
Far better to big up the Longs' name and stature | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
with a self-important gesture in the very heart of the local village. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:32 | |
Robert did what many noble families did at the time. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
He tarted up the family chapel at the local parish church, in this case St James' at South Wraxall. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:42 | |
Now, Robert left his mark here. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:45 | |
Look, RL - Robert Long - and the date, 1566. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:51 | |
He added this door, so the Longs could enter the church directly, | 0:25:51 | 0:25:54 | |
rather than mixing with the common parishioners, who would've passed through this arch here. | 0:25:54 | 0:26:01 | |
I will enter the church as the Longs did. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
This really is the hallowed land of the Longs. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:18 | |
The family would have sat here, seeing the altar through the squint in front of me. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:23 | |
Living Longs, surrounded by dead ancestors' bodies, in the crypt below, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:31 | |
and, on the walls, gigantic monuments. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
Look at this one. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:36 | |
A wonderful affair dating, I suppose, from the 1490s or so. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:40 | |
It shows a Long widow. You can see that by her widow's veil, | 0:26:40 | 0:26:45 | |
but her face tragically destroyed in some frenzied post-Reformation attack. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:53 | |
The Longs' status symbols are everywhere. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
Here, their coat of arms, and yet again, the fetterlock, positively aglow | 0:26:56 | 0:27:02 | |
in the chapel's windows. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
I must say, standing here, looking at this glorious stained glass, one's reminded | 0:27:08 | 0:27:13 | |
of the lost stained glass from the Great Hall at South Wraxall. How wonderful that must have been, | 0:27:13 | 0:27:19 | |
with celestial light flooding the Great Hall | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
and bathing all those sitting there in these glorious hues. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:29 | |
The Longs' chapel was a very public piece of self-publicity, | 0:27:37 | 0:27:42 | |
but it's also testament to huge changes in society brought about by the Reformation. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:48 | |
The Catholic Church's dominance had been overturned. | 0:27:51 | 0:27:54 | |
Churches became more secular places. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
This allowed ego-driven families, like the Longs, to leave their mark in sacred spaces for all time. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:03 | |
Blessed not only in this world, but also in the next. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:09 | |
In 1581, Robert was succeeded by his eldest son, Walter Long, | 0:28:16 | 0:28:23 | |
a man of enormous prestige. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:25 | |
Not simply an MP and knight, but also a justice of the peace and rapacious landowner. | 0:28:25 | 0:28:32 | |
And ultimately, Walter was the true master builder of South Wraxall. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:40 | |
The manor, as we find it today, is the result of his ambition and verve. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:47 | |
Beforehand, the house had grown as a series of small extensions. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:52 | |
Walter tied them all together, built upwards and outwards | 0:28:52 | 0:28:55 | |
into one great unified building | 0:28:55 | 0:28:59 | |
that spoke splendidly of the Longs' bigness - bigger than ever before. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:03 | |
But perhaps more than anything, Walter's story, | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
a story that includes a dramatic feud with a local family, | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
demonstrates that in Elizabethan England, | 0:29:12 | 0:29:14 | |
one of the great spurs for building was one-upmanship. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:18 | |
And building, of course, included the creation of spectacular interiors | 0:29:18 | 0:29:22 | |
that were seen as badges of honour and status for the family. | 0:29:22 | 0:29:27 | |
Walter's improvements at South Wraxall captured the fervour | 0:29:29 | 0:29:33 | |
for elegance and civilised culture that characterised Elizabeth's reign - | 0:29:33 | 0:29:39 | |
flamboyant displays of taste, wealth and comfort, for in the age of | 0:29:39 | 0:29:44 | |
Elizabethan socialising, first impressions mattered enormously. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:49 | |
Hence this sensational fireplace. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
It's dated 1598 and was the height of Renaissance fashion, | 0:29:57 | 0:30:02 | |
but it contains some very curious and personal details, | 0:30:02 | 0:30:07 | |
like the clock there in the centre | 0:30:07 | 0:30:09 | |
is a face of Hercules or the Green Man, | 0:30:09 | 0:30:13 | |
symbolising, I suppose, strength. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:17 | |
Here is, once again, the fetterlock | 0:30:17 | 0:30:22 | |
and below Hercules is a shield with, | 0:30:22 | 0:30:25 | |
on the left, the Long lion and crosses, | 0:30:25 | 0:30:29 | |
and on the right a bird, | 0:30:29 | 0:30:32 | |
the emblem of the Carne family, that's Walter's mother's family. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:36 | |
So this is not just a great architectural statement, | 0:30:36 | 0:30:40 | |
but a monument to the family's distinction. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:44 | |
I imagine Walter standing here with his friends, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:48 | |
contemplating this fireplace... he would have been very proud. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:53 | |
And he had much to be proud of. | 0:30:56 | 0:30:59 | |
During the 16th century, | 0:30:59 | 0:31:01 | |
European classical design had arrived in England with a vengeance. | 0:31:01 | 0:31:06 | |
Home-owners added novel classical details as signs of sophistication. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:13 | |
And Walter Long was no exception. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:15 | |
The Great Hall's old oak screen was replaced around 1600 in the most fashionable Renaissance manner - | 0:31:15 | 0:31:22 | |
all part of his thorough updating of Wraxall's decor. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:27 | |
And in what is now the dining room, we find another of his great fireplaces. | 0:31:29 | 0:31:35 | |
A masterpiece of symbolism, packed with clues like a cryptic crossword puzzle. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:41 | |
It really is sensational. The whole fireplace is loaded with messages. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
Here, you see, it says "Faber est quisque." | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
I mean, this is saying, "Every man is the architect | 0:31:48 | 0:31:53 | |
"of his own fortunes." | 0:31:53 | 0:31:55 | |
And here, "Praised by the good and to be abused by the bad | 0:31:55 | 0:32:01 | |
"is all praise alike." | 0:32:01 | 0:32:03 | |
These, I suppose, are moral messages that you can't really argue with. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:07 | |
They're like mottos in a Christmas cracker. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:09 | |
But in the middle is a rather more intriguing message, | 0:32:09 | 0:32:12 | |
"Mors rapit omnia", | 0:32:12 | 0:32:15 | |
"Death seizes all things." | 0:32:15 | 0:32:18 | |
And that message is being delivered by a little Caliban creature, a monkey. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:22 | |
Very strange. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
So peculiar. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:25 | |
So what was this fireplace, this room, all about originally? | 0:32:25 | 0:32:29 | |
Well, the first thing is that it was originally much smaller. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
It's now a rather charming, large, well-lit dining room | 0:32:32 | 0:32:36 | |
that was created about 1700. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:38 | |
Originally a small closet, just off the Great Hall over there, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:43 | |
the Great Hall, a place of light, life, entertainment, the present. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:48 | |
Here, of course, a tiny room, the counterpoint, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
come here to contemplate not this world but the next. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
Death, eternity, the afterlife, all things pass, be prepared, | 0:32:55 | 0:33:00 | |
memento mori, very much the spirit of | 0:33:00 | 0:33:02 | |
a late-Elizabethan, a Jacobean world. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:05 | |
Death is ever present, in life there is death. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
That's the lesson of this little room and the fireplace. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
But there could be more. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:15 | |
Perhaps Walter's relentless improvements to Wraxall | 0:33:17 | 0:33:19 | |
were a direct response to the most scandalous and tragic incident in the Long family history. | 0:33:19 | 0:33:25 | |
For all was not as it seemed behind Walter's highly refined country house. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:32 | |
Deep down, he was as manipulative and self-important as his ancestors. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:37 | |
Despite the civilised manners of 17th-century society, | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
fierce and bloody rivalries were still raging across England's shires. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:49 | |
And the Longs were embroiled in a bitter feud of one-upmanship | 0:33:53 | 0:33:57 | |
with another Wiltshire dynasty, the Danvers. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:00 | |
Sir Walter was by then high on his own grandeur, | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
having married into the fabulously wealthy family of Longleat. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
Together with his brother Henry, | 0:34:11 | 0:34:13 | |
he was determined to show the Danvers who really ruled the roost around his manor. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:19 | |
The row started as a petty squabble | 0:34:23 | 0:34:26 | |
but, by looking at the records in Britain's national archives, | 0:34:26 | 0:34:30 | |
we can see how it got completely out of hand. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:33 | |
I'm looking through some of the state papers domestic of Queen Elizabeth I | 0:34:33 | 0:34:38 | |
and this story is told in these papers in some considerable detail, clearly regarded as an event of, | 0:34:38 | 0:34:44 | |
well, of national importance and certainly quite some feud. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
"A true declaration of the ground of the conceived mislike of Sir Walter Long, Knight, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:54 | |
"and Henry Long, Gent, his brother, | 0:34:54 | 0:34:57 | |
"against Sir John Danvers, Knight, his sons and followers." | 0:34:57 | 0:35:03 | |
So here we see the characters in this play that's about to unfold in front of me. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:07 | |
It's incredible. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:09 | |
The account explains how Henry Long and one of his servants | 0:35:09 | 0:35:11 | |
carried out a robbery on a Danvers property, provoking their ire. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:17 | |
All too quickly, it escalated. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:21 | |
Ah, now here we go. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:23 | |
This paper talks of "many insolent behaviours" | 0:35:23 | 0:35:27 | |
and how one of Danvers' servants was murdered by a Long servant | 0:35:27 | 0:35:32 | |
and another one dangerously wounded. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:36 | |
Heady stuff. Clearly, the Longs are carrying out enormities | 0:35:36 | 0:35:39 | |
against their rivals, the Danvers, | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
and people are being murdered, wounded. Golly. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:47 | |
Sir John Danvers, a magistrate, seized the upper hand, | 0:35:47 | 0:35:51 | |
by charging four of Walter Long's servants with murder. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:54 | |
When his son Charles tried to make peace by exchanging gentlemanly letters, | 0:35:54 | 0:35:58 | |
it could all have been settled | 0:35:58 | 0:36:01 | |
except Walter's brother Henry fired off poisonous letters in return. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:05 | |
So Henry taunts Sir Charles, | 0:36:05 | 0:36:10 | |
"Sundry times, sending him word that wheresoever | 0:36:10 | 0:36:16 | |
"he met him, he would untie his points" - | 0:36:16 | 0:36:19 | |
he wants to take his trousers down - | 0:36:19 | 0:36:21 | |
"and whip him with a rod, calling him ass, puppy fool and boy." | 0:36:21 | 0:36:29 | |
That is fighting talk. Just picture that. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:32 | |
This really is... | 0:36:32 | 0:36:34 | |
you know, this is it, isn't it? | 0:36:34 | 0:36:37 | |
It's heading for an absolute incredible violent collision. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
You can't just call a chap those things, can you, and get away with it? | 0:36:40 | 0:36:44 | |
BELL CHIMES | 0:36:44 | 0:36:46 | |
And he couldn't. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:48 | |
The Danvers boys had been pushed too far, humiliated. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
They wanted revenge. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:59 | |
On October 4th, accompanied by a gang of over 20 retainers, | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
they burst into a house in the village of Corsham, | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
where the Longs were having dinner. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:10 | |
According to the Corsham coroner's court records, | 0:37:10 | 0:37:13 | |
Henry Danvers "did assault the aforesaid Henry Long | 0:37:13 | 0:37:17 | |
"and the aforesaid Henry Danvers voluntarily, | 0:37:17 | 0:37:21 | |
"feloniously and of malice propense, | 0:37:21 | 0:37:25 | |
"did discharge in and upon the said Long a certain engine called a dag," | 0:37:25 | 0:37:31 | |
a type of primitive pistol, | 0:37:31 | 0:37:33 | |
"charged with powder and a bullet of lead | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
"which Henry Danvers had in his right hand | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
"and inflict a mortal wound upon the upper part of the body of Long, | 0:37:39 | 0:37:45 | |
"under the left breast, of which wound he instantly died." Bang! | 0:37:45 | 0:37:52 | |
As Henry lay dead, the Danvers fled. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
The chase was on. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
The High Sheriff of Wiltshire and the justices of the peace set out to capture them. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:11 | |
The Danvers headed to Titchfield, near Southampton, | 0:38:11 | 0:38:14 | |
where their friend, the Earl of Southampton, hid them away. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:19 | |
In a matter of days, they made a getaway to France, | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
evading justice for many years. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:26 | |
But because the Earl of Southampton was one of William Shakespeare's great patrons, | 0:38:29 | 0:38:33 | |
some people believe the Longs' feud inspired one of the Bard's greatest plays, | 0:38:33 | 0:38:39 | |
Romeo And Juliet. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:41 | |
Historian Jonathan Bate is one of them. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:43 | |
It's in the mix. The timing is right. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
The events took place in late-1594 | 0:38:46 | 0:38:51 | |
and Romeo And Juliet was written the following year. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:54 | |
Now, that's not to say that Romeo And Juliet is a dramatisation of the Danvers/Long feud | 0:38:54 | 0:39:01 | |
but the interesting question is, why does Shakespeare decide to dramatise | 0:39:01 | 0:39:06 | |
a story about a family feud at this time, at this moment? | 0:39:06 | 0:39:11 | |
It's the Southampton connection that is the real key here. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:16 | |
We have to go back to 1592, | 0:39:16 | 0:39:18 | |
just the moment Shakespeare's establishing himself as a successful playwright, | 0:39:18 | 0:39:22 | |
but then the theatres get closed down because of plague. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
Well, what a writer does when it's not possible to put on plays | 0:39:25 | 0:39:28 | |
and make money that way, is target a wealthy patron, | 0:39:28 | 0:39:32 | |
so Shakespeare leaves London and writes some poems and dedicates them | 0:39:32 | 0:39:36 | |
to the Earl of Southampton and they seem to have done the trick. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
There's a fair bit of evidence that, by the summer of 1594, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
Shakespeare has got a close connection with the Earl of Southampton | 0:39:44 | 0:39:47 | |
and he may, indeed, even be staying with Southampton down at Titchfield | 0:39:47 | 0:39:52 | |
because what happens very soon after this is the theatres re-open | 0:39:52 | 0:39:56 | |
and new theatre companies form and Shakespeare starts writing some of his greatest plays. | 0:39:56 | 0:40:01 | |
Well, Shakespeare probably wasn't at the house when the Danvers turned up, | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
but he would have found out about them, about it, the feud, | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
and I suppose one can say that that the notion of feuding families, | 0:40:08 | 0:40:14 | |
that inspired him, did it? | 0:40:14 | 0:40:16 | |
That's right and, of course, the thing about Shakespeare's plays is that, | 0:40:16 | 0:40:20 | |
although they're usually set abroad, they do feel very English, | 0:40:20 | 0:40:23 | |
so when you get the servants fighting at the beginning of Romeo And Juliet, | 0:40:23 | 0:40:27 | |
these are English servants, they have English names. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:30 | |
So there's a sort of double-take going on. | 0:40:30 | 0:40:32 | |
Yes, on the one hand, we're in Verona, but on the other hand, we're in England, | 0:40:32 | 0:40:36 | |
so that means that Shakespeare's audience would have connected the family feud, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:41 | |
the Capulets and the Montagues in the play, | 0:40:41 | 0:40:43 | |
with family feuds among great houses in England and certainly the most notorious, | 0:40:43 | 0:40:49 | |
the most talked about feud of that time, especially in this Southampton circle, was Danvers and Long. | 0:40:49 | 0:40:55 | |
So it's no mere coincidence that, in the years immediately following his brother's brutal murder, | 0:40:57 | 0:41:03 | |
Walter Long turned South Wraxall into one of the finest homes of its time. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:08 | |
Beautifying the manor was about having the upper hand, | 0:41:10 | 0:41:13 | |
showing that the Longs were still a force to be reckoned with. | 0:41:13 | 0:41:17 | |
Walter masked his own devious involvement in the affair with domestic glory, | 0:41:19 | 0:41:25 | |
and it doesn't get more glorious than this. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
This is Walter's most splendid creation at South Wraxall. | 0:41:28 | 0:41:33 | |
He transformed the Great Chamber into this drawing room. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
It really is a visual explosion, almost an assault. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:41 | |
Look at these huge windows in front of me and over there, letting light flood inside. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:47 | |
They are in themselves a statement of wealth, cos glass was still relatively expensive at that time. | 0:41:47 | 0:41:52 | |
Above, is a splendid barrel-vaulted ceiling, | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
a wondrous thing festooned with carvings - faces, suns, moons, | 0:41:57 | 0:42:04 | |
perhaps even the moustachioed face of Walter Long himself. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:08 | |
An image of the vault of heaven. | 0:42:09 | 0:42:12 | |
Best of all, of course, is this overwhelming fireplace. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:17 | |
Just look at it. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:19 | |
This is one of the greatest creations of late-Tudor England. | 0:42:19 | 0:42:23 | |
It was carved by local masons, but nobody knows who designed it. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:29 | |
Perhaps it was Walter Long himself. | 0:42:29 | 0:42:32 | |
Certainly is packed with lots of messages and meanings, most of them moral rather than Christian, | 0:42:32 | 0:42:39 | |
and I suppose many would be appropriate for Walter and this part of the country. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:46 | |
In the centre we see an image of Pan, | 0:42:46 | 0:42:49 | |
the god of nature, | 0:42:49 | 0:42:51 | |
of shepherds and flocks who lived in Arcadia. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
Well, of course, this was wool country at the time and is part of Wiltshire, as beautiful as Arcadia. | 0:42:55 | 0:43:02 | |
At its end we have, well, here an image of Prudence and over there an image of Justice, | 0:43:02 | 0:43:10 | |
again very appropriate attributes for Walter as lord of the manor and magistrate. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:16 | |
He should indeed be prudent and just. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
Each side of Pan we have representations of arithmetic | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
and geometry, the attributes of architecture. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:26 | |
What's really remarkable about this great creation is that it shows how | 0:43:26 | 0:43:32 | |
Walter Long brought the virtues of Renaissance civilisation to this part of rural Wiltshire. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:39 | |
Walter's drawing room is the epitome of domestic comfort and grandeur, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:48 | |
one of the most spectacular rooms of the Elizabethan Age. | 0:43:48 | 0:43:52 | |
It seems to proclaim victory, showing that Walter Long, | 0:43:52 | 0:43:55 | |
unlike Henry Danvers, was a civilised fellow, no crude, pistol-wielding assassin. | 0:43:55 | 0:44:02 | |
The splendour of South Wraxall remains a testament to Walter's ambition. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:08 | |
He wanted his house to be fit for a king. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
But this wasn't just lofty posturing. He'd pulled it off. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:17 | |
The family was now beginning to earn its place among the great and powerful in British history. | 0:44:17 | 0:44:23 | |
The social ascent of the Longs had now reached its peak. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
Incidents in their family's history had perhaps inspired William Shakespeare. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:32 | |
They were acquainted with Queen Elizabeth and visited by eminent characters | 0:44:32 | 0:44:37 | |
such as Sir Walter Raleigh, the chap who brought tobacco to England - | 0:44:37 | 0:44:40 | |
indeed, probably brought tobacco to South Wraxall. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:44 | |
The Raleigh legend haunts the building today - quite literally, for some. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:52 | |
Generations of visitors have been spooked | 0:44:52 | 0:44:54 | |
by a ghostly scent of tobacco smoke appearing as if from nowhere. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
But Raleigh isn't the only spectre to walk these halls. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:03 | |
Another ghostly tale hangs over Wraxall's history. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:07 | |
It concerns the dastardly, backstabbing behaviour of Sir Walter's second wife, Catherine. | 0:45:07 | 0:45:14 | |
By now, the Longs' tradition of cunning and conniving | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
was so ingrained that the family was turning on itself. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
Catherine was the ultimate wicked stepmother, | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
masterminding a devious plan to prevent | 0:45:25 | 0:45:27 | |
Walter's eldest son, John Long, from inheriting the family fortune. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:33 | |
As the 17th-century historian John Aubrey tells it... | 0:45:33 | 0:45:37 | |
"The second wife did use much artifice to render the son by the first wife, | 0:45:37 | 0:45:43 | |
"who had not much Promethean fire, odious to his father. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:48 | |
"She would get her acquaintances to make him drunk | 0:45:48 | 0:45:53 | |
"and then expose him in that condition to his father. | 0:45:53 | 0:45:57 | |
"She never left off her attempts till she got Sir Walter to disinherit him." | 0:45:57 | 0:46:02 | |
With the help of her lawyer brother, Catherine plotted to change Walter's will, | 0:46:04 | 0:46:09 | |
to leave all the family's considerable riches to their first-born son, also named Walter. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:16 | |
But her dastardly scheme seems to have aroused the spirits of South Wraxall. | 0:46:16 | 0:46:21 | |
The clerk employed to commit John's fate to paper was horrified when | 0:46:21 | 0:46:27 | |
"a fine white hand interposed between the writing and the candle. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:33 | |
"He could discern it was a woman's hand - and then vanished." | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
This happened not once, not twice, but thrice. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:41 | |
The clerk was terrified. | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
He imagined - he was sure - it was the hand of the late Lady Long. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:49 | |
He threw down his pen and he refused to continue writing. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:53 | |
In the end, there was a compromise. | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
Young Walter got the house nearby at Draycott. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
Young John inherited Wraxall. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:05 | |
Perhaps John's mother had indeed saved the day, from the afterlife. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:11 | |
And fanciful though the tale of the white hand seems, there is something haunting about South Wraxall. | 0:47:11 | 0:47:17 | |
There's a strange aura that's got me thinking about the very origin of the building. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:25 | |
So here we are, back where we started, back to these extraordinary man-eating gargoyles. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:34 | |
But I wonder, it now occurs to me, these were created not so much to ward off evil, | 0:47:34 | 0:47:42 | |
but as to act as warnings - warnings from the past to the future, | 0:47:42 | 0:47:47 | |
warnings that this is an ancient haunted site. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
Even in the 15th century, this was a strange and magical realm. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:57 | |
By the 18th century, the haunted tag stuck to Wraxall Manor. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:10 | |
In the family's eyes, the building had become tainted by a curse. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:15 | |
With 14,000 acres of land and many houses at their disposal, | 0:48:15 | 0:48:20 | |
they neither wanted nor needed to live there. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:25 | |
Wraxall was a mere bauble in their empire, | 0:48:25 | 0:48:28 | |
used as a rest home for spinster aunts or often just left empty. | 0:48:28 | 0:48:33 | |
But that, ironically, is what saved it. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:37 | |
Never modernised to adapt to changing tastes and fashions, it remained trapped in time. | 0:48:37 | 0:48:44 | |
But as the 20th century arrived, the Long empire was in sharp decline. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:54 | |
Most of their estates and lands were sold off and South Wraxall Manor | 0:48:54 | 0:48:59 | |
once again became the main residence of what was left of the Long family. | 0:48:59 | 0:49:04 | |
Sara Morrison grew up there. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:07 | |
I was there until I was five with my father, until the beginning of the war. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:12 | |
And so I remember it through rose-tinted spectacles as a small child. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:19 | |
Old Walter Long, my great- grandfather, and my father's father, | 0:49:19 | 0:49:23 | |
-had been killed in the First World War. -Yes. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:26 | |
And so getting it back was sort of my father recapturing it, if you like, for the Longs. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:33 | |
When Sara's father was tragically killed in the Second World War, she inherited the house, | 0:49:33 | 0:49:40 | |
which was soon rented out to a family friend, Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:46 | |
I had the unusual experience of spending a lot of holidays there, as it were, a guest in my own house. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:51 | |
And so I had a sort of second childhood at Wraxall in the late-40s and early-50s, | 0:49:51 | 0:49:59 | |
when it was under Rothermere command, and the whole world walked through its front door. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:06 | |
-Evelyn Waugh... -Yeah. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
..I remember, because he was so disagreeable. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:10 | |
And I remember being told that we'd got to mind our manners | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
if we were going to have lunch in the dining room, | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
because people like Evelyn Waugh took great exception to unpleasant children. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:21 | |
What those grown-ups didn't understand is that we took great exception to unpleasant grown-ups. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:26 | |
And I remember Ian Fleming there, | 0:50:26 | 0:50:28 | |
because we were told that he was frightfully glamorous and a spy, | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
and us looking at this figure, sort of leaning back in his chair | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
and saying, "If he was a spy, absolutely ridiculous, | 0:50:35 | 0:50:38 | |
"anybody would see that he was a ridiculous Englishman at 500 yards - | 0:50:38 | 0:50:42 | |
"can't possibly have been a spy, they don't look like that!" | 0:50:42 | 0:50:45 | |
And being told that we were... | 0:50:45 | 0:50:47 | |
And did he like a dry Martini? | 0:50:47 | 0:50:49 | |
He, er... | 0:50:49 | 0:50:52 | |
Do you know, he did in those days, | 0:50:52 | 0:50:54 | |
and of course that's an odd thought, to think that that was the last time | 0:50:54 | 0:50:58 | |
that one heard the constant noise of cocktail shakers. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:01 | |
To move on a bit, then, you're a guest in your own home. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:05 | |
Then eventually you are mistress of your own home - when did that happen? | 0:51:05 | 0:51:09 | |
Well, that happened when, rather tactfully, I married a Wiltshireman, | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
and my grandmother reckoned that the minute Charlie and I were married, we would live at Wraxall. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:18 | |
He was 21 and I was 19, and we moved into Wraxall. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:24 | |
To begin with, I was thrilled, but increasingly it became obvious | 0:51:24 | 0:51:28 | |
that unless one could afford to do it really easily and really well | 0:51:28 | 0:51:34 | |
and wanted to become something of a slave to a medieval museum, | 0:51:34 | 0:51:40 | |
it was just not the way that suited us to live indefinitely at that stage. | 0:51:40 | 0:51:47 | |
We were very young and eventually moved out in about 1965. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:53 | |
Oh, you moved out then? It was let? | 0:51:53 | 0:51:56 | |
-No, no, we sold it then, we sold it. -You sold it in '65? | 0:51:56 | 0:51:58 | |
Sold it in '65. At the time, strange to say, it was a no-brainer. | 0:51:58 | 0:52:05 | |
Tomorrow mattered more than yesterday, as it were, and it just seemed that it was going to be | 0:52:05 | 0:52:11 | |
the wrong thing to do, to try and keep it, against the odds. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:16 | |
I thought the time had come. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
The bad moment when I left, which was meant so very kindly, | 0:52:20 | 0:52:24 | |
was the village sadly asked me to go to the village hall | 0:52:24 | 0:52:30 | |
and the village gave a goodbye party for the last Long. | 0:52:30 | 0:52:34 | |
That, that was bad. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:36 | |
That was exactly like going to one's own funeral. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:39 | |
And in fact I felt that it would have been more suitable if they'd shot me instead of being nice. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:44 | |
The evening I actually left there and was the last member of the family to go, | 0:52:49 | 0:52:54 | |
I did sort of feel that I was... | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
Oh, I don't know, spitting on the altar of the ancestors or killing them all, all over again. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:02 | |
And just for a moment I thought, "Oh, maybe I am very, very unpleasant indeed | 0:53:02 | 0:53:08 | |
"and shouldn't be doing this." | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
But I'm a complete meritocrat. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:15 | |
I think the Longs had a hell of a good run and rather a long one in Wiltshire. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:21 | |
But I'll feel that it's rather suitable that a house that had lived through so much history | 0:53:23 | 0:53:29 | |
should be casting its sort of historic shadow | 0:53:29 | 0:53:32 | |
over essentially new modern people | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
as opposed to anachronistic old bits of yesterday, like me. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:41 | |
In the 40 years after the Longs departed for good, | 0:53:43 | 0:53:46 | |
South Wraxall changed hands three times, the latter owner planning to convert it into a luxury hotel. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:54 | |
Then, in 2004, its fortunes turned when it was spotted in Los Angeles | 0:53:54 | 0:53:59 | |
by some very modern people indeed. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
Rock musician John Taylor of Duran Duran and his wife, | 0:54:05 | 0:54:09 | |
Gela Nash-Taylor, co-founder of fashion label Juicy Couture. | 0:54:09 | 0:54:15 | |
'For Gela, it was love at first sight. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:19 | |
'The manor's current restoration and authentic furnishings are all down to her determination | 0:54:20 | 0:54:26 | |
'to create the perfect embodiment of English country-house living.' | 0:54:26 | 0:54:30 | |
Did you have an image in your mind of the sort of English house you wanted? | 0:54:33 | 0:54:37 | |
-Yes. -Oh! -I was obsessed with Gosford Park and that was... | 0:54:37 | 0:54:41 | |
I think that's got to be every American's fantasy, is Gosford Park. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:44 | |
So in my head that's what I was looking for. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:47 | |
I mean, for me, it was the whole combination of | 0:54:47 | 0:54:50 | |
the silver services and dressing for dinner. | 0:54:50 | 0:54:52 | |
And I think it's fun to be an American in an English world like that, too, | 0:54:52 | 0:54:56 | |
because I think we probably see things a little bit different. | 0:54:56 | 0:55:00 | |
I saw it in Country Life and called up and had to come and see it, flew over to see it. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:07 | |
And then the first time I saw it, it was very dark, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
and I'd never been inside a manor house before. And it was crazy. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:15 | |
I mean, the fireplaces just were unbelievable, | 0:55:15 | 0:55:20 | |
and when I first would come to stay here, every night before I went to bed, | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
I would walk in that room and just, because I'm a designer | 0:55:23 | 0:55:27 | |
and I'm affected by my surroundings and by aesthetics, | 0:55:27 | 0:55:30 | |
this place is just, it's heaven. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:33 | |
I mean, you just come here and the beauty of the house | 0:55:33 | 0:55:37 | |
just speaks to you, it's just incredible to live here. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
You really can't help, when you're sitting around, to sort of think, | 0:55:42 | 0:55:46 | |
you know, who was here before and what were they doing and what were their lives like? | 0:55:46 | 0:55:50 | |
When you live in such an old, historical place, you think about that, there's no way around it. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:54 | |
And I think that we, my family, were just so fortunate | 0:55:54 | 0:55:59 | |
to have stumbled upon it and then met amazing people to help us restore it. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:04 | |
I definitely wanted it to be English. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:06 | |
I wanted the bulk of the furniture to be English antiques. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:11 | |
I wanted to feel when you walked in that it was the way it is. | 0:56:11 | 0:56:14 | |
It doesn't feel, when you walk in, you don't look around and feel like it was just decorated. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:19 | |
There's nothing about it that feels that way. It feels authentic. | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
There are of course some rather wonderful ghost stories about this house. Do you feel it's haunted? | 0:56:22 | 0:56:28 | |
Do you ever feel anything like that? | 0:56:28 | 0:56:30 | |
No, but both of my girls, the first few times they stayed here, came screaming over to us. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:35 | |
They were sure that there were ghosts in their rooms. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:38 | |
-And then there's the legend of Sir Walter Raleigh smoking the first pipe... -Yes. -..in the Raleigh Room. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:43 | |
-So people will say, "Mmm, did you smell smoke when you were sleeping in that room?" But... -And did you?! | 0:56:43 | 0:56:49 | |
Well, I never have, no, not personally, but I think if there are ghosts, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:54 | |
they're happy that we're here, so they're sort of chilled. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:58 | |
They let us be. | 0:56:58 | 0:57:00 | |
But South Wraxall is filled with presence, traces and memories. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:09 | |
To visit the house is to wander through an amazing relic of British history, | 0:57:09 | 0:57:14 | |
but also to intimately feel the pride, passion and power | 0:57:14 | 0:57:19 | |
of the unstoppable force of nature that built it - | 0:57:19 | 0:57:22 | |
the ancient Long dynasty. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
This extraordinary building stands as a permanent monument | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
to four men who used any means necessary, fair or foul, | 0:57:30 | 0:57:34 | |
to make it the hidden architectural marvel it is today - | 0:57:34 | 0:57:38 | |
Walter, Henry, Thomas and of course Robert, who laid the foundations | 0:57:40 | 0:57:46 | |
with his magnificent Great Hall almost 600 years ago. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:51 | |
Amazing. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:55 | |
South Wraxall Manor retains its magical quality, | 0:57:55 | 0:58:00 | |
its labyrinth-like charm - | 0:58:00 | 0:58:02 | |
around every corner, a new delight, a new telling detail. | 0:58:02 | 0:58:06 | |
But taken all together, it's transported me back to the Tudor Age, | 0:58:06 | 0:58:11 | |
the age that saw the birth of the great English country house. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:16 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:41 | 0:58:44 |