Astley Hall, near Stourport-on- Severn was Stanley Baldwin’s country home for forty-five years. It had a small estate(by the standard of the time)of some 100 acres. He moved there in 1902 with a growing family, and became its owner in 1912 when substantial additions and improvements were made.
He died there in 1947, two years after his wife, lonely and largely forgotten by the country he had served as prime minister during three terms (1923,1924-29, 1935-37) and as (in effect) deputy prime minister for four years (1931-35). Public opinion turned against him after the outbreak of the Second World War when he was accused, not least by Churchill, of failing to re-arm Britain in the face of the threat from Nazi Germany.
On 10 October, Alistair Lexden visited Astley Hall, which is now a nursing home and greatly changed since Baldwin’s day, to provide a commentary for a short film which will be shown in due course as part of a series on prime ministers and their homes on the BBC Parliament Channel.
His commentary combined references to the house, built in the Jacobean style in the mid-nineteenth century, with summaries of some of the principal events of Baldwin’s political career. At the outset, he described Baldwin as a man who became “ one of the most controversial of all British prime ministers, but only after he had left office with many achievements to his credit”.
As regards the pre-war years, he said that “ recent academic research has shown that Baldwin launched a major rearmament programme in 1934 which was expanded further in the ensuing years. I take the view that, though a man of peace, Baldwin did not neglect his duty to prepare Britain for a possible war.”
As a final contribution to the film, Alistair Lexden revisited the new statue of Baldwin unveiled last year in Bewdley where he said: “Stanley Baldwin stands in the centre of the town, surveying the place he represented for so long in Parliament –-and where his memory continues to be held in great affection.”
As indeed it should, in view of the great affection he had for his native county. He once said: “When I do my work in London hardly a day goes by, whether it be in Downing Street or whether it be while sitting in Parliament, that I cannot see in the vision of my mind the hills of Malvern, and Abberley and Woodbury, the Teme Valley and the Shropshire border, and the Cathedral in Worcester. They are always here, still and constant, and I know that the people who dwell round them remain constant too.”
