DODDINGTON HALL
The station of Doddington and Harby is just over the border,
and Harby village is in Nottinghamshire. A statue over the
doorway in the church tower commemorates the fact that Here
Queen Eleanor died. Edward I. was holding a council at
Clipston in Sherwood Forest in 1290 when the queen was taken
ill and was removed to the house of one of her gentlemen in
attendance who lived at Harby. After her death her heart
was buried in Lincoln Minster and her embalmed body was
taken by stages to Westminster, a beautiful cross being subsequently
ordered to be set up at each resting place, ten of the
thirteen were either not completed or subsequently destroyed,
all those in the county being among the number. These were
at Lincoln, Grantham, and Stamford. The only three Eleanor
crosses that have survived the abominable destruction of all
beautiful things from which the country suffered, first at the
hands of Henry VIII.'s minister Cromwell, and then from the
acts of Parliament passed by the iconoclasts of the Reformation,
and finally by the soldiery of the Civil War, are at Northampton,
Geddington, and Waltham.
The first owner of Doddington Manor that we know of was one Ailric, in Edward the Confessor's time, who gave it as an endowment to the newly built Abbey of Westminster. The family of Pigot held it under the abbot, paying a rent of £12, and the estate remained with them till 1486, after which Sir John Pigot, having no heir, his widow sold it to Sir Thomas Burgh of the Old Hall, Gainsborough, and his family 100 years later sold it, in 1586, to John Savile, M.P. for Lincoln; but when, seven years later, he ceased to represent the town, he sold it to Thomas Taylor, for many years registrar to the Bishops of Lincoln. He was a wealthy man, and at once set to work to build the present hall, which was finished in 1600. It is built of red and black brick with stone quoins and mullions, and is approached by a stone gateway with two brick storeys above it and three gables. It stands between two quadrangles, with gardens in that on the west, and with a cedar-planted lawn on the east, and the E-shaped house is surmounted by three octagonal brick turrets with leaden cupolas. It is 160 feet long and seventy-five feet deep on the wings. There is no superfluous ornament, all being solidly plain but harmonious outside, and with fine stately rooms inside. The hall is fifty-three feet by twenty-two, and the long gallery on the third floor ninety-six
