Coughton Court (21st July)

Coughton Court is another property that we highly recommend, both for the beauty of the building and gardens, and for historical interest. We would warn you that even NT members have to pay to see the garden, which is worth seeing.

This is the ancestral home of a prominent Romanist family, the Throckmortons, and it has a significant association with the Gunpowder Plot, for which they provide a very good booklet on the subject. The leader of the plotters' (Catesby) mother was Anne Throckmorton of Coughton Court, another plotter's (Tresham) mother was her sister, Muriel, nine of the other plotters were related to the Throckmortons, the house was rented for the Midlands headquarters of the planned uprising by another plotter and the Jesuit priests implicated in the plot were living there at the time!

The Throckmortons are proud Romanists and have various items on display such as a cope made by Catherine of Aragon, Mary Queen of Scots' execution robe, a large document from the Elizabethan period professing adherance to the cause of Rome, a Priest hole (for hiding Jesuits) and other memorabilia. Their website has the following statement: One house, one family, one faith!

See a photo album of this trip here: