A VILLAGE FULL OF SHADOWS
Imagine a village prey to many fears. The dead walked, malevolent spirits roamed at large and witches were blamed for everything from cattle plague to bad weather and warts, boils and fevers. The village had its own sacred copse at Black Birch Hollow where the poppets of witchcraft dangled from the branches and every ten years at the spring solstice a human sacrifice gave warm, young blood to the fields that the crops might prosper. Woe betide the old widow with her pet cat or jackdaw who fell victim to the suspicion and anger of the villagers. The mill pond sprawling below high street was the abode of jack o’ lanterns who, on summer evenings, sparkled, luring the unwary to their doom whilst owls in the woods foretold death and disaster. That was Caverswall in 1530.
THE CHURCH OF ST. PETER AT CAVERSWALL
The church dates back to 1080 when Ernulf the Norman held the village under Robert of Stafford. It has many interesting features each of which tells a story about other times. It has stained glass by the country’s three great artists, Kempe, Image and Holliday. It has also a north aisle which is significantly smaller than its partner on the south side, a legacy of the Black Death. It also has the remains of a tympanum which stood over the west door and was broken during the erection of the tower by Petronella who was Lady of the Manor (1410 - 1450). It was in the churchyard between church and castle that Charles Lamb ’saw’ a mysterious ‘young lady in black seated on a mule’.
BUILDING THE NORTH AISLE
Thomas de Kaveriswelle was a felon with a coat of arms. Imprisoned on trumped up charges of horse theft he was granted a Royal pardon when he went to fight for the King in the French Wars. He fought at Crecy as a mounted archer and returned home a wealthy man. It was that wealth which sponsored the extension of the church only for the Black Death to halt building work in 1349 / 50. That is the reason why the north aisle is narrower than the south aisle.
CAVERSWALL HAS ITS OWN 'SCARLET LADY'
Brought up by her mother to believe that a woman should make and live by her own rules and use her charms to advance herself in society Lady Frances Hamilton, a tragic young widow, married another title and became Lady Frances Vane of Caverswall. It was an unhappy marriage; her husband was known as ‘the imbecile spendthrift’ and she was known to be a ‘very great whore’. Between them they bankrupted the Caverswall estate. Thanks to Tobias Smollett she entered literature as Lady Frail in the Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. Her own memoirs, ‘Memoir of a Lady of Quality’, written to excuse herself and explain her beliefs about life failed to restore her to her once cherished place in society but make entertaining reading today..
CAVERSWALL CASTLE
Originally a strongpoint to overawe the area it was never intended to be a major fighting castle. In 1630 Mathew Cradock a wealthy wool merchant bought it and had it redesigned as a fortified manor house. In the Civil War it became part of a series of thinly stretched defence lines established by the Parliamentary forces across the North Midlands. On several occasions the costs of maintaining the garrison led to suggestions that it should be abandoned and rendered unfit for use. On each occasion Royalist cavalry were seen in the area and the fortress was saved. It was only after the war that the man reporting the presence of cavalry and his kinsman on the Parliamentary Committee bought the castle and moved in.
THE STONE HOUSE
The third oldest property in the village which dominates the village square. It was built from stone made redundant when the castle walls were lowered as Mathew Cradock’s rebuilding took place. Mathew used the house as a pied a terre when visiting the village to check on the progress of work on the castle. Subsequently it was used to quarantine patients suffering from smallpox and typhus. It was there that his son George died in 1637, just a year after the death of his father.
