Pargeters

Name: Pargeters
Rating: 4.04 (316 reviews)

by Norah Lofts

First published 1984

Amazon

3.9(316)

Adam Woodley is a skilled pargeter whose decorative plasterwork gives a new Suffolk house both its character and its name. His connection with the Mercer family begins a household history that becomes increasingly precarious as the political struggle between king and Parliament moves from argument to civil war. By the next generation, Sarah Woodley-Mercer has inherited responsibility for farms, tenants and the manor at the moment when men, money and property are being drawn into competing causes.
Sarah’s attempt to keep Pargeters intact carries the novel through the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I and the Commonwealth. Royalist obligations drain the estate, Parliamentarian victory threatens sequestration, and Puritan authority enters marriage and domestic life as well as government. Charles I and Oliver Cromwell remain national presences rather than principal characters, while the consequences of their conflict are experienced through land, labour, inheritance and Sarah’s determination to recover the home around which her family has formed.