Sophia Kelly was on-hand to give us a sneak peak into the history of the estate, and explained how her family Christmases today don’t look so different to those of the family 100 years ago. 

In 1086, William the Conqueror ordered the making of the Domesday Book, listing all the landowners and property across England. It is here when the first ancestor of the Kelly family is named, a man called Modbert, who acquired the land from his Norman king. Around 1100, Martin de Kelly was connected to the estate. Just half a century later, Nicholas de Kelly held a manor at the site and in 1252, Sir William de Kelly built the church next to the house. Since then, the Kelly family has remained here ever since. Today, Sophia’s children are the 30th in a long line of Kellys.

With frost coating the lawns and winter skies hanging over the ancient chimneys, Christmas at Kelly House is something the family always treasures. 

Sophia’s great aunt Margaret, whose diary written during the turbulent years of the First World War can be read on Kelly House’s website, appears to have some very similar traditions to that of Sophia and her family today. Despite the changes the family faced during the Great War, Margaret describes some of the comforts that kept them going. Just days before Christmas in 1914, Margaret documented making a Christmas cake. On Christmas Eve of the same year, she wrote: “As usual, giving of presents, sending off cards, decorating church, & clearing up for Christmas day. Cold day but fine.” 

Sophia recalls, one hundred years later, making her own Christmas cake by an almost identical method, and continuing the 12 days of Christmas tradition that the Kelly family has followed for more than a century. She said: “It’s fascinating, because in 1914 she cooked a Christmas cake and, a hundred years later, I found myself cooking a very similar Christmas cake - soaking the fruit in October, and then it goes in the oven on Christmas Eve. 

“We have always been one of those families that puts the tree up on Christmas Eve, and will leave it up until the twelfth day. Like Margaret documents, on Christmas Eve she went to decorate the church with holly and ivy, and that’s exactly what we continue to do today.”

Have you kept any Christmas traditions in the family? Let us know, email rosie@life-media.co.uk