Merevale Park is the official name for the grounds and area that surround Merevale Hall
In the park at Merevale Hall, Warwickshire, the seat of W. F. S. Dugdale, Esq., are a quantity of very fine and tall oaks, which rival those at Bagot’s Park, and are, according to Sir H. Maxwell, of the sessile variety, though when I saw them they were not in leaf. They stand at a considerable elevation, on a dry and seemingly rather shallow red sandstone. Many of them are 100 feet and more in height, with clean trunks of 40 to 60 feet long.
The best that I could find measured as follows:—112 feet by 13 feet, with a Common Oak 3 19 straight bole 65 feet long; 107 feet by 15 feet, with a clean bole of 70 feet, and probably containing about 600 feet of timber; 107 feet by 17 feet 3 inches, with a bole 48 feet long, and about the same cubic contents as the last; 114 feet by 15^ feet, bole about 60. This last is, I believe, the same tree which Mr. Dugdale had measured some years ago, when it was thought to be 133 feet high ; but I do not think it can be nearly so much, the sloping ground on which it stands making a base line difficult to get. He tells me that these trees are believed to have been planted by the monks who lived at Merevale Abbey at the foot of the hill, which would make them at least 370 years old, and that most of them have now passed their best. The timber being very straight in the grain is largely used for cleaving spokes.
The trees of Great Britain & Ireland, by Henry John Elwes and Augustine Henry. Edinburgh, Priv. Print., 1906-13.
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I wonder if anyone has information about a Prisoner of War camp which, as far as I know, was installed in the park at Merevale Hall during and after WW II. I believe that my father, Robert Schueller, may have been interned there from approx. 1945 to 46 or 47. Family lore has it, that as a musician and conductor, he and fellow prisoners performed in local churches, and he may even have conducted one of the church choirs there for a while.
If anyone had any information on this topic, I would be very grateful for it, since my father died in 1974 without ever having told much about his experiences, other than that they were very positive given the circumstances. Thank you and good luck on the further development of your website.
My father Otto Schneider was at Atherstone POW Camp about 1944/45. He voluntered for farm work at a farm near Studley Warwickshire where he met and later married my mother.
My dad who lived in Atherstone told me when his brother returned from being a prisoner of war in Germany , he went with him up to the gate of the POW camp and when he spoke in German to them they rushed to the gate for news back home in Germany.