Research Trip to Dunham Massey, Cheshire

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may know that I have been recently contracted by Pen and Sword Books to write my first non-fiction book. It is currently titled Strong Despite the Skirts, but that may change. I am planning to write a full post about my book, explaining fully what it is about and why I am writing about this topic, but for now I will just summarise.

So the book is about women who ran country houses alongside their gentry husbands. People often think that female country house owners had it easy – they embroidered, met friends and occasionally did some charity work. Whilst there were some ladies who enjoyed doing just that, there were some women who took more of a hand in managing their vast country estates. They hired and fired staff, managed the financial accounts, designed and managed any architectural changes to the house, hand-raised a family as well as participating in all the social niceties expected by society.

So where does Dunham feature in all of this? Well, one of the women I am writing about is Catharine Cox, second wife of George Harry Grey, 7^th Earl of Stamford and Warrington who, among other estates, owned Dunham Massey in Cheshire. Catharine Cox was a circus performer who was famous in London for her acrobatic skills as well as her beauty. As may be expected, George Harry’s decision to marry Catharine caused huge ripples within ‘polite’ society which ended with the couple retreating to their Staffordshire estate, Enfield. I will be writing about Catharine’s story, her marriage and Dunham Massey and Enfield Estate.

I visited Dunham Massey recently with my Mum to research the story about Catharine and George Harry and was thrilled to see that Dunham’s current exhibition about the couple was still open. I have to say that having studied country house management and worked within country houses I was blown away by the exhibition. It was interactive, it included the collection in a way that made it accessible and it was suitable for all ages. There was a combination of sound, images and artist designed pieces and the interpretation panels introduced characters as actors in a play. Not only did I learn lots about Catharine and George Harry, I really enjoyed the process of learning. Well done National Trust, you’ve done a great job of making a country house enjoyable and exciting again!

Let’s talk more about the house and its collections – I loved how much of the house was open. Obviously because it is a national trust property, none of the house is used as a private residence and so more of it can be opened to the public. My favourite room was the Saloon which had a beautiful writing desk on it which my mum said ‘I bet you’d love to be in this room to write your book wouldn’t you?’ I was like ‘YES!’.

My least favourite room was the Green Silk Room which was Catharine’s room whilst she lived at Dunham. I didn’t feel like the room really told me anything about her and the pictures of her on the wall were slightly hidden so I couldn’t even see the pictures properly. The piece of art in the centre of the room was beautiful, depicting the boned structure of a gown with birds that were trapped inside like a cage, representing Catharine’s feelings whilst she was at Dunham.

But I would have liked to see and hear more about Catharine herself. Could they have done another vocal piece, where words she may have said to herself could be heard, things like ‘have I made the right decision?’, ‘oh how I miss my exciting London life and my sister’ etc.

Overall I loved visiting Dunham Massey and I definitely want to return and spend a whole day there - and after all the research I gathered I really can’t wait to start writing about Catharine and George Harry!