Return to Blankney

But on this day of my return to the village my focal point was the fine Palladian Hall: where I had spent over twelve months during the Second World War. I arrived at the gateway to the drive. I looked across the intervening land towards the Hall: the effect was uncanny. I felt as if I had slipped back over the years and was, once again returning from leave. The Hall looked almost the same with the roof still open to the sky and the breeze blowing through the unglazed window frames, a monumental shell in ruins amid a setting of increasing wildness: standing there waiting.

I walked up the main drive. Pools from recent showers reflected the building against the still threatening sky. Where grass lawns had been, there was now barley beginning to turn golden. I became conscious of an unnatural stillness pervading the place.

The place appeared to have become an embodiment of the past. The heavy facade of the building seemed to be gazing out along the drive-waiting-waiting for whom?

I walked over to that part of the building which juts out at right-angles to the front of the Hall on the south side: it used to be the billiard room. The windows were dirty from neglect but one was open and I looked through it into the empty room. There was the fireplace at one end which in winter, in spite of it being filled with fire, never seemed to warm the room. I said the room was empty, but as I gazed and my thoughts wandered, I saw the figures of three of my erstwhile companions of the RAF - Lindsay Costeloe from Stockport, Jim Conway from Glasgow and Mervyn Bush from Birmingham - all moving around the billiard table with cues in their hands and laughing at some unlikely shot that had uncannily 'come off'' to the surprise of all.

A cloud passed over the sun and the vision faded back into the past. Once more the room was empty and silent, with the bars of the fire grate cold and uninviting and the damp walls now beginning to lose their shiny surface. Lindsay Costeloe and I came from Cheshire, were both interested in music and drama and, towards the end of our stay at Blankney, we produced jointly a stage show called "Loud and Clear" for which we found a great deal of talent on the camp. We were particularly fortunate in having the help of one of the WAFF's, Peggy Hale, who was a first class dancer and is now principal of a dancing school in Kettering.

As I wandered round the building and gardens, some of the atmosphere of former years seemed to crowd in on me. The fire which reduced Blankney Hall to ruins started on St Swithin's Day 15 July 1945. It was a sunny Sunday evening following a very hot day.

We airmen were sitting in the Dining Hall having tea, when one of our corporals came in and said "There's a fire at the top of the house." We went out to the south end of the building where some of our fellows were on the roof trying to reach a tank of water with a hose which they had already laid out on the top of the building: the hose however, was too short to reach. A fire-tender from our parent station Digby arrived and we tried to connect hose carts to the nearest hydrant which we found near the front of the Hall. The hydrant, however, was of an obsolete type and the modern hose unions would not fit it. Consequently we couldn't get any pressure of water to the fire and valuable time was lost. Here was the delay, which, I believe, lost the battle for the Hall.

In the meantime a bucket-chain had been started and as the fire, which was in the WAFF quarters, became fiercer, we helped all the WAFFs out with some of their belongings, as much as they could carry.

Soon fire brigades from Lincoln, Sleaford, Metheringham, Woodhall Spa and Billinghay arrived and started to pump water from a large pond in the grounds. They pumped it almost dry and the smell of rotting vegetation afterwards was terrible.

Eventually a hydrant was fixed in the centre of the building, but a strong breeze which was now blowing helped the flames at the north end of the hall to creep gradually towards the south. Some of us turned our attention to salvaging as much as we could of the girls' belongings.

Owing to the relaxation of regulations governing the wearing of civilian clothes, all the WAFFs had quite a bit of civilian clothing with them in camp. Our task was to race through the top floors of the Hall, emptying all drawers and cupboards we could find, throwing the items out of the windows onto the grass below and trying to keep ahead of the fire which was creeping along beneath us. Clothes, suitcases and the contents of chests of drawers were dropped to the waiting girls and airmen down below, to be sorted out later on.

By this time, the floors and roof were beginning to collapse and we were ordered out of the building as half the Hall was ablaze. In the meantime the Countess of Londesborough, who had been living in part of the hall, was being helped by her staff. Together with some American servicemen from a nearby camp they managed to get a grand piano out onto the Lawn.

Years ago a former resident, the Second Earl of Londesborough, had a passion for fire-engines. If a fire broke out within a radius of twenty or thirty miles of the Hall, he would leave his guests to their own devices and tear off on his little red fire-engine. No doubt it was he who had had the little fire-station built, from which came some of the antiquated equipment with which we tried to save his Hall.

So died Blankney Hall.

Now nature has taken over. In the crannies of the walls, in between the paving stones and along the footings of the walls tufts of grasses and flowers had rooted themselves. The magnolia tree still blossomed on the front of the building and a carved figure over the main doorway looked out rather wistfully from the desolation within. Before occupation by the RAF, glittering social occasions would have echoed to the same rafters that now lay charred and sodden in the grass and flower-beds where they had fallen or been thrown on the night of the fire. There was something uncanny and strangely disturbing about these charred reminders of the past: of my own past.

I discovered that the Blankney Estate was being administered by agents who had an office up a lane near the crossroads. The two clerks there were interested to hear my first hand story about the events on the night of the fire. They gave me permission to wander round the site and take photographs. But before returning to the ruins, I called at the village post-office which also served as a general store. Hundreds of small items fastened to cards hung round the walls: tinctures for one thing, pills for another, ointments for this and mixtures for that. Cakes chocolates and cooked meats met in an ill-assorted display on the counter, while the more bulky items such as buckets, clothes-lines, fire lighters, cases of minerals and paraffin oil were gathered into convenient heaps on the floor.

A dark, middle aged woman wearing an old slouch hat waited to attend me. I wanted two things: information about the Hall and a fruit pie. (Why a fruit pie you will learn later).

She recalled how many people were engaged on the Estate during the First World War, and spoke of some of the famous people who had stayed at the Hall, such as King Edward V11, then Prince of Wales.

On the ground floor back at the Hall there was a bay window on the east side of a large room where we worked when on duty.

It was possible to look through the window over the sunken garden and lawns, past the pool to the fields beyond. I retraced my steps through the sunken garden and found that the two sculptured children were still disporting themselves in the pool although the grass now almost obscured them. The building we used during the war as a NAAFI was an old barn-like place covered with lichen situated at the opposite end of the drive. The windows had been broken, and I was able to look inside and see the old serving hatch where we bought tea, coffee, cakes and (if available) chocolate. One regular item on sale was a well-known make of fruit pie: we must have consumed thousands, but at a price less than half what I paid at the village post-office. So back again in my old eating haunt I enjoyed my fruit pie while leaning on the window-sill of the now deserted former NAAFI.

Close to the walls at the back of the Hall there used to be lavender and other herbs growing in small beds, until the night of the fire when, I am afraid, many were trampled underfoot in the urgency of the hour. Nearby was the sunken garden which used to be full of roses. On moonlight nights, when on guard duty, I have wandered around this garden amid the flowers and the shadows, and surrounded by the subtle fragrance of rose and herb in the cool atmosphere of the Lincolnshire countryside. In the distance a slow goods train chugging its way between Lincoln and Sleaford drawn by a heavy steam locomotive.

Those were the pleasant nights when everything seemed good and peaceful. But there were other nights. Nights when I felt that someone else was in the garden, someone watching me. Such nights made me feel uneasy and I felt conscious of an evil or mischievous atmosphere surrounding the place. I used to call them 'evil nights' and I would hurry back to the doubtful seclusion of the sentry-box with occasional glimpses over my shoulder. I mentioned this experience to my friend Lindsay Costeloe on one occasion and he said that he also had similar feelings at times. But that was fifteen years ago: now I found no roses to scent the air, and the flower-beds and steps leading into the sunken garden were a mass of thistles and weeds.

There was ample accommodation for horses at Blankney, and it had been the stables, where we were billeted. Designed by E.J. Willson in 1825, for some of the finest bloodstock in England, they were well built and we made them quite comfortable. Today they were being used as poultry houses. Coming off a duty watch at midnight, the fact of not having to get up early the next morning often induced Lindsay, Jim, Mervyn and me to play billiards into the early hours of the morning until the moon came up over the trees and a ghostly mistiness stole in from the fens.

Blankney church tower rises above the stables only a few yards beyond the fence. On certain Sunday mornings, just as we climbed into bed to sleep after a night watch, the eight bells in the tower (given by farmers as a thank-offering after the First World War) would begin their morning peal: it was after the national ban on bell-ringing had been lifted. As they rang out on the morning air, poor Lindsay would lie fuming in his bed, trying to sleep against the clangour of what he described as 'those perishing bells'.

The church stands between two main drives to the Hall. The rector showed me round, pointing out the silver-gilt chalice and paten of the early 16th century and a strange effigy of one John de Glori about whom little seems to be known but is dated early 14th century. Perhaps the finest monument is the kneeling life-size figure in white marble by Sir Edgar Boehm of Lady Florence Chaplin wife of Henry Chaplin the famous Victorian squire. The marriage only lasted five years, as she died after a two day illness, on 10th October 1981.

Returning to the Hall, I discovered that the demolishers had moved in. I felt that I had returned for the death of the Hall. One man told me that some of the stone was going to repair Lincoln Cathedral, but a lot of the rubble was being dumped down the lane. Before leaving I returned once more to the back of the Hall, and there I noticed something against the east wall-it was a spray of roses. So all the roses hadn't deserted the place. At least one link with the rose garden remained.

Taken from - A Blankney Journal - A blog by Rodney Garlant
Previously published January 2009. Used with permission.

More images of Blankney Hall can be found in our photo archive.