_____________________________________________________________________
General
Mentmore is a small village and a large house five kilometres south of Leighton Buzzard. The house, Mentmore Towers, was built in 1855 for Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild. The building was designed by Sir John Paxton in an Elizabethan style with great windows and a turreted roofline. In the 1970s the contents of the house were put up for sale which caused outcry at the possible loss to the nation of many important items. Later the building was sold to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and became the headquarters of his University of Natural Law.
The name Mentmore derives from the Old English Mænta, a personal name and mor which means moor. By the time of the Domesday Book the village was known as Mentemore, a name almost identical with its modern one. In the 2001 census the parish population was 370.
Mentmore
_____________________________________________________________________
Local Cottage
In 1907 a couple and their young child of nine years moved to a cottage in Mentmore. The young girl soon became the best of friends with a ninety year old man who would always wave to her when she came out of the village school. One day she arrived home feeling very happy as her friend had been ill and now he was better as she had seen him and he had waved to her. Her parents were angry with her for what she had said because her friend had died that afternoon, before she had seen him.
Until her death at the age of eighty-one, in 1979, she was convinced she had seen him. Maybe he was saying goodbye to his little friend.
To view a map of the area click on the button below
See also - Buckinghamshire - Mentmore -
Stud Cottage
_____________________________________________________________________
Stud Cottage
At the beginning of the Second World War a couple who been living in another cottage in the Mentmore, moved to Stud Cottage. The wife had a previous experience when she was a young girl living in the village when she saw the ghost of an old friend.
The new cottage was next to the Earl of Rosebury's racehorse stud. The couple had an agreement with the Head Groom that he could cut across their garden without having to ask permission whenever he needed to go in to the village. One day the wife was alone in the cottage when she heard a knock on the brass knocker. She went quickly to the door and just had time to catch a glimpse of a short, thick-set man before he disappeared. At first she thought it was the Head Groom but she couldn't understand why he had knocked the door then left and why he didn't react when she called out to him just before he vanished.
Later she remembered that the Head Groom, Dave Burns, was in Newmarket so who had she seen? Shortly afterwards she received news that a cousin, who had been captured at Dunkirk, had died of an infection in a German prisoner-of-war camp. At first she thought there was no connection between the two events until it happened again. The second time she heard the same knock and caught another glimpse of the retreating figure followed shortly the notification of the death of another cousin, Ken, whose plane crashed in an accident. This was not the end as a third knock heralded the death of a third cousin, Billy, who was a pilot.
The couple's daughter used to hear the sound of a baby crying when she was twelve. The sound always seemed to come from the same part of the garden. At first she blamed it on a cat but was never able to find one in the area.
The cottage was built on the site of a farm which was pulled down just after the Boness family who lived there were evicted. It is said that the father put a curse on the place.
To view a map of the area click on the button below
See also - Buckinghamshire - Mentmore -
Local Cottage
_____________________________________________________________________
Village Green
There is a legend in Mentmore that the once Vicar of St Mary the Virgin, John Horneby, saw a corpse coming towards him across the green from the direction of Ledburn. It was 1697 and the vicar was so shocked that he hanged himself.
To view a map of the area click on the button below
To view images see:
Mentmore Album
To view a report about the Village Green see:
21-05-2010
Mentmore, Fields to the North
|