Page 15 - Oundle Life A5 March 2023

literary critic, a playwright, and translator, his era became known as the ‘Age of Dryden’ and no less a scribe than Sir Walter Scott referred to him as ‘Glorious John.’
Dryden was a local boy. He was born in the rectory in the nearby village of Aldwincle in 1631 and lived in Titchmarsh as a child before being sent to Westminster School in London and then to Trinity College, Cambridge.
Although his works are not as well known amongst the general public as those of Shakespeare (even his most famous poem ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ is little known outside of literary circles) Dryden’s place in the English literary canon is assured, and his direct link with Cotterstock and Oundle equally so.
The hall was also home to the famous society beauty, Jane Huck-Saunders Fane, Countess
of Westmoreland, who acquired the mansion in 1843. Fane was a patron to both Keats
and Byron, giving the house another literary connection, but she was, alas, feared to be mad. One contemporary report said of the countess that she was ‘perhaps not mad, but nobody ever approached so near it with so much reason.’
Set in just over four acres, the hall itself has seven bedrooms and covers an area of 8,116 square feet. Sadly, it’s not open to the public
as it remains a private residence, but you can see the hall as you pass through the village of Cotterstock. And on a cold, dark, winter’s night, it looks uncannily like Eel Marsh Hall...
Stuart Barker is a professional writer and author. He has a keen interest in local history and likes nothing better than riding round Northants visiting historical sites on his motorcycle.
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Centre bottom: ‘©Plate 102: Mid 17th-Century House’, in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Northamptonshire, Volume 6, Architectural Monuments in North Northamptonshire (London, 1984), British History Online. Bottom right: ©James P. Miller www.lowlandrambler.com