A brief addition to Friday’s 150th birthday blog, on the actual date of Juliette Gordon’s Low’s birth.
In 1892, Daisy’s younger sister Mabel was visiting the Lows at their home in the English Midlands. A Warwickshire neighbor held a birthday dance for both women at the magnificent estate he was renting, called Compton Verney. So this…..
……is where Daisy spent the evening of her 32nd birthday! It must have been another memorable occasion!
Compton Verney has recently been turned into an art gallery. The new owners have asked for people with memories of this gorgeous Georgian manse to post them on their website. One reminiscence you can read about would surely have made Daisy Low happy: the people who lived at Compton Verney in the 1950s opened up their private grounds and welcomed the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts for camping adventures. If you click on this link you’ll see a photograph of the 124th Birmingham Girl Guides with their tents in 1952 on the very grounds Daisy walked sixty years earlier.
And one final note about Compton Verney–Daisy and Willy Low had considered leasing it. Just imagine the Lows living there!
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Photo from the Compton Verney webs. Please follow the links to learn more, including the brief memory of the Girl Guides pictured above. On the “About Us” tab on the homepage, you’ll find more photos and see pictures of the extensive grounds.
wow — this one makes the description of Wellesbourne House as a "jumped up hunting lodge" really evident!
Yes, I think you're right–but Daisy did have some very nice things to say about Wellesbourne, for example, that living there rooted her in the country–in England. This makes sense from a woman born in the city when Savannah wasn't all that large and when the land figured so prominently in the Gordons' lives and business and adventures.
I think she loved Wellesbourne. The town, village and surrounding countryside are charming. The house is very nice but not grand on the scale of Stoneleigh Abbey or Compton Verney.