The Tower Drawing–Room is also oak panelled, and contains a fine mantelpiece. Above it is the bedroom known as Henry VII.’s; and over that again is the top tower bedroom, from which beautiful views of the park and moat are to be obtained.
The Dining–room on the ground floor contains a sideboard which is stated to have been made out of a tree at which Oliver Cromwell practised marksmanship in Coleshill Park, and also some interesting portraits of the Fetherstons and Fetherstonhaughs.
Scarcely a room at Maxstoke but contains something either in its decorations or its furniture of great interest; and, indeed, it is a matter for congratulation on the part of all those interested in architectural survivals and the preservation of historic houses that the castle presents in this twentieth century so interesting and perfect an example of the fortified manor–houses of ancient times. Maintained, let it be added, with all the loving care which such a unique treasure–house of antiquity deserves.
Some six miles to the north–east of Maxstoke is situated Astley Castle, prettily placed in Arbury Park. Although known as a castle, it is in reality rather an example of the defensive manor–house which came into being when residences of a more formidable nature had become no longer necessary. The house is surrounded by a moat, which is picturesquely overhung with foliage, and spanned by a bridge admitting to the house through an arched gateway.
Within a mile and a half of the church, and reached by a lovely avenue through Hawk’s Wood, is South Farm, where, on November 22, 1819, was born Mary Ann Evans, afterwards to become famous as “George Eliot.” The building is quite a small farmhouse, having one bay and a gabled east wing, and is coated with rough cast. It stands pleasantly situated a little distance on the right of the Park Road to Griff.
“George Eliot’s” father, Mr. Robert Evans, was agent for the Arbury Estate, and the family afterwards, whilst the future novelist was quite a child, removed to a larger house at Griff.
As was perhaps not unnatural, “George Eliot” drew much of her early inspiration and local colour from the immediate neighbourhood in which she was born, and in “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story,” which she commenced to write on Christmas Day 1856, Astley Church appears under the disguise of “Knebley Church”; whilst Sir Robert Newdigate, who collected so many Art treasures for his beautiful home of Arbury, figures in the same story under the name of “Sir Christopher Cheverel.”