Henry VII Slept Here: The Myths of 'Selly Manor'
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The house today known as Selly Manor Museum has varied past…depending on who you asked over the years. The truth is that it was old farmhouse on Bournbrook Road that attracted the attention of artists and historians through the nineteenth century; its clearly great age and considerable decrepitude making it a natural subject for them.[1] This interest resulted in a lot of pictures and photographs of the house but no established history.
The interest in the house and land was quickened when it came onto the market in 1895, advertised as land for building, rather than as agricultural land as it had previously been used. In the absence of known history and rising curiosity about the house’s past, the imagination and commercial instincts of one or more of the three tenants served to fill in the blanks. A cottage industry arose of charging interested visitors a small amount for a cup of tea and telling them tall stories about the house, as a letter in the Birmingham Daily Post recounted:
'A week before the auction...I wended my way to the half-timbered cottages... partly from a view to attending the sale and partly from an antiquarian proclivity, having them in my mind's eye from passing them at times in a country stroll, being very hospitably entertained to a refreshing cup of tea and nice bread and butter by one of the tenants, and at a charge so low that I forbear to mention the name of mine host for fear of the kind hearted occupiers should be overwhelmed with callers. A pleasant chat with Mr Blank about the antiquity of the cottages resulted in setting them down from 300 to 400 years of age, and, if the tradition is true, that the miscreant Richard III did stay to rest here, they must be 400 years old...'[2]
Other correspondents talked about stories that the house was haunted; unfortunately details of the ghost stories haven't survived to the present.
Picture above: This picture shows the Rookery in the late 1800's. This is what the property would have looked like when the account of the residents telling their tall tales dates from.
The historical myths about the house started at this time have a remarkably long life. The one about King Richard III sleeping at the house, with the variation that it was on the way to the Battle of Bosworth is sceptically published in a 1984 guidebook, with a comment that the distance to Bosworth makes it unlikely.[3] Another undated guidebook gives a variant that the future Henry VII slept at Selly Manor on the way to same battle (which would imply both opposing leaders slept under the same roof on their way to the battle), and adds that there are traditions that Cromwell and Robert Catesby, one of the gunpowder plotters, also slept in the house.[4] Possibly Catesby is a canny invented visitor, his links to Warwickshire and Staffordshire making him a likely local. Remarkably, there is no recorded tradition of Charles I or Charles II having slept here! Needless to say, there is no evidence that any of these famous visitors ever slept at the old farmhouse.
The letter, above, from Birmingham Daily Post attracted the attention of local historian and steward to the manor of Northfield and Weoley, Frank S Pearson. Unfortunately, in his reply, by mistake, he started the single biggest myth about the house, that it was the manor of Selly. He even admits in his letter that he can't find the entry for the manor and is writing from his own memory:
'I have every reason to believe that the cottages your correspondents mention were formerly the manor house or hall of the manor of Selly, one of three tithings or sub-manors of the manor of Weoley. It would, I fear, take too much of your space to trace the facts of the manor of Selly, the tenure on which they were held, and the reasons for the belief that the cottages are the old manor hall.... I cannot at the moment find the entry, but I believe about the year six of Henry VI when Thomas Jonettes had just succeeded to the manor on the death of his mother, Agnes, the hall was reported at the court of Weoley to be in a ruinous condition, If this be so it is not impossible that Thomas Jonettes built a new house altogether. I am not aware who is the present owner of the property, but if there are any ancient deeds to the property, they might throw some light on the matter if he would permit them to be examined.'[5]
In reality the house was a farmhouse and even before its descent into multiple tenancy its residents would have been one social step below the lords of the manor, being yeomen farmers who were free tenants and not serfs. This 1895 letter is the first record of the house being called Selly Manor; it has been established that at various times its name was Smythes Tenement, Selly Hill Farm, and at this time was called The Rookery. The real manor of Selly was actually much closer to the current Selly Manor Museum site. It most likely would have been located near the war memorial on Sycamore Road, Bournville.
Picture above: This photograph was taken around 1904 in its original location on Bournbrook Road.
The following year Pearson wrote an article in the Transactions of the Birmingham Archaeological Society in which he repeated his belief that the Rookery was the manor of Selly, and the myth took hold. By 1904 a postcard of the house was published labelled 'The Old Manor Bournbrook Rd Bournbrook'. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings took an interest in George Cadbury's subsequent purchase of the house, and in their correspondence with him referred to the house as the manor of Selly. The myth was well established by 1920, when both the architect of the reconstruction, WA Harvey, and FTS Houghton in Transactions of the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society repeated the claim that the house was the manor of Selly, without question. It would be difficult or impossible to call the house by any other name now because it has been known as Selly Manor since its opening as a museum in 1917.
The way the house has been reconstructed can also sometimes encourage visitors to interpret it in a way which doesn't reflect the real history. Luckily the 'priest's hole' tends to arouse people's suspicion that priests using it must have been very small. There are no records of a priest's hole before the reconstruction or of the house being involved in Roman Catholic recusancy. Similarly, by the time the house was moved, the external staircase mentioned in an old description of the house had been removed and replaced by an internal one. This means that the much-loved aspect of the house from Maple Road incorporates an external staircase created anew in the twentieth century, using salvaged materials.
Picture above: This photograph is from the reconstruction of Minworth Greaves in the 1930s. The architects used very similar methods to reconstruct both Selly Manor and Minworth Greaves in the early 20th century.
Standards of conservation have changed in the century since the house was moved to Bournville, and have come to give greater respect to social history and layers of meaning. While it is important to acknowledge that the many myths about 'Selly Manor' are myths, it is also important to give them their correct standing as part of the colourful history of the old house's long and peripatetic life. In fact, the idea of the tenants making some money by telling tall stories to visitors over a cup of tea is one of my favourite parts of the house's history.
Written by John Berry, a volunteer at Selly Manor Museum. He likes to let people think that he is a descendant of the Rev. John Berry who owned the house at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Sources
- Unless otherwise specified all information comes from George Demidowicz: 'Selly Manor': A New History. For the Selly Manor Museum, Bournville Village Trust, 2012.
- Letter from 'GHS', Birmingham Daily Post, July 5th, 1895. Cited in Demidowicz, op. cit., Appendix 1, p. 30.
- Elizabeth M Henslowe: Selly Manor Bournville. Birmingham: Bournville Village Trust, 1984.
- Anonymous: Selly Manor and Minworth Greaves, Bournville. Birmingham: Bournville Village Trust, no date.
- Letter from Frank S Pearson, Birmingham Daily post, July 9th, 1895. Cited in Demidowicz, op. cit., Appendix 1, p.30.