It’s always a pleasure being part of the launch team for a new book, and even more so when you know the author and are a long-time admirer of her work. This is most certainly the case with my book review today, SC Skillman’s latest publication, “Illustrated Tales of Warwickshire.”
I’m a big fan of local history and when it’s illustrated by a series of fantastic full colour photographs taken by the author and her family, so much the better.
The book arrived just before our family holiday at Easter. The first thing I pack when leaving for a break is books. The underwear, clothes, make-up and footwear can wait. The right reading material can make or break a holiday.
As we drove along the autobahn past Bonn and Darmstadt, I opened the book and began to read. I wasn’t disappointed. Within its pages, I found beautifully written accounts of strange goings on, rural crimes in times gone by, local legends, folklore and fascinating people, each chapter preceded by a quote from Shakespeare, Warwickshire’s most famous son. Pretty soon, I was reading out bits to my husband, busily engaged in navigating us safely to our destination and looking out for coffee stops along the way.
Who knew that the first person to be killed by a sniper on English soil was the unfortunate Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke? He met his end during the English Civil War, fighting against Royalist troops. His tomb is in the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, and his ancestral home, Warwick Castle, is still a popular tourist destination today.
The author specialises in hunting out the kind of tales which give the reader a pleasurable shiver down the back. Visitors to the Old Coffee Tavern in Warwick, a Victorian building used as offices for many years, report the feeling of being watched. This is bad enough for the chaps, but for ladies, the haunting is rather more specific. “Curious experiences were reported by young female staff in particular; they felt the invisible touch of a hand in the basement rooms both of 16 Old Square and the 1958 block. Because of this, they would only go into the storerooms in pairs.”
The author specialises in hunting out the kind of tales which give the reader a pleasurable shiver down the back.
In nearby Knowle in the west of the county, a former seventeenth-century coaching inn, now converted to a private house, seems to be haunted by an unquiet spirit. A number of people including the owners report hearing the sound of leather boots walking slowly and deliberately along the flagstones. I spend a lot of time researching areas for my property freelance work and the following information fascinated me.
“This and many similar stories uphold the theory that the stone may act like a magnetic tape on a tape recorder. No seventeenth-century coaching inns remain derelict in 2021, having all been converted into residences or pubs, restaurants and hotels, where, doubtless, phantom footsteps still cross-stone floors, and mysterious voices, phenomena and ghostly apparitions may sometimes still be sensed.”
That piece of information (no derelict seventeenth-century coaching inns left in England) has dropped into the seething cauldron of my mind and will, no doubt, be extracted when needed in the future.
Warwickshire is the home of some quite remarkable people, as we find out in the chapter entitled, “Intriguing People, Past and Present.” Beautiful Compton Verney with its parklands designed by Capability Brown was built in 1442 and has had a chequered history. Post-war, it was left empty and went to rack and ruin, until an eccentric nightclub owner bought it, mainly to keep his pigs in. He hardly ever went into the house, entertaining guests in a caravan parked in the grounds. If you’re a fan of the Peter Hall version of, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1968), you’ll see the Compton Verney woodlands featured in it.
Popular entertainer Larry Grayson was brought up in Nuneaton while at the other end of the social scale, Daisy Brooke, Countess of Warwick lived the first half of her life in a whirl of luxurious Edwardian over-spending and bed-hopping and the second as a philanthropist and generous donor to charity.
Warwickshire is full of fascinating history and ceremonies and rituals which go on to this day. On 11th November every year, the annual Ancient Tax Gathering at Ryton-on-Dunsmore takes place, early in the morning as it has done ever since 1170. For around eight hundred years, the sometimes violent, “Shrove Tuesday Ball Game” takes place in Atherstone, with people battling in the streets for half an hour to be the possessor of the ball at full time.
If you want to know about the healing properties of the Hand of Glory (not for the squeamish), read up on Warwickshire witch trials or find out about the longest unsolved murder case in the county, this is the book for you. Driving through Germany and Switzerland, the snow-capped mountains went unnoticed as I lost myself in this beautifully illustrated, delightfully written book.
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You can buy your copy direct from the publisher here, Amberley Publishing or the Warickshire bookshop, Warwick Books, or online and wherever good books are sold. I was given a review copy but was under no pressure to provide a favourable review.
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For more information on S.C.Skillman, please visit her website here.