Norton Conyers, staircase from the Hall

Slide 3 – It was Sir Richard Graham who was “The gallant cavalier, Who crossed the moat at Markington When Rupert’s call rang clear” The tradition is that, feeling himself mortally wounded, and finding all was lost at Marston Moor, he galloped to his home at Norton Conyers. Riding his trusty charger through the grand old hall and up the broad oak staircase into his own bedroom, where he died. As the story goes “they point out the mark of a horse-shoe on the topmost step of the staircase, and tell how when Sir Richard fled, Cromwell followed him with an armed force and how old Ironsides, at the finish galloped up the staircase reaching the sufferer in time to shake the last breath out of his body. They tell that his horse turned to descend the stairs and stamped the hoof print pointed out” Then some old fossil, in blue spectacles, takes the cream off the sentiment with the fact that Sir Richard did not die until 1655, ten years after the Marston Moor fight.