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MUSIC
Deep in the heart of the Cotswolds, yellow bricks warmed by Spring sunshine,
sits Chastleton House.
Home for some four hundred years to the descendants of Walter Jones.
A merchant who built the house in 1607.
The house and its contents give a unique insight
into this somewhat eccentric family
and their way of life over four hundred years.
In eighteen thirty-one, Walter Jones Whitmore was born at Chastleton House
and there he lived inventing gadgets and playing games.
He avoided employment of any kind.
This was the games room where he played skittles
and practiced horse riding on this strange contraption.
So keen was Walter Jones Whitmore on games that he became famous for his part
in the rise of a new British pastime.
Here on this very lawn
Walter Jones Whitmore got his name to the history books.
But what was he playing?
With peels and peg-outs, bisques and ***,
This ancient game achieved a sudden popularity in Victorian Britain
and Walter Jones Whitmore was the man who codified the modern rules
here on the lawn at Chastleton House.
The game was croquet.
Although croquet's ancestry goes back a long way
with a very similar game, "Pell Mell" being played in France in 1660,
it had died out in Britain in the early eighteenth century.
Once Walter had published his definitive modern rules in 1865
the first English croquet championship was held at Evesham.
It was organized and won,
by Mr Walter Jones Whitmore.
The very exclusive Chastleton House croquet club still meet and play
on this historic lawn
and run specially open days a few times a year
for the public to have a go too.
Contact the house staff for information.