The house is, well, old.
It was the childhood home of Rowena Nason, wife of James Nason, and, being 500 years old, it saw an epic journey of families unfold over the centuries as it was passed through the generations, never being sold. Until in 1992, Mrs. Nason’s parents were forced to sell.
Alas, after buying it, the new owner, a princess from offshore, meant to renovate but never did. Just the opposite. The house that stood since 1559 began its steady decline and was all but abandoned.
But the Nasons never forgot it.
Today, Mrs. Nason’s childhood home, Pitchford Hall, is being reclaimed from despair; Mr. and Mrs. Nason bought it back two decades ago and have spent the years since then recalling it to life.
The epic journey of families began in medieval times, with an even older house on the estate, built around 1280.
Mrs. Nason’s forbearers originally bought the land in 1473. The Ottleys, an important family of wool traders from Shropshire, were the owners and, as a projection of their wealth, they raised Pitchford Hall to impress people of importance. It even saw royalty stay over.
“It’s generally seen as an Elizabethan house or a Tudor house,” Mr. Nason, 53, told the Epoch Times.
The hall’s half-timbered zebra look really stands out with its dark-stained boards of English oak running in parallel with stark white lime filled in between, all along the sides.
With about 60 rooms, the Great Hall is the star of the estate, boasting an enormous fireplace that once warmed families during winters. Other rooms include a drawing room, kitchens, larders, a game room, and a library. There are many, many bedrooms as well as servants’ wings.
The epic journey of families carried on. In 1807, the estate passed to a cousin, Lord Liverpool, the brother of the British prime minister at the time, and then on through several more families by marriage.
Notable visitors included Queen Victoria and, potentially, Prince Rupert. During World War II, the estate was part of an escape plan—called the Coats Mission—for the royal family should the Nazis have gained ground in England.
Each generation brought new objects and furnishings, enriching the house with history and antiques.
At last, the epic journey of families reached Mrs. Nason when her mother inherited the home from her stepfather, Robin Grant, in 1972. Mr. Grant felt his stepdaughter and her husband would do a great job maintaining the home.
He turned out to be right; Mrs. Nason’s mother spent 10 years fixing the roof and invested much into its upkeep.
The Journey to Reclaim the Home
After the bankruptcy, Mrs. Nason’s mother sought to save the home by offering it to the National Trust. They were interested but refused to take it for anything less than 10 million pounds in an endowment.There were neither charities nor governmental bodies offering this money, so Mrs. Nason’s mother’s only choice was to sell everything.
Mr. Nason and his wife were dating at the time. Both were in university.
“I remember very well—and this was in 1992—my wife coming up to me in complete floods of tears and saying, ‘I’ve just been told by my mother that we’re going to have to sell the house, and we’re going to have to leave the family home,’” he told the newspaper.
The home was sold to a Kuwaiti princess, who meant to invest in it but ultimately never did; nor was it kept even remotely as Mr. Nason’s mother-in-law would have wanted.
The princess “never stayed a night in the house, not one night for 25 years, and she’d visit the house like every five or 10 years and just come and see it for a day, and that was it,” Mr. Nason said.
Any house would fall apart if its owners spent only one or two times a decade tending it as this royal owner from offshores did. But Pitchford Hall, a house from 1549, saw an exponential decline.
Piece by piece, it fell apart. Before long people began breaking in. Years passed, and little was done to stave off its steady decay.
The Nasons still owned the estate but not the house. They could only watch the beloved hall become a shambles.
Eventually, they spoke to the Kuwaiti princess’s agent and expressed interest in buying should it come for sale. Years passed with no affirmative word.
Two decades of correspondences eventually saw the Nasons and the agent meet again to discuss the poor state of the house and their serious intention to buy and restore it.
In 2016, the agent finally relented that a sale may be possible, yet there was an ultimatum: they had to buy Pitchford Hall for 2 million pounds within three months or it would go on the open market.
Prior to taking possession, they visited Pitchford Hall for an inspection. Seing her childhood home in such shambles was traumatizing for Mrs. Nason. The rooms she had played in as a child, full of happy memories, were gutted of both furnishings and warmth.
“It [was] a very emotional time, but nothing put us off, nothing dissuaded us. There was no doubt we wanted to seek to put the house back together with the estate,” Mr. Nason said.
They secured a bank loan for the home and got it insured. In September of 2016, the deal went through.
His wife was in tears when they arrived, keys in hand. “She was shaking so much, her hand was shaking with emotion,” Mr. Nason said, “but she couldn’t open the door. ... After 25 years, she’d got the key to Pitchford Hall.”
Restoration
Born in Lincolnshire, Mr. Nason is a political consultant for the UK government. Mrs. Nason works for a British private equity company. In a sense, though, the Nasons now have a second job since 2016: restoring Pitchford Hall.Restoring the home was a monumental challenge. The Nasons didn’t just aim to restore it—they also worked on the orangery, ice houses, stable yard, a tunnel under the lawn, and other structures.
Everywhere there was dust, plaster falling off the ceiling, pieces of the home that had collapsed, and dead insects and bats.
The building had no heat.
They prioritized the west wing first, the part of the house “which was in the worst condition,” Mr. Nason said, which was turned into a vacation rental to fund further restoration.
It wasn’t long before they started giving guided tours—another way to raise cash—while continuing the lengthy reno. “We just do it bit by bit,” Mr. Nason told the Epoch Times.
“And we’ve got a good team of craftsmen, or artisans, and we work closely with them, and we restore it,“ he said. ”It takes time, but it doesn’t overwhelm us.”
Slowly, antiques have been finding their way home to Pitchford Hall every month. Recently, a watercolor painting returned to the Nasons which was once owned by Lord Liverpool. Social media has helped greatly in finding such items. Mr. Nason emphasized that breathing life back into Pitchford Hall has been a team effort, involving people across England and worldwide.
A work in progress, about one third of the home remains derelict. Aside from letting out the west wing and offering guided tours, the Nasons also host weddings and events to generate income.
So far, about 1.5 million pounds have been put into Pitchford Hall, notwithstanding all of the material donations.
Surveying their efforts, the Nasons appraise their work by asking themselves: Would the mother of Mrs. Nason recognize it as the place of her childhood?
“It’s part of everyone’s heritage in England. And, hey, there’ll be lots of Americans who’ve got ancestors from Shropshire,” he said. “So, it’s part of all our heritage.”
