2017 Conference Dinner at Wroxall Abbey Hotel and Estate
The conference dinner will be held in a marquee in the grounds of Wroxall Abbey Hotel and Estate, once the country seat of Sir Christopher Wren.
Coaches will depart from the coach park by Bluebell Hall at 19.00.
Pre-dinner drinks will be served from 19.30 and dinner at 20.15.
Aurora’s Carnival will provide music and entertainment and later on there will be a disco.
The last coach will leave at 23.45 but if you wish to return earlier a coach will depart shortly after dinner.
Dress: smart casual
Wroxall Abbey Hotel and Estate, Birmingham Road, Wroxall, Warwickshire, CV35 7NB,
Ticket: £55 per person (4th item on the ticket list)
Win a refund on your dinner ticket in the photo competition
More about the Ceilidh: this will involve International dance hits and singalongs from the 16th century, played by The Diabolus Waytes, one of England's finest Elizabethan Town Bands. Try your feet at a Measures, a country dance, or the latest French dance craze. Wallow in the glorious sound of a full shawm band, or caper to the strains of hurdy-gurdy, English and German bagpipes, renaissance guitar, and lots of recorders.
A short history of Wroxall Abbey
Wroxall Abbey dates back to the 12th Century and was once the country seat of Sir Christopher Wren and William Shakespeare’s Aunt Isabella was a Prioress here.
The Conference Dinner will be held in a marquee in the grounds close to the mansion house and next to Wren’s Cathedral which serves the local community with Christian worship and pastoral care.
The original Priory was founded in c.1141, and it housed ‘black’ nuns and prioresses from the 12th to the 16th Centuries. Isabella Shakespeare was Prioress here and other members of William Shakespeare’s family were involved in the Priory until it was dissolved in 1536 in the Tudor ‘revolution’ during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
In 1713 Sir Christopher Wren bought the estate as his country seat. He re-modelled the church and built the famous ‘Crinkly-Crankly’ wall. His wife is buried in the Wren’s Cathedral and 5 generations of Wrens are commemorated with tombstones, plaques and the family Coat of Arms.
The property was sold to James Dugdale in 1861 who demolished the old manor house, building a new one in 1866 just to the west of the original. Dugdale did however, leave the old Priory ruins untouched and this is the same mansion house and ruins that you see today.
The Dugdale’s were known as Victorian philanthropists; restoring the church in 1867, building the village school and new cottages and farmhouses for the local labourers.
In 1867, James Broughton Dugdale inherited the property and continued to work on the park and grounds until his death in 1927. The Mansion house, gardens and grounds were then occupied by Wroxall Abbey School for Girls from 1936 until the estate’s closing in 1995.
In 2001 the empty property was acquired by the private company “Wroxall Abbey Estate Ltd”.
Much restoration and improvement has already taken place, and work still continues on the grounds and buildings with a ‘green’, eco-friendly approach, including rain water harvesting, re-use and refurbishment whenever possible, utilising sustainable materials and recycling to preserve the precious history and heritage for the benefit of future generations.