One of my favourite teases for admirers who came to stay at Pitchford was to make them crawl down the subterranean tunnel and to paddle their way about the lake in a coracle. Those young men who were full of themselves invariably fell in as meanly I did not tell them that any violent movement in a coracle was not to be advised.

The coracles had been made by Harry Rogers at Ironbridge. He was succeeded by his son Eustace. Salopian coracles are a different shape from Welsh ones. The experts make a figure of eight on one side or the other to propel and steer. My cousin Christopher Hely-Hutchinson, on leave from the Royal Navy, became an expert and in fact he ordered one from Eustace. Subsequently when in the Lake District he actually 'courted' his future wife Beatrice in a coracle. He could even stand up in one.

There was one entrance to the subterranean tunnel on the edge of the bottom lake and the exit was in the Rowe Brook. I once lead a group of archaelogists from the British Archaelogical Society who told me that the tunnel was in fact an ancient conduit and that the large room was the old 'settling room'. They said that first 100 yards dated circa 17th Century, and that the second 100 yards was 16th Century. We would crawl along to the settling room, which was about 12 feet high and there were rough stone seats. There was a small stone window and various shells stuck on the walls. The last part was sloping downwards and emerged in deepish muddy water. If we were lucky the first person who arrived could be hauled out onto the bank by my mother without getting too wet.

Once I was leading a posse of cousins young and old down the conduit plus our daughters Romaine and Rowena who were five and seven at the time. In the settling room Rowena announced that she had found a live mole. I knew what was expected of me and stuffed the mole in my t.shirt, making a pouch to hold it with the bottom clamped twixt my teeth as I needed one hand to hold the torch and the other to balance with. Half way down the last part of the conduit Cousin Tina asked after the welfare of the mole. I replied "Ouch the little bugger has just bitten me on my tit". We all arrived safely and returning the mole to Rowena it was taken to the field on the other side of the stream.

In the settling room Cousins Tina and Lou and I had great fun imagining how the serfs would have had to shovel the excess shit out.

Apparently after the Seige of Shrewsbury Prince Rupert, who was the first cousin of King Charles I, hid in the Priest's Hole and twelve of his troopers hid in the conduit.

Mosey Painter, who started working at the Hall as the bootboy when aged fourteen told me that an otter used the conduit as a resting place.

The Tree House knew no less than two Prime Ministers. Lord Liverpool and Lord Rosebery. Once I could not understand why my husband and a friend Fred were spending a lot of time in the Tree House. I discovered. The voluptuous tenant of the Orangery, was in the habit of sun bathing totally naked!