Swavesey & District History Society – October 2025 Meeting

October meeting. About 40 people (members and guests) heard John Vigar, a former architectural historian from Kings Lynn, present “Bedrooms, Banquets and Balls”, one of his numerous talks. This talk dwelt on the development of the English Country House and the people living in them. He started with the medieval hall-house then followed architectural tastes and fashions right up to the mid twentieth century. Life in the Middle Ages was firstly about keeping safe and comfortable but also about status. By about 1450 country houses were growing in size with added rooms, mostly remaining empty but kept for the use of high-status visitors. Royalty often toured the country with an army of servants in tow but Henry VIII challenged this practice, reducing the number of necessary followers with the assistance of the contemporary Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey set up a list of jobs for the followers to manage and wrote a job description for each.

The speaker looked at the architecture of the houses, their furnishings and the way in which the rooms were used in different periods. Doddington House near Lincoln, built in 1601 had three towers. Two were staircases but the third was a banqueting hall although at that time banqueting referred solely to the dessert course of a meal. In 1604 the Somerset House Conference took place when peace was made with Spain and in the painting of the celebratory feast a rich carpet was placed on the table, not on the floor as in earlier practice. We also heard about the people who lived in these buildings – many of them eccentric and memorable – and discovered the ways in which their whims fashioned the houses we see today. In the 17th century aristocratic houses often had a performing dwarf. Jeffrey Hudson was a dwarf who belonged to the court of Queen Henrietta Maria of England and his party piece was to emerge from an exploding cake towards dinner guests. Lord Anglesey lived at Plas Newydd in Anglesey and loved dressing up and appeared in his own shows in Plas Newydd. The Regency period was a great time for informality with bedrooms no longer private but being used for meetings by large groups of people. Most of the houses illustrated by the speaker are open to the public, but several private homes which he has visited offer a different vision.

Next meeting- 18 November. An Elizabethan Grammar School. Mike Muncaser.