Cardinal joins battle to save Sawston from the developers
Archbishop of Westminster joins campaign to turn Tudor-era mansion into Catholic heritage centre.
By Mark Greaves
9 May 2008

Sawston Hall, Cambridgeshire

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has become a patron of a campaign to save one of Britain's most historic Catholic houses from being sold to developers.

Sawston Hall, near Cambridge, a crucial "safe house" for Catholics during the 16th and 17th centuries, is on the market for £6 million after plans to convert it into a luxury hotel were put on hold.

A group of campaigners backed by the Cardinal are now trying to raise enough money to buy the hall and turn it into a Catholic heritage centre.

The hall can be restored to its former glory, they say, because its archives, portraits and other treasures have been inherited by a local priest - a descendent of the Huddleston family which owned the hall for hundreds of years. It was re-built in the 16th century after the original building was torched by Protestant soldiers in pursuit of Mary Tudor, who had used the hall as a refuge.

Priests' holes are crafted into the structure of the building, including what experts regard as the "cleverest" priests' hole in England, made by the Jesuit St Nicholas Owen.

Its history is bound up closely with another of England's martyrs, St John Rigby. A steward of the Huddleston family for many years, he was hanged, drawn and quartered in Tyburn after revealing that he was Catholic.

The Huddleston family owned the hall until the 1980s when financial trouble meant that they could no longer afford to keep it up. Since then it has been used as a language school but more recently it was bought by Adrian Critchlow, an internet entrepeneur who wanted to turn it into a luxury hotel with en-suite bathrooms.

However, Mr Critchlow is now prepared to sell the property unless he can find financial partners to help him develop plans for a hotel.

Campaigners say that St Nicholas's priests' hole has started to fall apart and needs to be mended. They believe that the building can be restored to its former condition and turned into a "trail" museum in which visitors can trace the history of the hall as they pass through it.

Canon Timothy Russ, a Buckinghamshire priest who inherited the artefacts and furnishings of Sawston Hall from his mother, said the Cardinal's support for the campaign was "a wonderful step forward".

He said that a Catholic heritage centre at the hall would give people "a sense of Christian England".

The Huddleston family, he explained, was thought to have descended from Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, and so "in its mythology it goes back to the kings who made England and defended it from the Danes".

The family remained powerful after the Norman Conquest and was prominent during the Crusades. It has remained Catholic for its entire history.

Canon Russ, a parish priest in Great Missenden who used to minister to the Blair family when they stayed at Chequers, their country residence in Buckinghamshire, said: "I've somehow ended up owning all this gear but also having a priestly vocation, which is a bit awkward."

The archives, which are stored at County Hall, Cambridge, go back to the 14th century and include proceedings at the manor court, the lowest court of law in England, which ruled on the fields that would be given to each tenant farmer.

The hall's paintings are held at St Edmund's College, Cambridge, and include a portrait of Queen Mary. There is also a portrait of Lord Hardwick, who, according to Fr Russ, fell in love with a Lady Huddleston but could not marry her because he was not Catholic. He asked for his portrait to hang in the hall to demonstrate his love for her.

Some of the hall's furniture - including chairs and a 17th-century pin-cushion - is held at Stonor, an 800-year-old manor house in Oxfordshire.

A hall with a distinctively Catholic past

In 1553 mary Tudor was fleeing across England to escape the supporters of Robert Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, who was plotting to seize the throne for his son. On the way she sought refuge at Sawston Hall. Tradition has it that, as she rode away in the morning, she looked back to see the hall in flames, torched by the Duke's soldiers, and promised to rebuild it when she became queen. She kept her word, and the present building was completed in 1584.

The hall is closely associated with two English martyrs: St Nicholas Owen, the Jesuit carpenter who was tortured to death in the Tower of London in 1606, and St John Rigby in 1600.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I Lady Huddleston was summoned to London to explain why she did not attend Protestant services. She was ill at the time and so she sent St John, the steward of the family, as her representative. He revealed he was Catholic and was executed.

Henry Huddleston met Robert Catesby on November 5, 1606 - the day the Gunpowder Plot was foiled. It is rumoured that Huddleston was the man who betrayed the plotters.

The Huddleston fortunes revived after Catholic Emancipation, and in the 19th century Sawston Hall played host to a number of distinguished visitors, including Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell and Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III.

Some of the more bizarre theories about Sawston Hall extend into the realm of the supernatural. The hall is said to be haunted by the headless ghost of Queen Mary I and has been the subject of an investigation by the Cambridge Paranormal Group.