Another tour abroad

On our drive back from London last month we stopped off at Charlecote Park to visit the ancestral home of the Fairfax-Lucy family. Famous for its royal visit in the sixteenth century and the reason for Shakespeare's flight from Stratford to London, Charlecote is also the marital home of Mary Elizabeth Williams Lucy. In 1823 the heiress from North Wales reluctantly married George Lucy at the tender age of twenty and became mistress of Charlecote. After reading her memoirs I was eager to visit the country home she and her husband set out to rejuvenate, replenished with marble, art and other treasures purchased during tours abroad, one of which saw the young family leaving with a newborn babe and returning more than two years later to report his sad loss and the arrival of another infant.

It amazes me that a tour of the Continent in the 19th century might last two years. After a fourteen-hour crossing on a steam packet, I imagine I'd stay a good long while too. So I suppose Mary Elizabeth might look upon our three and a half years in England as a prolonged tour or sojourn. Judging from the number of places we've managed to visit, perhaps she'd not be far wrong.



For more on Charlecote, visit our Travels in the UK website.