Ingatestone Hall (and Station)

We visited Ingatestone Hall, a Tudor mansion that has remained in the Petre family since it was purchased out of the lands of St Erkenwald's monastic foundation of Barking during the Reformation. The house was completed the year Old Sir Rowland Hill completed his freehold purchase of Soulton Hall, Shropshire, from Thomas Lodge (1556). Like Soulton, Ingatestone has sheltered secrets and protected people through religious turmoil. The Petre family is Roman Catholic, and there are not only priest hides in the building, but displays of the most poignant relics, including execution-day clothes of a Jacobite lord from The '45.

Another connection is St Erkenwald (or Erconwald). The local church is dedicated to the Patron Saint of London (whose relics we recently located at Soulton). We are have raised funds to continue Harry Frost's acclaimed performance tour of the Middle-English poem 'Erkenwald', and are keen to discuss the possibility of a date at Ingatestone to celebrate the links.

'The Mysteries' feature, too. Like Soulton, Ingatestone is on the Grand Tour route (the Roman Road goes through Ingatestone, and the present A12 is still close), but unusually it kept this status in the Age of Steam, as the magnificent Ingatestone Station serves the manor, and advertises its ethical excellence through windows (likely manufactured by the Shropshire ironmasters) that display a key pattern that represents the Rhombic Dodecahedron, versions of which can also be seen in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, and in the Round Church in Cambridge.

We brought back two souvenirs to pass on to Soulton to rekindle connections: a guide book and a teatowel, which we used while raising a toast to St Erkenwald after recent media interviews at Soulton. The whisky for the toast was a celebratory gift from superstar sculptor Jacob Chandler.

One of the highlights of the guidebook is the story of Robert Petre, 9th Baron Petre, who through holding both his Roman Catholicism and a position as Grand Master within Freemasonry (a non-sectarian British fraternal tradition that nevertheless in reflecting the Orders of Garter and Thistle proclaimed political loyalty to a Protestant state in such a way as to be antagonistic to the Roman Church on the Continent), was able to secure Catholic Emancipation. That is, religious and political freedoms were restored in Britain partly through the reconciliation Lord Petre embodied.

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