Charlton House

Last Friday, at the end of S's final half-term break in England, we travelled to one of Greenwich's lesser known attractions.

Built between 1607-1612 on the orders of King James I for Sir Adam Newton, Charlton House is a fine example of a Jacobean country house. The draw for us, however, was not the architecture or the relative absence of people, but the place of Charlton House in two notable scenes in the life and autobiography of Lady Anne (Murray) Halkett.

The "oldest" Mulberry tree in England

As at Dunfermline, we found that our lady’s reputation preceded us, which made for another interesting experience in oral history: This time we were treated to two different highly-romanticized accounts of Anne Murray’s clandestine engagement with a love-struck Thomas Howard. (More on the less-romanticized version in scene 1 below.)

Anne's father, Sir Thomas Murray, may have known Sir Adam Newton well because both men came to England from Scotland with King James, and served in the royal courts as tutors to the king’s two sons, Henry and Charles.

Original Chapel Door

We don’t know anything more about the relationship between the Murray and Newton families, but in 1640 Sir Adam’s son Henry Newton married Sir Thomas’s daughter and Anne’s sister, Elizabeth. By this time, Sir Thomas (d. 1623) and Sir Adam (d. 1630) were long gone, and the English civil war was on the horizon.

Scene 1: Blind Date in the Cellars

Fast forward to 1644 and the setting of our scene 1: King Charles has retreated to Oxford; Anne’s brother-in-law, Henry Newton, is in hiding for supporting the Royalist cause; and twenty-two-year-old Anne, her sister, Elizabeth, and their mother, Jane Murray, are living together at Charlton House. They are joined by Anne Murray’s good friend, Anne Howard, daughter of Baron Edward Howard of Escrick, a Parliamentarian who was instrumental in helping the Murray women get permission to keep living at Charlton House after the Newton property had been claimed by Parliament.

Long Hall Fireplace

To make a long story short, Baron Howard’s son, Thomas, falls in love with Anne, proposes, is rebuffed, threatens to convert to Catholicism and join a monastery, which arouses Anne’s sympathy. Anne eventually promises not to marry anyone before Thomas does. Thomas takes Anne’s “maybe” as a “yes,” but when Anne’s mother hears about it she is NOT PLEASED, apparently because Anne was not well enough off to make a good match for the son of her benefactor. Anne’s mother threatens to cut off all ties with Anne if ever she sets eyes on Thomas again. Not to be deterred, Thomas makes a final visit to Charlton house before sailing to France. He is mistaken for Henry Newton, beaten and left unconscious, which again arouses Anne’s sympathy. She agrees to meet Thomas—not in the summer house, as he proposed ...

Inigo Jones designed Summer House, until recently re-purposed as a public toilet

... but in the cellars. And, to keep her word to her mother, she insists on meeting him blindfolded. (For more detail, see pp. 3-19 in Anne Halkett’s autobiography.)

In the summer of 1646, two years after Thomas professed his undying love, Anne is again at Charlton House when she learns that Thomas has married someone else.

Since Anne was concerned about the summer house’s proximity to her mother’s rooms, we speculated that they were located on the second floor, below the long hall:

The Long Hall, rebuilt after the north side of the house was damaged by a bomb in WWII

Because the north wing of the second floor is now used as offices, we didn't get to view its rooms, but the staff at Charlton House kindly offered to let us see the cellars:

Scene 2: A Wedding “in my brother Newton’s Closet”

Original Staircase

Anne Murray’s friendship with Anne Howard apparently suffered little from the one Anne’s engagement to the other Anne’s brother. Anne Howard invited Anne Murray to Naworth Castle in September 1649, where she stayed until June 1650. There she had another courtship experience, this time involving a scheming Anglican clergyman-in-exile who was chaplain to the Naworth household. (See pp. 31 and following in the Autobiography.)

In June 1650 Anne Murray went to Scotland, where she met and became engaged to a widower from Dunfermline by the name of Sir James Halkett. In September 1654, she returned to London to set her financial affairs in order so that she could get married. This took almost two years. The wedding finally took place on 2 March 1656, outside London in Charlton House. This is how Halkett described the event:

“Upon Satturday the first of March, 1655-6, Sr James and I wentt to Charleton, and tooke with us Mr. Gaile, who was chaplaine to the Countese of Devonshire, who preached (as hee some times used to doe) att the church the next day, and affter super hee maried us in my brother Newton’s closett, none knowing of itt in the family or beeing presentt butt my brother and sister and Mr. Neale.” (p. 137)

Salon Fireplace Carving

The reason the marriage took place at Charlton House is probably because Anne wanted to be married by a proper Anglican clergyman. Religious marriages were forbidden during the Interregnum, so getting Mr. Gaile would have involved a certain amount of string-pulling and privacy, as he could have gotten in trouble for performing marriages. Mr. Gaile was chaplain to Halkett’s godmother, the Countess of Devonshire, the façade of whose house we saw at Leicester. Halkett says that a sermon preached by Mr. Gaile at St. James Palace in 1644 was what first led her to make prayer for the king a special part of her daily devotional routine, so he seems to have been a significant figure for her.

Of course, we went looking for Henry Newton’s closet. I took a photo of the fireplace in the office now identified as the Newton Room:

Unfortunately, the interior rooms of the house have been changed since Halkett’s day:

And no one seems to know who slept where in the mid-17th century.

Charlton House from the East, with Ha-ha

Credits: As you can probably tell, some of the wording as well as much of the detail comes from our resident Halkett expert. The mistakes and over-simplifications are my own.

Easter Excursion Day 2 - Naworth Castle and Lanercost Priory

On September 10, 1649, a twenty-seven-year-old Anne Murray—known to us by her married name, Anne Halkett—left London for Naworth Castle, where she stayed nine months. Naworth Castle was then the home of the twenty-one-year-old Charles Howard and his wife and cousin Anne Howard, Halkett’s childhood friend. (How convenient not to have to change your last name when you get married!)

Charles Howard

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (and Wikipedia), Charles Howard successfully tacked with the changing political winds of the tumultuous 17th century. He was brought up as a Catholic and sided with Charles I during the English civil war, but then “distinguished himself” in battle on Cromwell’s side and served in parliament during the interregnum. After the restoration of Charles II, he was knighted and appointed ambassador to Russia, and then governor of Jamaica. By the end of it all he had amassed a fortune large enough for his grandson to build the palatial Castle Howard.

Today the 14th-century Naworth Castle is still in the Howard family, serving as the residence of Philip Howard, the second son of the twelfth Earl of Carlisle.



This means, unfortunately, that it is not open to the public, unless you can afford a private guided tour. But since the castle is just down the road from where we were staying, we decided to get as close as possible on our return from Housestead's Roman Fort. Here are the castle's front gates, both ancient and modern:

Since we qualify as the "public," we continued down the lane (driveway?) past the castle, where I took another photo:

The castle website—still under construction after all these years—does have a few nice pictures of the interior.

We were looking for the public footpath that runs through the back of the Howard estate where we hoped to getting a better view, but the footpath we chanced upon once we located a "car park" took us along the other side of the River Irthing to the ruins of Lanercost Priory:

The Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalene:   

The vicar of the Priory Church is a shepherdess. I wonder, are these her sheep?

We decided against paying the fee to see the English Heritage section of the Priory ruins, and entered the restored part of the 12th-century church instead, where we were treated to the equivalent of a free guided tour.

In brief, the Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalene and adjoining Augustinian Priory were built in the 12th-13th centuries at least partly out of stones from Hadrian’s wall. (This is apparently common in Cumbria. Our “guide” explained that you can tell Hadrian’s wall stones both from the colour of the local stone and the size: they had to be small enough for Roman soldiers to carry one at a time.) King Edward I made the Priory his home in 1306-7 when he tried to conquer Scotland; in 1538 the Priory was dissolved by Henry the 8th, and both Church and Priory were mostly left in ruins. Unlike Leicester Abbey, these ruins survive, and unlike the rather thorough iconoclasts in our area, the Cumbrian reformers missed a statue:

In 1649, when Lady Halkett visited Naworth Castle, the local parish church met in the old church's north aisle. I am given to understand, however, that she most likely attended services in the Castle’s private chapel, which had its own Anglican chaplain at a time when the Anglican order of service was proscribed from use in local churches. For some reason, the list of Lanercost ministers has a gap between 1637 and 1651, so we don’t know who would have officiated if she did visit the old Priory.

The nave of the old church was re-roofed in the 18th century, and then beautifully restored in the 19th by George Howard, the 9th Early of Carlisle, and his Pre-Raphaelite friends, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. (I do regret not paying the requested £1 donation so that I could take pictures of the restored church’s beautiful interior, but you can sample Google’s offering here.)

Of greater interest to us at that moment was the walking map our guide produced, indicating the public footpath that might have afforded us a better view of Naworth Castle. Alas, by the time we had rested our feet by the old Lanercost bridge and helped rescue a wandering puppy ...

... there arose a protest against venturing any further.

Edinburgh Day 3: Dunfermline

Day 3 was a public transit extravaganza. We took a city bus to the Edinburgh train station and then a train from Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth to Inverkeithing where rail repairs necessitated a transfer to a coach to Dunfermline, the medieval capital of Scotland. A suspension bridge spanning the Firth of Forth is visible in the background of this picture:

Our initial destination was Dunfermline Abbey, though not the 19th-century shrine to Robert the Bruce visible in this picture, ...

Next door to the church yard is Abbott House, where "Lady Anne", as she is affectionately known to the locals, lived from 1671-1699 after her husband, Sir James Halkett, died:

Unfortunately, Abbott House is now closed to the public, so we weren't able to see the "Anne Halkett" room, but I took several pictures of the outside:

An index to the church cemetery informed us that the Halkett family burial plot was relocated in 1818 either in or near the "oldest part of [the] church":

Perhaps because we happened to arrive on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Robert the Bruce's tomb, the door of the medieval church was ajar ...

 ... and we located the Halkett family memorial:

Our next stop was the Dunfermline Golf Club, a couple miles down the road in Crossford. Anne Halkett lived in the clubhouse--then the Halkett family manor--from 1656-1671: 

 

More information about Pitfirrane Castle can be found here and here.

One of the staff invited us up to see the old private dining room, whose wood paneling was apparently taken from Dunfermline Abbey--presumably, if the story is true, around the time the Abbey and Palace were abandoned in the mid-to-late 17th century:

Before retracing our steps all the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped at the Dunfermline Tesco cafe for what was easily the best food we had on the entire trip: