One of the best things about having any kind of relationship with an old house — seeing it, visiting it, living in it, owning it — is the chance to image other lives that have also, over the years, passed through it. Better still, of course — although, admittedly, it isn’t always possible — is the opportunity to feed that imaginative exercise with scraps of historical narrative.
Who lived here? Why did they live here? What did they do when they were here? What did they eat, drink, read? How did they pass the time?
Very often, research is better at generating such questions than it is at answering them. Still, each little tiny bit of the puzzle, somehow salvaged from the destructive torrent of those intervening years or centuries, helps to create a slightly more legible picture, a slig…
One of the best things about having any kind of relationship with an old house — seeing it, visiting it, living in it, owning it — is the chance to image other lives that have also, over the years, passed through it. Better still, of course — although, admittedly, it isn’t always possible — is the opportunity to feed that imaginative exercise with scraps of historical narrative.
Who lived here? Why did they live here? What did they do when they were here? What did they eat, drink, read? How did they pass the time?
Very often, research is better at generating such questions than it is at answering them. Still, each little tiny bit of the puzzle, somehow salvaged from the destructive torrent of those intervening years or centuries, helps to create a slightly more legible picture, a slightly more audible tune.
If we are very fortunate indeed, we may even be able to catch the odd glimpse of some long-ago drama, enacted here, in this very place, amid what is at least semi-recognisable scenery. We may not understand it clearly, we may miss or misunderstand a great deal of what is going on — but once we have encountered it, perhaps it becomes that little bit easier to spot, out of the corner of our eye, in the dark spot under the stairs or at the top of the landing, the shadow of one of the protagonists, or to hear another voice joining in, just for an instant, with some ordinary, everyday, easily-forgotten conversation.
Between 1725 and 1727, Robert Cunyngham and Elizabeth Arnold both lived at the Manor House in Crowland, Lincolnshire. They remained there for a total of about sixteen months. They were there at the request of Robert Hunter, former governor of New York and New Jersey, and future governor of Jamaica, who also lived there for part of that time.
Here, then, in PDF form, is a very rough draft of their story.
I took the time to try to learn about these three people because the house in which they lived is now my house, and so, in a sense, their stories — and the stories of those around them — are now my business, too.
I will continue to update the link above, as the draft text becomes more polished. The references, in particular, are not yet complete. They will improve. The PDF format, incidentally, seemed the best answer to the eternal problem of how to show footnotes on a WordPress site.
It seemed better, though, to post an awkward imperfect version of what happened at the Manor House, and how and why it happened, than not to post it at all.
I hope, then, that you will all enjoy this very double-edged, sometimes paradoxical, real-life early Georgian diversion.
This is Godfrey Kneller’s portrait of Brig General Robert Hunter, former governor of New York and New Jersey, and future governor of Jamaica. He, too, lived in the Manor House at Crowland.