Echoes of the past: I have never felt that Stokesay Court is haunted, but inevitably something that has stood the test of time as this house has, and seen so much and so varied a history, is bound to carry some of the spirit of that history with it. Usually this manifests itself in the creaks and groans of the house as it wakes and sleeps throughout the day or year. However, a few days ago, with the onset of commemorations of the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1 running through my mind as we set about displaying the extensive archive that survives from the time when it was volunteered as a hospital for wounded soldiers, I looked out of my window early, on an unusually fine and sunny morning. Seeing these shadows cast upon the wall of the walled garden, I abandoned my breakfast, and ran out to photograph them. 
How strangely they resembled a couple of foot soldiers carrying a WW1 gun carriage! Could this be an echo of the past? The imprinted ‘memory’ of soldiers whose letters speak so movingly of a happy time of respite away from the War, while convalescing in the VAD Auxiliary Military Hospital here between 1915-18? The research in the our archives is gathering pace and we are planning to add some evocation of the WW1 hospital feel to the tour for 2014, as well as telling some of the soldiers' personal narratives. But the first port of call for anyone interested in the WW1 story should surely be the new online archive of diaries in the National Archives. Meanwhile we here at Stokesay Court will hope to bring you some of our own stories as we discover them in the archive.
