Master of Measham Hall
1665, London. It is five years since King Charles II returned from exile, the scars of the English Civil Wars are yet to heal and now the Great Plague engulfs the land. Alethea Hawthorne is safe inside the walls of the Calverton household as a lady's companion waiting in anticipation of the day she can return to her ancestral home of Measham Hall.
But when Alethea suddenly finds herself cast out on the plague-ridden streets of London, a long road to Derbyshire lies ahead. Militias have closed their boroughs off to outsiders for fear of contamination. How will this determined country girl navigate a perilous new world of religious dissenters, charlatans and a pestilence that afflicts peasants and lords alike?
The Master of Measham Hall is the first book in a page-turning historical series. In lyrical prose, Anna Abney portrays the religious divides at the heart of Restoration England in a timeless novel about survival, love, and family loyalty.
Anna Abney is among the last descendants of the former residents of Measham Hall, a lost house of Derbyshire. The Measham Hall series is a fictionalised account of her ancestors' lives. Anna was born and raised in London and lived in Ireland, North and South, for thirteen years before returning to the Big Smoke. She now lives in rural Kent with her husband, a playwright and screenwriter, and their border-collie.