Haddon Hall The Vernon Family 1350-1550
The little Derbyshire village of Bakewell sits amid picturesque rolling hills and small farms on the edge of the Peak District National Park. The park lies at the southern end of the Pennines, a range of high country running north-south that separates North West England from North East England. The first cotton mills of the Industrial Revolution were built on the streams emanating from these hills.
Today, it is bikes that roll off the hills and hikers who walk them. Tourism is big here for a reason. The landscapes are stunning and access is easy. Walking holidays are popular in Britain and the Peak District is a wonderful place to do it. The epicentre for all this activity is the little village of Bakewell.
On the edge of Bakewell lies Haddon Hall, the home of my medieval ancestors, the Vernons. Haddon Hall first came into my family in 1170, when my 26th great grandfather, Sir Richard de Vernon, married Avice Avenell, the heiress of Haddon Hall.
Feeling Connected
I am a fortunate man, for I am overflowing with grandparents. And so are you. I stopped to count once and quickly gave up. You see, all of us have two parents whether we like it or not. Each of our parents had two parents whether they liked it or not and so forth. Mathematically speaking, the number of grandparents we have increases by 2 to the power of n, where n = the number of generations we go back.
When I apply the above formula to the 26 generations since Richard and Avice, I discover I have accumulated 2 to the power of 26 or 268,435,456 grandparents. To give you an idea of just how many people that is, my grandparents, assuming an average height of 5.5 feet (folks were smaller then), when placed end to end, would stretch 36.2 times around Great Britain, no disrespect intended.
Some argue, my friends and family among them, that attempting to claim a relationship with someone who lived 900 years ago is a fatuous exercise, as staggering numbers of people may be related to any given individual who lived hundreds of years ago. As if to drive home the point, my cousin Bill tells me that David, his table mate at the retirement residence where he lives, is also related to the Vernons of Haddon Hall.
Frequently, I find myself putzing about in what I think is an obscure corner of my family tree. Then when I stop to check the connection to me, I am flabbergasted to discover they are my umpteenth great grandparents! And judging by the number of claimants to my DNA and by the following facts derived from genetics research, I am hard-pressed to argue the point.
The facts are these: the amount of DNA we possess from our ancestors diminishes rapidly with each additional generation. By as little as five generations, we may have only 3% of each ancestor’s genes and by the seventh generation, less than one percent. Yet despite the Science, I still feel that sense of connection to my ancestors of centuries past, for good reason. If any one of those 268,435,456 individuals had made a different choice of spouse, I would not be here. I may not have much of their DNA, but each and every one of them allowed me to be on this planet. How can I not feel connected?
Vernons of Haddon Hall
The Vernon family called Haddon Hall home from the late 1100s to the mid 1500s. The family came from Vernon, France, in Normandy at the time of William the Conqueror and were known as de Vernon. As Norman nobility and a party to the conquest of Britain, they were granted extensive lands in the lush rolling hills of Derbyshire and neighbouring Cheshire – the Midlands of England.
Our family’s entrée to the Vernon family came in 1510 with the marriage of William Fisher to Mary Vernon. We know little about William but his Fisher family is prominent in my family tree from the 1500s onward. Both the Fishers and the Vernons had the knack of doing well from the people they called their friends and importantly, from the carefully chosen marriages of their children.
The Vernon family seemed never in a rush to part with their wealth or position. On multiple occasions through the centuries, cousins married each other in order to combine two estates into one grand estate, doubling the wealth of the family with a mere two words — “I do”. Power, influence and more wealth came with their strategically arranged marriages and connections. Among them were three High Sheriffs, two Chief Justices, two Members of Parliament, a Speaker of the House, two Treasurers of Calais (a British possession for one hundred years up to 1558), and a governor and treasurer to Arthur, Prince of Wales. Some were earls, dukes, barons and knights. You might say they were ‘plugged in.’
Sir George Vernon was the last male of the Haddon Hall Vernons. He owned a vast acreage and was appropriately referred to as ‘King of the Peak,’ a reference to his domineering character, wealth and power. King of the Poke, however, he was not, for he died without male heirs, a circumstance much dreaded in his day, for it meant that the family’s wealth and power would fall to the in-laws.
When he died in 1565 Haddon Hall passed to his daughter Dorothy who married Sir John Manners. The couple’s descendants are the Dukes of Rutland, who own Haddon Hall today. According to legend, Dorothy Vernon, a famously beautiful and kindly young woman, fell in love with John Manners. However, her father, the formidable Sir George Vernon, forbade Dorothy to see Manners, perhaps because Manners was Protestant and the Vernons were Catholic or perhaps because John, as the second son, had uncertain financial prospects.
The couple, however, had a plan. During a ball hosted by Sir George, Mary slipped away through the garden. On the far side of a footbridge (still there today) Manners was waiting for her and away they rode to be married. This is hardly the script for a modern-day gripper but still, it was a touching love story that proved to have grip of another kind. Novels, short stories, plays including a Broadway play, a light opera and a film starring Mary Pickford in1924 have all retold the legend of Dorothy and John. Along with his wife and daughter, the brother of the current Duke of Rutland lives somewhere in Haddon Hall beyond public reach.
For 200 years, starting in 1700, Haddon Hall lay vacant. The Manners still owned it; they just chose not to live there. They had other, more upscale castles at their disposal, with bigger fireplaces, fewer cracks and more doors. The hall must have fallen into dreadful disrepair but in the 1920s the challenge of bringing Haddon back to life was taken on by the 9th Duke and Duchess of Rutland. Today, Haddon Hall is touted to be “probably the finest example of a fortified medieval manor house in existence.” Haddon Hall is open to the public.
To approach the manor one walks through the arch of the designed-to-impress gatehouse and up the entry road through an expanse of grass field, past a pond large enough to float the British Navy and up a rise to an extensive edifice, which to my ill-informed eye, seems much like a castle. To the left are the stables, converted now to a cafe. Ahead, is the manor’s entry, its ancient wood doors with iron fastenings cast wide. If you can, visit Haddon Hall. Find a you tube video on Haddon Hall narrated by Lord Edward Manners.
