Gainsborough Old Hall

Friends and I called at Gainsborough Old Hall this month. It is one of the few properties belonging to English Heritage for which the double-digit entrance charge is worth the money. It is a large, late-medieval manor house which has barely altered since it was constructed in the 1460s. The rear is black-and-white timber framed, with a pleasingly wonky elevation (below), while the front (above) is made of that narrow, dark red brick with which the Tudors and Jacobeans were so pleased to build.

In many respects, this is an archetypal old, English house: lots of dark furniture, uneven floorboards and several guides in each room desperate to share their expertise. The tower (where else?), is haunted by the Grey Lady. Why are these supposed ghosts so cautious in their choice of colour scheme? A grey lady strikes me as a little passé. An Orange Lady, or a Magenta Lady, or an Aquamarine-With-A-Little-Hint-Of-Mottled-Purple Lady would have been far more interesting.

The Hall’s hospitality was deemed grand enough to entertain the likes of Kings Richard III and Henry VII (though not at the same time, obviously), and the two pastors who visited five hundred years later were also suitably gratified. Yet the old house played a small though surprising role in the religious Reformation of our land. It was here that Queen Catherine Howard allegedly committed her indiscretions which resulted in her execution and the demise of her powerful Catholic relatives; it was no coincidence either, I think, that this was also the home of the beautiful widow Catherine Burgh (nee Parr) whom Henry VIII later married. She was a committed evangelical whose influence and piety at court God used to good effect.

Towards the end of that century, the hall was owned by the Hickman family. William was a London merchant and committed puritan. He and his mother Rose were sympathetic to the Separatists led by John Smyth. These people believed in 'gathered churches' rather than state churches controlled by the government and funded by a form of taxation. Smyth went on to reject infant baptism, effectively seeking to create a church like our Salem Chapel and many others like it. Then, separating from the Church of England was illegal, and considered an act of sedition, for which the Hickmans would have paid most dearly had they been caught. Quite where abouts in the house those separatist puritans met, I cannot say. I would like to think in that great hall, above, but this would have been rather public and not in the spirit of a secret meeting of persecuted true believers. The many other dozens of smaller rooms might well have been a place where those early Congregationalists/Baptists assembled for the pure worship of a holy people. While they may not have had the use of a great cathedral or minster, the Old Hall is a grand enough place for such a wonderfully historical and theological a gathering. Truly, the Old Hall is not just an historical gem, it is a treasured trophy of our faith.