In 1917 Tabley House was home to Cuthbert and Hilda Leicester-Warren and their children Margaret and John. That summer twelve year old Margaret and ten year old John made the folly tower, on a tiny island in the lake, their own private domain. On Saturday 7 July, with ‘due pomp and ceremony’, the tower was declared open for the season.

N.B. If you haven’t seen last week’s post you might want to catch up on the history of the tower here.

The family had a number of boats on the lake including a motor-launch called ‘Rainbow’ and a sailboat called the ‘Ark’. These vessels transported the family to the tower which was equipped with a ‘suitable supply of furniture, cups, saucers and plates’.

Formal invitations were sent to guests staying with their parents at Tabley House, requesting the pleasure of their company at the tower. Margaret (1905-1964) was the hostess on these occasions and styled herself the ‘Chatelaine of the Tower’. As John (1907-1975) wrote in 1918:

In the Boat we go to see
The Chatilaine [sic] who owns the key
Of the Tower on Tabley Lake
Then she gives us all a cake.

In the summer of 1918 the motor launch was out of action because of wartime petrol restrictions, so transport was only by the more ‘antiquated’ means of sail or oar.

Timetables for the boats to the lake were published to help guests make plans, and happily in 1919 the petrol restrictions were relaxed, and ‘Rainbow’ was back in action.

The visitors were invited to ascend to the rooftop viewing platform or perhaps try to catch a fish or two. After tea and cake was served they were asked to contribute to a visitor’s book called The Tower Book. Some praised the picnics (which sometimes included ‘excellent meat pies’) and others added poems or sketches.

One guest, T.W. Turner couldn’t resist mentioning his artist namesake, who had painted the tower a century earlier:

O lovely Tower, O limpid lake
For thee my feeble pen I take:-
See there the oaks and wavy beeches
Beautify the farthest reaches:
See here the sparkling wavelets beat
Upon the stones beneath one’s feet:
Right well might Turner near this spot
Call for pencils and paint pot.

In July 1920 Margaret was given a birthday present of a new tea service for use at the tower. The children kept the tower spick and span with a housekeeper’s box of brushes, and at the start of the 1921 season they ‘stained’ (painted) the upper room.

Sadly the book ends with the close of the 1921 season and we don’t know if the summer excursions to the tower were continued. Lord Bathurst contributed the final drawing to the book after a ‘turn round the lake’ with the children’s father in 1921.

Margaret was painted by Philip de Laszlo in 1927 when she was almost 22 and making her debut in society. Little brother John inherited the estate in 1954 and was the last member of the family to own Tabley. He had never married and hoped the National Trust would take on the estate after his death, but his offer was declined as there was no endowment to support the estate. In short, under the terms of Lieutenant Colonel John Leicester-Warren’s will the estate then passed to the University of Manchester.

The University of Manchester sold the wider estate, including the lake and tower, to the Crown Estate and sadly there is no public access. But you can see the house and artworks – see the Tabley House Collection website.

All images other than the portrait are taken from The Tower Book (D 5524/8/5) and are reproduced by kind permission of Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

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