Papillon House & The Cursed Brocade Shoes
Wikipedia tells us that Papillon Hall, off Theddingworth Road near Lubenham, was built in about 1620 and demolished in 1950. It was located adjacent to what is now the Bramfield Park Homes site and it was built by David Papillon, (1581-1659), a French Huguenot architect and military engineer. It was an octagonal, two-storey stone house surrounded by a moat.
In about 1903, Sir Frank Bellville had the hall restructured by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. The building was set-out in a butterfly plan. (Papillon is the French word for butterfly.) The original hall was retained at the centre of the design, and an extra storey added to it. The original hall contained the entrance hall and a sitting room. The four new wings, built in the shape of butterfly wings, incorporated a dining room, billiard room, kitchen and servants’ hall. To the east and west were two circular structures, the ante-room and the Basin Court. The court, open to the air, connected the main part of the house with the kitchen and servants’ quarters, and had a Tuscan colonnade.
Papillon Hall was requisitioned by the army during the Second World War,[1][3] and used as a billet for the 319th Glider Field Artillery Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army. It was demolished in 1950.
The garden house, wall and attached pillar, that formed part of the garden, were built as part of the 1903 renovations and were listed as grade II buildings on the 7 September 1995. In 2013, a survey showed that, in addition to the listed structures, there was a lily pond, summerhouse, some walls, and the remains of a greenhouse. The stables and outbuildings are now used as farm buildings.
The cursed brocade shoes
David Papillon (1691-1762), known by locals as ‘Pamp’, was reputed to have had a Spanish mistress who was not allowed to leave the Hall. She died in mysterious circumstances in about 1715. There are no records of her death but the body of a woman was found within an attic wall during the 1903 renovations. The mistress applied a curse that anyone who removed a pair of brocade shoes from the Hall would suffer an ill-fate. During the 1903 renovation work, Sir Frank Bellville had the brocade shoes removed from the house and shortly afterwards, Sir Frank was thrown from a pony and trap and suffered a broken skull. The brocade shoes were returned to the hall and are now owned by the Harborough Museum, Market Harborough. They are currently on display in New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in the Leicester Stories Gallery.
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