The stone that marked the Hopton family

Walled off from the unforgiving landscape, the country house at Canon Frome, Herefordshire sits on stone foundations that date to Roman times. However, the 1786 rebuild of the house is not what this story is built on. The stones that tell the greater story of Canon Frome Court lie not inside the building, but outside along the drive, where a griffin and a hound stand in silent witness to the family that lived for too long. The Hopton family coats of arms graced the necks of these two statues, and they are a decades-long retelling of the family's fortunes and labours - and their eventual ejection from the manor.

The griffin grasping at an unmoving hand speaks of the family's birth: a knight's marriage to an estate's heiress in 1591, which brought the House of Hopton into the prominence it would hold for centuries. The hound, floral collar fixed to its neck, tells the tale of the family's decline: bankrupted in the 1930s, they were forced to sell the house. The statues serve as a reminder of the family's legacy, standing as silent sentinels in the landscape for decades to come.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons