The New Murrey and Blue blog

My husband Robin and I were married on 28 October 1967, and today would have been our fifty-seventh anniversary, but I lost him nine years ago. It’s still hard to be on my own.

Back then we lived in a tiny cottage in Hardwicke, a few miles south of Gloucester. Our daughter Sarah was a toddler when I began to write historical novels, one of which I named Alice, after a fictional young lady in the reign of Edward II. Alice de Longmore lived in a castle I placed on a hill I could see from our cottage. The hill was to the west of Hardwicke—at the straggling hamlet of Elmore—with the River Severn curving around the foot of it. I imagined Alice’s castle perched there, guarding the river and southern approaches to Gloucester. Her name was a combination of Elmore and the adjacent village of Longney.

That’s all it was. Imagination. There was no castle there at all….but it turned out that there was a large country house. I didn’t find it until one day when I went for a bicycle ride with my daughter in a little seat behind me. I rode through pretty Elmore, up its long, wide green of scattered houses and cottages, some half-timbered, to find among the trees at the top some very grand black and gold wrought iron gates. Worthy of Buck House, I remember thinking. Well, I stopped, and looked through to see the façade of Elmore Court, which appeared to be more recent than the time of medieval castles.

I found out that the site had been owned/occupied continuously by the Guise family for 750 years, since being given it by Henry III in the 13^th century. This puts it high on the list of residences occupied continuously by one family, such as Berkeley Castle. Henry set the rent at “One clove of gillyflower a year”. What had been on the site that far back I don’t know, but no matter how much I wished, I couldn’t conjure it into a full-blown castle! The present house dates to the late 16th century and was altered during the 18th and 19th centuries (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmore_Court, which link contains many references/sources). You can learn more about the Guise family here https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/8dfe3e43-02ac-4600-b647-c039bddb9454.

Back in the early days of my marriage Elmore Court was open to the public on certain days, and Robin and I did go there on one occasion. The above armorial oriel window is in the great entrance hall, and is very splendid indeed. My writer’s inner eye was busy, and although I refrained from giving 14^th-century Alice an Elizabethan oriel window, I did include the window in a book from my long career writing Regency-era novels. So I made the most of Elmore Court.

Of course, Elmore Court has changed a lot since then, and has featured in TV shows. See here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01shr3d/p01shpjx and on Channel Four, although that link is no longer available. The house is now a venue for weddings. You can see more here https://www.elmorecourt.com/weddings/ and here https://www.hitched.co.uk/wedding-venues/elmore-court_5896.htm.