Our wet weather option on Wednesday, a trip to a new (to us) National Trust property to get out of the incessant rain.
The Lucy family, who came to England with that chap William the Conqueror in 1066 and was given the land (as well as land in Scotland and Norfolk), have owned Charlecote Park since then. Charlecote House was originally built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style.
Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare was said to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man, and to have been brought before the magistrates.
