Exploring Heritage
This atmospheric Elizabethan farmhouse secured its place in history when it provided a safe refuge for a fleeing king, which in turn saved its own future
Just to the north of Moseley Old Hall runs a motorway, with its incessant rumble of vehicles, while on all other sides, Wolverhampton encroaches – a bustling, 21st-century urban oasis of technology and industry.
Approaching this Elizabethan farmhouse, however, is the closest you may ever get to time travel. To reach the property, you take a narrow, twisting lane with high hedges that preclude the view. Then, all of a sudden, as the greenery closes in, the distant past becomes as if yesterday.
‘It still has that sense of a little enclave,’ says Sarah Kay, National Trust cultural heritage curator. ‘Just imagine being in that house, in the middle of the 17th century, in the dark, hearing the sound of horses’ hooves clattering down the lane, not knowing who is coming.’
That was exactly the scene, early on the morning of 8 September 1651, as the would-be King of England approached. Not that he looked like a king. Charles II – as he would later become – had just suffered a humiliating trouncing at the Battle of Worcester –the last Royalist defeat by Cromwell’s New Model Army.
And now, here he was, hobbling up to Moseley Old Hall, footsore and dog-weary. He arrived at the door which – as he later described to the famous diarist Samuel Pepys – was ‘three planks wide and studded’, details that speak volumes. This was not just a doorway: for the future King Charles II, this was a portal between life and death.
A simple woodman
It is a 40-mile trek from Worcester to Moseley at the best of times, and this was far from the best of times. Charles – at 6ft 3”, unusually tall for his day – could not afford to stand out, nor could he afford to look royal. Cromwell’s troops were hot on his very sore heels. Yet even soldiers who had fought alongside him would have been hard-pressed to know Charles now. Loyal Shropshire farmer Richard Pendrell - in charge of this stage of the escape – had roughly cut his liege’s hair, disguising him as a simple woodman. Then, together, the two men had begun a tortuous route in the hope of eventually getting Charles safely over to France via a port in Wales.
