a brief history BY WILL SWALES welcome Welcome to a brief history of The Feathers Hotel, Ledbury. During the late spring and early summer of 2016 we had the good fortune to be able to revitalise and refurbish one of our fabulous sister inns, The King’s Head in Richmond, North Yorkshire. During the planning stage of this project we started to look hard at the building and its many historical attributes, at how some parts of the building had been added during its 300 years of existence. And whilst contemplating the small changes and additions we wanted to make, it dawned on me that we will only be its custodians for a generation or two at most. I can’t foretell who will follow but started thinking about who had been its keepers in the past. Therefore, we asked a good friend if he would research The King’s Head and try to separate the fact from the fable; what’s true and what has been elaborated during the storytelling process over the years. Will Swales made such a good job of The King’s Head that we then asked him to complete the same task for The Feathers Hotel. What follows is that research. We think it’s as accurate as can be, but naturally there are many gaps and we would welcome any additional information. I hope you enjoy this small booklet and the hospitality and service we provide within The Feathers Hotel. Please feel free to take this copy with you. Kevin Charity Managing Director The Coaching Inn Group www.coachinginngroup.co.uk Copyright © 2018 The Coaching Inn Group Ltd., Boston, Lincolnshire, PE21 6BZ Designed by www.penny-wilson.co.uk “one of the principal monuments of ledbury.” 3 thomas pantall and the booth hall The Feathers Hotel in Ledbury comprises two extraordinary buildings standing side-by-side in the High Street. The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England has described the hotel as one of the eight ‘principal monuments’ of the town. Both of its buildings are widely acknowledged as among the best surviving examples in Ledbury of a great period of re-building that was commissioned by a group of the town’s wealthy Elizabethan clothiers, or cloth merchants. The left-side building has been dated by architectural historians to the period 1560-70. It is the earliest building of its type in the town, and was possibly the model for others that followed. Its top storey is thought to have been added in the early 1600s. Inside it retains large areas of exposed timbers, some examples of original wall painting, and a Detail of the pattern on an original wall painting in the private house, built 1560-70. grand staircase dating from the late 1600s. The building seems to have been erected as a private house, and to have remained so until about 1700. The building on the right was erected around 1600, and was originally used for various functions of local-government. It belonged to the lords of the manor, and was known as the Booth Hall, or sometimes the Boothall House, the Manor House, or the Lord’s House. The story of The Feathers Hotel began in 1698 with the appointment of Thomas Pantall as tenant of the Booth Hall and as bailiff of the manor. His contract with 12 joint lords of the manor is on public display in the Painted Room at 1 Church Lane, another of the town’s early timber-frame buildings. Pantall, a cutler of Ledbury, took a lease on the Booth Hall for 20 years. His rent was £10 13s 4d a year, in addition to which he was required to collect and account for the rents of the tenants of the manor, and to maintain the Booth Hall as the court chamber, a prison, and a ‘park house’. His reward was to keep the profits, normally due The lord of the manor’s Booth Hall, built in about 1600. to the lords, from the tolls of three annual fairs held in the town at Easter, Michaelmas and Christmas. 4 The staircase of the late 1600s. 5 a house ‘now called the plume of feathers’ An abstract of deeds reveals that in 1699 Thomas Pantall purchased the house adjoining the Booth Hall for £230. In 1702 this property was described in a deed of marriage jointure for Thomas’s wife Joane as ‘now called or known by the name of the Plume of Feathers’. This could be one of the earliest recorded examples of this particular inn-name, and so possible explanations of its origin are worth exploring. Generally, it came to be represented on inn-signs by the symbol of a crown and three ostrich feathers, being the heraldic device of the heir to the throne and the title Prince of Wales. The symbol is said to have been first adopted by Edward the Black Prince (1330-76), the son and heir of Edward III. There was no holder of the title Prince of Wales between 1553 and 1610, the period in The Prince of Wales emblem on one of the street-facing timbers of the private-house which both buildings are thought to have been erected, so the small carving of the building could be a late addition. Prince of Wales emblem on one of the street-facing timbers of the private-house building could be a late addition. Significantly, at the time of Thomas and Joane Pantall’s marriage, and of the naming of the inn, there was an important national event concerning the then Prince of Wales that could point to the choice of inn- name having political undertones. Earlier, in 1688, the Catholic King James II had been deposed and replaced by Protestant joint monarchs, William of Orange and his wife Mary. James fled to France with his family and entourage, including his baby son and heir, James Francis Edward Stuart, the Prince of Wales. The young James’s titles continued to be recognised by the English establishment on the understanding that if he converted to Protestantism he could later accede to the throne. But on the death of his father in 1701, the 13-year-old prince, still a Catholic, proclaimed himself now the rightful king of England and Scotland. He was immediately attainted for treason and stripped of his titles. So-called Jacobite sympathisers were often not shy about declaring their allegiance James Francis Edward Stuart, acknowledged as to the Catholic claimant. Therefore, it’s possible that the naming of the Plume Prince of Wales from 1688 to 1701, painted c.1700-05, of Feathers in Ledbury, seemingly at almost precisely this time, was an oblique attributed to Alexis-Simon Belle, Royal Collection declaration by Thomas and Joane Pantall of their support for the young Prince Trust, © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2018. of Wales, and a hoped-for return of a Catholic king. 6 thomas pantall’s flasks Supporting evidence for Thomas Pantall’s period as owner and “… buried among a innkeeper of The Plume of Feathers exists in the rare form of the large quantity of old remains of four glass flasks, each bearing a moulded seal of a plume of feathers surrounded by the words ‘Thomas Pantell 1709’. bottles, clay pipes and They were found during an archaeological dig in 2009, buried among a large quantity other items…” of old bottles, clay pipes and other items, in what is thought to have been a rubbish pit, under a car park adjoining the back of the inn. Brilliantly coloured through age, this is the best example of the glass flasks bearing a moulded seal of the plume of feathers with the innkeeper’s name and the date of 1709. Photo arranged with thanks to Tim Hoverd, Herefordshire Archaeology. 7 acquired by a famous publisher A deed dated 1719 recorded that Thomas Pantall ‘innholder’ leased for nine years ‘all that inn commonly known as the Plume of Feathers’ to Humphrey Owen, ‘innholder’. The lease terms included ‘the boards and trestles that are in and about… for standings to be used in the fairs and markets’, which suggests that Humphrey Owen had also succeeded Pantall in the Booth Hall contract, with its right to collect the market tolls. In 1726 Humphrey Owen got a new landlord when Thomas Pantall sold the inn for £450. The conveyance deed confirmed that the inn at this time comprised – ‘All that messuage… commonly called or known by the sign of the Plume of Feathers… in the High Street in the borough of Ledbury in the county of Hereford, between: the street on the east part; land late of Richard Cox, clothier deceased, and now of Chas. Lacy, on Publisher Jacob Tonson (1655-1736), by Sir Godfrey Kneller. © National Portrait Gallery. the west part; the Booth Hall House on the north part; and the house, buildings, garden and backside of Caleb Randolph, lately called the Royal Oak, on the south part.’ The new owner from 1726 was Jacob Tonson, a relatively new but very wealthy and distinguished landowner in the district. He was nationally famous for having made a fortune as the London publisher of two of the country’s leading poets of the period, John Dryden and John Milton. As a founder and the secretary of the famous Kit Cat Club, he enjoyed the company of great writers, politicians and aristocrats. He retired from business in 1720, aged 64, and used some of his riches to buy a new home and estate for himself at The Hazle, a historic home of one of the lords of the manor of Ledbury.