Before we were able to follow our instincts and immerse ourselves further in the lost world of Robert Bateman, we were confronted by the more mundane imperative of twenty-first-century financial reality. At the outset of our restoration of Bletchley Manor, we had made the controversial decision to allow the two distinct phases of its building – half-timbered Tudor gables and an early nineteenth-century stuccoed wing – to sit alongside each other undisguised, with no attempt to resolve the architectural disparity between them. It had been a radical approach and several times during the course of the work we had feared the result might be an uncoordinated hotchpotch rather than a stimulating juxtaposition of surviving historical fragments. So it was exciting as we reached the final phase to see the Manor emerge from its chrysalis of scaffolding and sheeting as both a usable family home and a striking historical building with a unique persona.
When the topiary garden was planted and a new approach from the busy main road was completed, Bletchley began to attract serious attention in the historic house world. It was recognised as a significant and hitherto unregistered element in the heritage of Shropshire. The architectural writer Marcus Binney asked to visit it and included it in a piece on timber-framed buildings in The Times. However, none of this had any influence over the catastrophic decline in the property market which had begun a year earlier and was gaining momentum. We wanted no more than to cover the cost of restoring the building, but in this climate the expense of the highly specialised technical and archaeological work involved in stabilising the timber frame was discounted by the market, leading to the perception that the house was overpriced.
Imperceptibly, as month followed month without any serious interest from buyers despite two price reductions, the impending trouble began to mutate from a financial loss on Bletchley Manor to an all-embracing disaster threatening Biddulph as well. Eventually, the bank sent us a letter almost doubling the interest rate on our loans and giving us just twenty-eight days before beginning the process of a compulsory sale of both properties.
Fig. 44. Bletchley Manor, complete and ready to face the future.
As our problems grew more intractable we tried to believe that the hidden hand that had seemed to guide our fate since we first stepped over the threshold of Biddulph Old Hall would intervene again. We knew that if the house were to deploy a guardian angel to come to our rescue at the eleventh hour, it would be in a form we were least expecting. None the less, we were still dumbfounded when it arrived in the shape of Janet Street-Porter.
Months before, we had been contacted by television’s Channel 4 informing us that they had heard about our restoration of Bletchley Manor and encouraging us to enter it for the restoration section of the Grand Designs awards. They had sent a form which we had filled in and returned without really engaging with the process. In the last week of our one-month grace period from the bank, they rang again. They told us that we had made it into the last three projects in the competition, and were to appear on live television where the viewers would see short films of each property and then vote for the overall winner. We would be supported by a celebrity advocate on the live programme who, in our case, was Janet Street-Porter.
Janet loved Bletchley and entered enthusiastically into the spirit of the competition by describing Brian and me as ‘super-heroes of the restoration world’. When, to our astonishment, Kevin McCloud opened the envelope and announced Bletchley Manor the winner we were witnessed by the British nation kissing Janet Street-Porter on live television, sealing our claim to notoriety for all time. Winning the award worked as we prayed it might: now there was enormous interest in Bletchley Manor. It eventually went to a doctor, his wife and their three boys, and began a new life as a happy, living, family home. Our dream for it had been fulfilled, and we left it enriched by the privilege of being its custodians for a few short years in its long history. We had a sense of something achieved and brought to fruition (fig. 44).
Now we felt able to look forward again, and return to thinking about Biddulph, Robert Bateman, ruined towers, Pre-Raphaelite woodlands and waterfalls. One morning we decided to go for a walk along the Clough and into the woodland that surrounded the gardens at Biddulph Grange. The mist that hung between the trees seemed calculated to rekindle our sense of Robert Bateman’s veiled, still world from which we had been exiled. No one seemed to be about, so we walked slowly in the pale haze until we chanced on a path we had never followed before. It led steeply up through the contorted outlines of ancient Himalayan rhododendrons which almost met over our heads.
After a sharp climb, there was a gap in the brooding undergrowth which gave a distant view down across the Cheshire plain. We stood and gazed at the misty landscape, with the occasional spire or chimney providing a focus of interest. We talked quietly about the peculiarly contrasted atmosphere of the two houses, Bletchley and Biddulph. We continued up the path, which became steeper until the soil gave way to smooth rock under our feet. Suddenly, the sheer face of a huge outcrop of red sandstone loomed over us out of the mist. Our path skirted the front of it to a place where a set of steps had been cut into its surface (fig. 45). We climbed the steps and stood on the summit where we could see out across the surrounding countryside. I glanced down and there, in front of me, was a clearly incised message:
Fig. 45. The steps in the Round Rock.
Fig. 46. The riddle on the rock: ‘Remember this day’, with extended Rs.
11th JUNE 04
REMEMBER THIS DAY
It had been properly cut and stood quite apart from the few other scratched names and initials nearby (fig. 46).
I called Brian over, and for a time the two of us stood staring down at the inscription without speaking. The lettering was not formalised, but the script was instantly recognisable from the plaque in the porch at Biddulph. The elongation of the Rs at each end of the word ‘REMEMBER’ were Robert Bateman’s distinctive signature marks, used not only on the plaque, but on the 1874 date stone and almost all the pictures and prints that were known to be by him. Whoever had carved it was determined that the declared intention of the message should be fulfilled: the lettering had been deeply incised, and was easily legible after a century of exposure to the elements, even on the Staffordshire moorlands.
Of course, there was every reason to think it was Robert. He was known to have been an experienced sculptor, with the necessary chisels and equipment to carry out the job. Also, the rock stood within the grounds of his birthplace and childhood home, Biddulph Grange, and barely three-quarters of a mile from Biddulph Old Hall, the house in which he maintained a studio all his life.
But if Robert was the author of this enigmatic message, what riddle did it simultaneously conceal and perpetuate behind its few cryptic words? What event in his life had been commemorated on this day, and why was it invested with sufficient significance for him to mark it in this way, and seek to project the memory of it into the future, long after his own death? The message was specific to one particular day, but 11 June was not Robert’s birthday or Caroline’s, or their wedding day, so what significance did it have?
We were still discussing the inscription later that day when we went to the local pub for a beer. Two retired couples, whom we had chatted to several times, came in and sat at the table alongside us. Mavis, Terry, Stuart and Anne had all been brought up in the area and were interested in our renovation of the Old Hall. I asked them what they knew about the rock in the woods. Stuart, who was in his mid-seventies, immediately said,
‘Do you mean the Round Rock?’
When we looked blankly at him, he went on,
‘The huge, big one – with steps cut in it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘My grandfather knew all about that. Apparently the steps were cut by an artist, a sculptor, so that his wife could climb it.’
We were stunned. It took a moment to realise that Stuart’s grandfather could well have been a young man when the steps were cut, so his account stood a real chance of being accurate. When we asked him about the message, though, the Riddle of the Rock, he knew nothing. We were disappointed, but when we compared the photograph we had taken of the Riddle with the plaque in the porch at Biddulph the relationship of the lettering was too close to be coincidence.
Fig. 47. Love-sculpted tower? The tower at Biddulph after restoration.
