Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

by Charles G. Harper

Ettington Park is now without a tenant and is, I believe, to be sold. Thus passes the pride of this branch of the Shirleys.

It is a lovely park and a stately house, with the ivied ruins of the ancient church adjoining, including the tombs and effigies of older Shirleys and others who would make excellent ancestors for any enterprising purchaser. “I don’t know whose ancestors they were,” says the Major-General in the Pirates of Penzance, of the monuments in the ruined chapel on the estate he has bought, “but I know whose they are.”

The Squire, besides his activities in the way of bad rhymes, stumbling metres, and obvious moral sentiments, was an antiquary, and keen to alter the spelling of the place-name “Eatington” to “Ettington,” on the coming of the railway in 1873. He showed that it is “Etendone” in Domesday Book, and that Dugdale, the historian of Warwickshire, was the first to spell it Eatington in 1656. But Dugdale, who knew the name derived from the watery situation of the place, was right, and Domesday wrong, as it very often is in these matters, the Norman-French compilers of it not being at all well-equipped for rendering the, to them, alien names correctly.

Passing pretty scenes at Newbold-on-Stour, the road bears away from the river and touches it again at the equally pretty village of Tredington. The spire of Honington is then seen on the left, and Shipston-on-Stour is entered. There is a railway station at Shipston, the terminus of a little branch line from Moreton-in-the-Marsh. When the railway reached so far it exhausted all its energies and could do no more. It might be supposed, from the efforts to reach Shipston by rail, that it was an important place, whose traffic was well worth securing—perhaps even, from its name, a port; but it is long since this old market-town was a place of any commercial value, and no ships ever sailed the little Stour. They were sheep, not ships, that gave Shipston its name, and it first appears in history, nine hundred and fifty years ago, as “Scepewasce”; that is to say, the place where the sheep were washed in those Saxon times. It was written “Scepwaesctun” in 1006, and is “Scepwestun” in Domesday; i.e. the Sheepwash Town.

To Brailes, over two miles from Shipston, the road rises, commanding views down upon the left over “the Feldon,” as the district between this and Stratford-on-Avon is known; that clearing in the ancient Forest of Arden which is by no means so bare of timber as might be supposed, and itself indeed looks from this height very like a forest. At Brailes is the parish church, proudly styled the “Cathedral of the Feldon.” It is large, its tower is lofty, rising to a hundred and twenty feet, and it stands in a prominent position. Its Perpendicular architecture is good, too, but there is nothing, internally, of a cathedral about it.

At the “George” inn, Brailes, the traveller to Compton Wynyates will do well to refresh himself before he proceeds further, for not only has he come far, but when he has threaded the steep and winding lanes beyond which that romantic manor-house of the Comptons lies in its deep, cup-like hollow, he will need something wherewith to fortify his energies, especially as it is extremely likely he will lose himself on the way, and as there is no likelihood of his being able to refresh himself when there. Romance, lovely scenery, and picturesque architectural grouping are not well seen when fasting.

“Wynyates” is a puzzling word, which may mean “Vineyards” or “Windgates”: the first for choice. The place, let it be impressed upon the stranger, is a house, not a village; although, looking sheerly down upon the hollow where its crowded gables and many clustered chimneys are seen, with its adjoining church, a village it might appear to be. There was once, indeed, such a place, but it disappeared so long ago that no one can tell us anything about it, and its church, which stood upon the site of the present building, was battered to pieces and “totally reduced to rubbish,” as Dugdale tells us, during the siege of the mansion in 1644.

Thus the Comptons, Marquises of Northampton, have the place all to themselves. And it is very likely that the explorer also will have Compton Wynyates to himself, for this is but one of the residences of that noble family, whose chief seat is at Castle Ashby, away in Northamptonshire, and it is occupied for only a short interval in every year. By an admirable generosity and courtesy the stranger may generally be assured of permission to see the interior of the mansion, a privilege very well worth exercising.

Sir William Compton, the builder of Compton Wynyates, was the descendant of a long line of obscure squires who had been settled here for centuries. He owed his advancement in life to being brought up with Henry the Eighth, who cherished an affection for him and gave his friend the Castle of Fulbrook, which was situated between Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick. Sir William Compton did a singular thing with the gift. He pulled it down and transported the materials by packhorse or mule-train the dozen miles or so across country to this secluded hollow, and with them built the charming house we now see. Fulbrook Castle, it would thus appear, was less of a castle than a slightly embattled manor-house, built of red brick, with tall moulded chimney stacks, in the reign of Henry the Sixth. It had been in existence only some eighty years. Its chimneys, according to tradition, were taken whole, the mortar being so strong that the bricks could not be separated. Thus the singularity of a brick house in a stone district is explained.