The Tearooms
In 1999 The Old Coach House won one of the CLA's (Country Land & Business Association) most coveted awards for the best conversion of a redundant building in the East of England Region.
The Old Coach House can be contacted on
01335 350501 (Manageress, Sally Hollingsworth) with bookings being taken for special groups and parties throughout the spring and summer months.
Summer Opening Times:
Open Daily - 10.30 to 5
Tissington Village
The beauty of Tissington, as with many an English village, is the result of evolution. No planner designed it, no bureaucrat decided how and where the houses were to be built. The village grew in that effortless and instinctive way that villages did before the Industrial Revolution began to change the face of England.
There
are wide green spaces and the houses, scattered about, are unintentional
and unselfconscious architectural gems. The by-road to Tissington
is flanked by a lodge and large stone gate-piers and is lined by an avenue
of limes. These trees were planted in 1970 by the late Sir John
FitzHerbert to take over from the Victorian avenue that had to be cut
down in 1991/92 as a result of rot and decay.
Instead
of this road, more like a private drive than a public thoroughfare, approaching
a nobleman's solitary seat as one might expect, it leads to the exquisite
beauty of the village of Tissington. Another approach to the village
passes from the east through a shallow ford or water-splash where a white
post indicates the depth. However, once in the village, the most
striking building is the Hall, a
splendid mansion that is unique amongst country houses in that it stands
in the midst of the village, central to community life.
The
long, low mansion is the seventeenth century home of the
FitzHerbert family. Presently the ninth Baronet, Sir Richard
FitzHerbert (who inherited the Title and Estate in 1989) lives there with
his wife Caroline (they were married in Gloucestershire in 1993) and their
young family. The FitzHerberts built the house and have lived there
for the best part of five centuries, adding not only to the size of the
Hall but also to the Estate domains throughout those years. The
family funerary monuments crowd the small churchyard which can be seen
from the Hall to the north of the
Church.
Standing
in this oasis of peace, as yet spared from the curses of modern progress,
it is difficult to believe that this was once a battleground, for during
the Civil War, there was a skirmish here between royalists and parliamentarians.
The FitzHerberts were for Church and King. Colonel FitzHerbert garrisoned
the Hall for the Royalist cause, and the family were lucky that their
home was not destroyed.
Tissington Village, on account of its unique beauty, attracts many thousands of sightseers every year, not only from this country, but from all over the world, yet it should not be forgotten that the village is the home and workplace to 150 people, many of whom were born and bred in the Village, like their ancestors before them.
History of Tissington Hall
J. Sinar
Tissington is first recorded in Domesday as Tizintin derived from Tidsige's farm. It was probably settled by the Anglians in the 7th century in the course of their move north from the Trent.
After the Norman Conquest, Tissington was given to Henry de Ferrers who had it in hand in 1086. Some time in the reign of Henry I (1100-1135) Earl Ferrers gave Tissington to one of his knights named Savage. When the male line ran out the manor was split between two daughters who married into the families of Meynell and Edensor. Edensor's heiress married an Audly, and the manor was held in moieties, or two separate parts, by the families of Meynell and Audly from at least from 1275 to 1330, possibly longer. Meynell's share passed by marriage to the Francis family in the mid or late 15th century, and Cicely Francis again took it in marriage to Nicholas FitzHerbert in the late 15th century (c.1480).
Form the mid 17th century, the FitzHerberts bought land steadily in Tissington, Fenny Bentley, Thorpe and neighbouring parishes. They acquired estates elsewhere by marriage and inheritance.
North of the church is an earthwork which is almost certainly the site of the old manor house, with the mound and ditch remains of a probably fortified building. The hall was probably fortified in the middle ages. It could, however, have been fortified or refortified in December 1643, when Col FitzHerbert garrisoned his home for the king. It was evacuated the following February after a fight near Ashbourne which the royalists lost. The new hall had been built a generation earlier but it would make more sense to strengthen an old fortified site than to put a new hall at risk.
According to family tradition, the new hall was built by Francis FitzHerbert in 1609. Francis FitzHerbert died in 1619, and the second stage of building is attributed to Francis FitzHerbert's son Sir John FitzHerbert, who died in 1642, as it is the Hall's gateway to the village street, dated about 1625. Its later ironwork, dating from the early 18th century is attributed to Robert Bakewell. North of the Hall is a Jacobean outbuilding, much restored.
The old Hall was not demolished. It survived until at least 1780 and probably for a generation after that, together with the cottages and farms that lined the village street north of the church. Before 1834, the old Hall and the village buildings opposite the new Hall were demolished to make room for a small park.
The Hall acquired its own electricity supply probably before 1934. Sir
William FitzHerbert, who succeeded to the estate in 1934, demolished the
private power station and rebuilt it opposite the duckpond as the Village
Hall.
Visiting the Hall
Monday 12th April to Friday 16th April
Monday 31st May to Friday 4th June
and
Tues, Wed,Thurs and Fridays
20 July to 27 August
Also
SPECIAL GARDEN OPEN DAYS
for the NGS(national Gardens Scheme)
Monday 30th August (Bank Holiday Monday)
Tuesday 31st August
(All proceeds to cancer charities)
and
GARDEN OPERA at Tissington
Friday 2nd July 2004 at 7.00pm
Don Giovanni by the Garden Opera Compnay
in Ashbourne Arts Festival Week
Call 01335 352200 for details
For further information, contact:
The Estate Office
Tissington Hall
Tissington
Ashbourne
Derbyshire DE6 1RA
01335 352200
tisshall@dircon.co.uk