Losing The Plot

This is where it all ended, four hundred and six years ago. At Holbeche House, near Dudley, with the Sheriff of Warwick on their heels, the last of the gunpowder conspirators - John Grant, Robert Catesby, Ambrose Rookwood, Henry Morgan, Stephen Littleton, Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright, Kit Wright and Thomas Percy - sought to make a final stand in the torrential autumn rain.

It's difficult to ascertain the extent to which their immediate locality affected the conspirators' mindset; however, the decision to dry their wet gunpowder in front of the house's open fire does resemble a serious fit of Dudley logic. In the space of a few explosive seconds, Holbeche House went from being an elegant stately home to what an estate agent would optimistically call "a fixer-upper".

The King's men arrived to find the conspirators burnt and blinded, which made the ensuing fight more than a little one-sided. Cold and hungry, and with Holbeche House a wreckage, the victorious soldiers had no choice but to go over to the nearby burger van for sustenance. Thus filled with hot dogs and pigs in blankets, they were free to spend the rest of the evening drinking brandy and writing their names in the air with sparklers.

Quite lucky for them that the battle had happened on Bonfire Night, really.