The name Baddesley can be traced back to Saxon times. It is thought a man called Badde made a clearing in the Forest of Arden for extra grazing – hence Badde’s Ley.

By c1100, the estate was owned by Walter de Bisege. It remained in the de Bisege family for four generations and became Baddesley Clinton after Walter’s great-grandaughter, Mazera, married Sir Thomas de Clinton. It is thought their younger son James built the house surrounded by a moat although little remains of the original house.

In 1438, a successful lawyer, John Brome, who later became Under-Treasurer of England, bought Baddesley Clinton. He extended the house and created a sewer system under the west wing. His bailiff’s accounts for 1442-58 discuss the clearing of ‘thorns and undergrowth’ to plant cereals although most of the land was left for grazing. However, after supporting the wrong side in the Wars of Roses, Brome was stripped of his titles. He was later murdered by John Herthill, steward to the ‘Kingmaker’ Earl of Warwick at Whitefriars Church in London after an argument over a mortgage.

John Brome’s second son, Nicholas, was determined to seek revenge for his father’s death. He challenged Herthill to a duel and in 1471, Hertill was killed. Brome got off lightly – his punishment was to pay for a priest to say daily prayers for the two victims and to pay Herthill’s widow 33 shillings and fourpence.

Brome inherited Baddesley on the death of his mother but seven years after appointing William Foster as parish priest, Brome returned home to discover the priest stroking his wife’s chin. Brome flew into a rage, drew his sword and killed Foster. As a penance, Brome paid to increase the height of the church and build the tower of Packwood Church. The two towers are known as the ‘Towers of Atonement’.

Brome was later pardoned by Henry VII and died ‘extremely humble and penitent’ in 1517. In his Will, Brome asked to be buried ‘Within the Church door as the people may tread upon mee as they come into the church.’

The estate was inherited by his daughter, Constance, who had married Sir Edward Ferrers, Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1500.

The Ferrers were a Catholic family and Henry (1549-1633) who was known as Henry the Antiquary because of his extensive knowledge of heraldry, genealogy, and antiquities built most of the south and east range of the house, including the Great Hall.

Henry occasionally rented out the house and in 1590, it was leased to Catholics Anne and Eleanor Vaux. Anti-Catholic views ran high at this time and so the sisters arranged for Nicholas Owen, ‘chief designer and builder of hiding-places in England’ to create hiding places for up to 12 priests. An account by Father Gerard of 1591 describes how on one occasion he and his fellow priests were at a Jesuit meeting at Baddesley when in the early hours of the following morning, pursuivants arrived looking for them. The men slid down a rope from the first floor through the old garderobe shaft into the house’s sewers where they remained undetected for four hours.

The house remained in the Ferrers family until 1940 when it was bought by Thomas Walker, a relative of the family who changed his name to Ferrers. His son gave the estate to the National Trust in 1980.