Oxburgh Revisited

Yesterday I booked myself into an online seminar from the Warburg Institute that was accessible through Zoom. The speaker was Anna Forrest who was talking about the discoveries under the attic floorboards at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk during restoration work on the roofs. This process is continuing and it is hoped that more discoveries will be made. 

Oxburgh Hall

Image: Wikipedia 

The ancestral home of the Bedingfield family who built it in 1482 Oxburgh is notable both as an example of a late medieval brick built moated fortified manor house and as a Catholic home throughout its history. Material from the Bedingfeld family archives, which is currently on display at the Hall indicates the importance of the family as leaders amongst the Catholic Norfolk gentry as supporters and servants of Queen Mary I and as committed recusants under the succeeding Elizabethan settlement. Oxburgh still has a priest hole, which is thought to be the work of St Nicholas Owen.

When these discoveries of fragments of manuscript, music and fabrics were first publicised in August I posted about them in Relics of recusant life at Oxburgh Hall

Dr Tessa Murdoch from the V&A gave a response to the seminar paper and wrote an article about the finds in Apollo which can be seen at https://www.apollo-magazine.com/rats-nests-bedingfeld-history-oxburgh-hall/

 

 

The Catholic and Royalist Sir Henry Bedingfeld and his family sheltered by the Virgin Mary during the Civil War

Image: Sir Henry Bedingfield Bt/ National Trust/ Church Times

The Times earlier this year had an article about the third baronet and his Jacobite activities in 1745 which can be read at Sir Henry Bedingfield: National Trust unmasks landowner who spied for Bonnie Prince Charlie