Phil Scarborough
Member
In the thread I posted about our village in England you ask " What is a manor house?"
The word "manor" is based on a very old French word meaning "estate".Hundreds of years ago, the king, whoever he was, would reward his faithful followers with gifts of land.Some people got thousands of acres.To show how important they were, landowners would build big houses on their "manor" (estate) and over the centuries, these came to be called "manor houses".
In our village, North Wheatley is separated from South Wheatley by a stream, and the fact that we have a manor house in each part of the village would indicate that at some time we had 2 big landowners, each having property on 1 side of the stream or the other.
It is still possible to be "Lord of the Manor" and this can have certain privileges. The best one, probably, is the privilege of being the first man to sleep with a bride on her wedding night.The groom had to wait until the next day.As far as I know, this practice is not normally carried out these days, but who knows?
Here in North and South Wheatley, we do not have a Lord of the Manor, but the 2 houses still exist, both are about 350 years old and are still family houses.Both are very big houses, cold, draughty and cost a fortune to heat and maintain!Phil
The word "manor" is based on a very old French word meaning "estate".Hundreds of years ago, the king, whoever he was, would reward his faithful followers with gifts of land.Some people got thousands of acres.To show how important they were, landowners would build big houses on their "manor" (estate) and over the centuries, these came to be called "manor houses".
In our village, North Wheatley is separated from South Wheatley by a stream, and the fact that we have a manor house in each part of the village would indicate that at some time we had 2 big landowners, each having property on 1 side of the stream or the other.
It is still possible to be "Lord of the Manor" and this can have certain privileges. The best one, probably, is the privilege of being the first man to sleep with a bride on her wedding night.The groom had to wait until the next day.As far as I know, this practice is not normally carried out these days, but who knows?
Here in North and South Wheatley, we do not have a Lord of the Manor, but the 2 houses still exist, both are about 350 years old and are still family houses.Both are very big houses, cold, draughty and cost a fortune to heat and maintain!Phil
