Baddesley Clinton

Baddesley Clinton was built in the 15th century by the Brome family on the site of a 13th-century farmstead. The 13th-century moat dictated the footprint and architectural proportion of the house we see today which is in many ways a patchwork, built in different phases in the 15th and 16th centuries, with alterations in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. While it is an archetypal medieval manor house, the function, shape and decoration of almost every room has been modified by the Ferrers, a family of Catholic recusants who began living at Baddesley Clinton in 1517 and stayed for the next four hundred years. The solid walls, the moat and the presence of a secret ‘priest hole’ below the floor level of the house made Baddesley Clinton a natural hiding place for persecuted Catholics in the 16th century.

Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire

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Many of Baddesley Clinton’s paintings were produced by one of its Victorian inhabitants, the artist Rebecca Dulcibella Orpen, who frequently painted herself, her husband, their living companions (her aunt and her husband) and their families and ancestors. These works are held at Baddesley alongside portraits of royalty and upper class individuals by, after, or from the studio of, earlier academic artists. Also in the collection is a c.1575-1600 wool and silk tapestry, which is often theorised – although never verified – to depict the visit of Queen Elizabeth I to the nearby Kenilworth Castle. Baddesley Clinton additionally possesses a number of historic documents relating to the property; amongst these is an 1890 papal authority from Pope Leo XIII to Bishop Ilsley of Birmingham for the administration of the sacrament at Baddesley, a framed plan from 1892 showing the possible arrangements for raising and lowering the drawbridge at Baddesley , and a grant of arms to Thomas Ferrers Walker in 1941. There is also a large amount of 17th-century wood furniture, a series of ten 18th-century leather panels with painted floral designs and five different historical clocks with the earliest dating from 1689-95.

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