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.
