Winnington Hall / Northwich / Cheshire My Dear Brown What is Rae's / address? after much / anguish of mind Leathart / agrees to speculate on / the "Merciful Knight" / so I must let Rae / know - how are you? / I am getting fat and / doing no work, dancing / every eveng. and playing / most of the day, and / beginning to fidget for / London and work - we / don't go to Florence this / year after all. So I / shall soon be back to / the old life - love to you all. from very affect / Ned Jones
Winnington Hall For some years the hall was used as a girls' finishing school under Miss Margaret Alexis Bell and Miss Mary Jane Bell, where Sir Charles Hallé visited to give recitals and John Ruskin gave lectures.[3] Ruskin helped the school financially, and had his own room in the house, which became for him a "semi-permanent residence".[4] He instructed the 35 girls on subjects such as the Bible, geology and art, supervised their music, and watched them play cricket.[a] In 1863 Ruskin invited Edward Burne-Jones to the school, and together they devised a project to create a set of wall hangings based on characters from Chaucer's poem The Legend of Good Women. The figures were to be designed by Burne-Jones and embroidered by the girls in the school under the supervision of Georgiana, Burne-Jones' wife. Embroidery frames and wool were purchased, and work began on one of the figures. However the work proved to be too ambitious, and the project was abandoned. Later, during the 1870s, the school became bankrupt, and closed.[5] 3. Koss (1970), pp. 28–29 4. MacCarthy (2011), p. 157 5. MacCarthy (2011), pp. 157–160 Koss, Stephen E. (1970), Sir John Brunner: Radical Plutocrat 1842-1919, Cambridge University Press, pp. 28–29, ISBN 0-521-07906-3 MacCarthy, Fiona (2011), The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination, Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-22861-4