With Remember Remember The Fifth of November having just taken place a few days ago, it’s interesting that a pivotal site related to the plot to blow up Parliament has just been given protection.
After their failure to blow up Parliament and assassinate King James I in November 1605, the gunpowder plotters fled to Holbeche House near Dudley in the West Midlands.
Sadly the one time grand Elizabethan manor has been looking ever more derelict following it being locked up last year when its long use as a nursing home for the elderly closed for good.
Now conservation group Historic England has agreed to add the boarded up Elizabethan manor house to its “heritage at risk” register, which will be published on Thursday.
The annual list highlights historic buildings and sites at risk of being lost through neglect, decay or redevelopment. It means property owners can apply for external grants to preserve them.
Back in November 1605, the Gunpowder Plot’s ringleader, Robert Catesby, and his Catholic co-conspirators tried to hide there after Guy Fawkes was caught preparing to destroy the Palace of Westminster in a bid to kill the Protestant king.
Several plotters, including Robert Catesby, were killed in a dramatic shootout with government forces as so spectactularly depicted in the painting by Ernest Croft above. In fact it is reported that musket holes still remain in the walls of the building.
Historic England said: “Built in around 1600, Holbeche House was the scene of the last stand of the Gunpowder Plotters. Their leader Robert Catesby was killed there. Listed at Grade II*, it is a site of extreme importance in our national story.
“Historic England experts have assessed the building and we can confirm that Holbeche House will be added to the Heritage at Risk Register, which will be published later this year.”
The traditional death for traitors in 17th-century England was to be hung, drawn and quartered in public but thankfully for Guy Fawkes he narrowly avoided this awful death.
As he awaited his punishment on the gallows, Fawkes leapt off the platform to avoid having his testicles cut off, his stomach opened and his guts spilled out before his eyes.
Mercifully for him, he died from a broken neck but his body was subsequently quartered, and his remains were sent to “the four corners of the kingdom” as a warning to others.
Following the failed plot, Parliament declared the 5th November a national day of thanksgiving, and the first celebration of it took place in 1606.
Stephen Liddell 