History of Yoxall Lodge and the bluebell walks
Yoxall Lodge was originally built as a hunting lodge in the Needwood Forest. The two main hunting lodges within the Newchurch parish are Yoxall and Byrkley and they proved a popular hunting ground for the kings of England.
The hunting lodge was rebuilt as a comfortable Georgian country house by John Gisborne in the mid 1700's and his eldest son Thomas was to become its most famous resident.
The Reverend Thomas Gisborne (1758-1846) was known as a divine and a poet. He was a lifelong friend of the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce having met and studied together at St. John's College, Cambridge along with Thomas Babington whose family seat was Rothley Temple in Leicestershire. Gisborne was to marry Thomas Babington's sister Mary in 1784, a year after he was ordained as a priest. They settled down at Yoxall Lodge which he had inherited from his father a few years earlier along with a considerable amount of money.
The Reverend Thomas and Mary Gisborne led a content and happy life at Yoxall Lodge producing eight children but Thomas was never happier than when serving God and the people of Barton under Needwood. Their youngest daughter Lydia was to scandalise society by conducting an affair, whilst married to the Reverend Edmund Robinson, with Branwell Brontë, brother of literary Brontë sisters.
William Wilberforce became a regular visitor to Yoxall Lodge from about 1794 making it his summer residence. He would arrive with vast amounts of papers knowing that this was the one place in England where he could digest them in perfect peace. The large and comfortable house provided by his old friend Gisborne, gave Wilberforce and Thomas Babington the perfect retreat from which to work on the abolition of the slave trade.
The Reverend Gisborne was succeeded by his eldest son, also Thomas, who died at Yoxall Lodge in 1852.
The magnificent old house was pulled down in 1928 having fallen into a state of disrepair. Henry Walter Featherstone, Richard's grandfather, purchased the land and remaining buildings in 1933 and it has been a family run farm ever since.
The old coach house and stabling remain as does the beautiful walled garden and gardener's bothy, these buildings now being used as part of the farm.
The present house was built on the site of the old mansion in 1951.
