Other famous homes of Great Britain and their stories . y. A few of the largest rooms inthe old Abbey have little innerchambers, supposed to have beenused as powdering closets,when the monks of Stoneleighgave place to fair women andbrave men. The visitors inter-est is also aroused by a curiousfigure painted on a wooden is known as the pretty house-maid. The legend tells how abeautiful housemaid of long agohad clad herself in fair array, in apale plum-coloured laced bodice,blue skirt, lace cap and ruffles, bracelets and ring, in prepara-tion for the Coventry fair, when the housekeeper
Other famous homes of Great Britain and their stories . y. A few of the largest rooms inthe old Abbey have little innerchambers, supposed to have beenused as powdering closets,when the monks of Stoneleighgave place to fair women andbrave men. The visitors inter-est is also aroused by a curiousfigure painted on a wooden is known as the pretty house-maid. The legend tells how abeautiful housemaid of long agohad clad herself in fair array, in apale plum-coloured laced bodice,blue skirt, lace cap and ruffles, bracelets and ring, in prepara-tion for the Coventry fair, when the housekeeper indignantlycommanded her to don her long apron, take her broom andsweep the floor; the Lord Leigh of the time, beholding herthus, was so struck by her beauty that he ordered that sheshould be painted. Chancellor Ferguson of Carlisle, who haspublished a pamphlet on Picture-Board Dummies, in which hedescribes this figure and others like it, conjectures that it isreally that of a Flemish gentlewoman masquerading as a house-maid, of the date 1610 to THE PRETTY HOUSEMAID StoneleiGb an& its flDcmories 265 The visitor who, on antiquarian researches intent, approachesStoneleigh Abbey from its west side, is surprised to find himselfconfronted by a comparatively modern house, with its Italiangardens sloping down on the south side to the banks of Shake-speares Avon. But having passed through Robert de HockelesGateway, already men-tioned, he soon discov-ers the old Abbey con-cealed behind the newbuilding erected in Ital-ian style and attached tothe ancient house by Ed-ward Lord Leigh in 1720. There is a persistentrumour that at one per-iod of his existence, whichno doubt included certainprivate visits to England,the Young Pretender wasa visitor at Stoneleigh Ab-bey. Indeed, a strangercorrespondent, a clergy-man of the Church of England, writing to the owner some years ago, referred to the factas one about which there was no question : when invited to quotehis authority he was unprep
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectcountry, bookyear1902
