Theological, Cultural and Educational Reflections

Wednesday 2nd September 2015

Today we beetled off eastward to the rolling green landscape of Suffolk to the busy market town of Bury St Edmunds.  Edmund was the C9th  King of East Anglia who was murdered  by opponents and his body dismembered and he was beheaded. Allegedly a wolf guarded his head until supporters came to find him and his body was eventually buried at the town now known as Bury St Edmunds. Today there are wolves everywhere around town and the story is alive and well.

It was market day today and we enjoyed the Autumnal  sunshine wandering the streets and sharing in the Salamanca Hobart like bustle and excitement with buskers everywhere. It is a very smart shopping centre with or without market day and the whole town generates a sense of pride and purpose. The Palladian Corn Exchange was particularly busy with a very popular beer brewing festival in full swing.

The town retains a high sense of history with its ancient abbey ruins dating from 1065 and plundered by Henry VIII’s operatives. Today the ruins form part of a huge and beautifully tendered garden presentation much loved by families.

A Benedictene Abbey existed on the site of Bury St Edmunds from 1065 but was destroyed by Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Today only the city gates to the monastery, parts of the old wall  and a few scattered ruins remain but the townsfolk have kept the site in the middle of town and transformed it into a beautiful garden park with stunning summer flowers and playgrounds for children

During the English Reformation work began on not one but three Protestant churches in Bury St Edmunds. One, St Margarets has been demolished.  Two remain, and ironically they stand side by side with only a cemetery in between…St James’ Church was begun in 1503 as a late Gothic design with additions in 1711(new chancel) and the C19th (new roof and another new chancel).  The most radical changes occurred post 1914 when St James was consecrated a Cathedral. Since that time massive changes have occurred the most recent of which include a new quire and crossing (1970), a new cathedral centre and song school ((1990); new Gothic style lantern tower (2005) and new cloisters and transfiguration chapel (2008). Bury St James’ “Gothic” Cathedral is effectively England’s newest Gothic style Cathedral and it is alive and kicking with a lively congregation and a magnificent interior.

Also since the Reformation, St Mary’s church has arisen from the destruction of the Benedictine Abbey of St Edmund. It is larger than St James and the nave at 213 feet is the longest English parish church. Unlike the Cathedral St Mary’s has had few major changes and remains an authentic late Gothic church with wonderful stained glass, the tomb of Mary Tudor, third sister of Henry V111 and an ancient porch dating from 1440 commemorating merchant John Notyygham and his wife Isobel. According to the folk we spoke to both churches have lively congregations, one “High Church” and the other “Low Church”. It is an interesting phenomenon.

We drove on from Bury St Edmunds to the Elizabethan Melford Hall which sits 15kms from the town in the beautiful Village of Melford which indeed also has its own very large parish church.

Melford Hall has been in the Hyde Parker family for the past 300 years and is set in the midst of idyllic Suffolk wool country. The home is run by the National Trust but the family still alive in one wing of the building. It is no treasure house and the charm of this home is that the furniture and fittings are not so totally removed from everyday life although there are some magnificent individual items.

We both felt really at peace in this quiet corner of Suffolk ..not as intense as the tightly knit villages of some other counties and a sense of distance on a sunny day…idyllic England of the poets…. hard to capture  with our camera

A unique feature of this home is the prevailing influence of children’s writer and ecology campaigner Beatrix Potter who was a cousin of the Hyde Parker family.  Here is found the original Jemima Puddleduck  and a large number of original paintings and drawings of Beatrix Potter and her influence is seen in the garden design and other elements of the home. The small villages of Suffolk are enchanting and we drove through many of them today. An English sunny day in the country is difficult to match!

Two more Beatrix Potter paintings of many at Melford Hall

Today we drove three quarters of a kilometre to a city car park and walked our little feet off  all over the ancient university city of Cambridge. Like Bologna, Padua and Oxford, Cambridge can lay claim to being one of Europe’s earliest universities. It is a beautiful city with its university colleges, impressive shopping centre, lovely river and boats and quite stunning Art Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Gallery.  Cambridge has more churches per square foot than any town I have ever been in even Rome!  Cambridge also has the most amazing bookshop Waterstones with four floors of wonderful books to browse in. Like being in Oxford with the martyrs shrine to Latimer and Hughes it is moving to be in Cambridge where so many Christian movements for evangelism came from and so many effective scholars laboured including Simeon, the Cambridge Seven, Lewis who worked at both Oxford and Cambridge and J B Lightfoot.

Cambridge is of course also loaded up with amazing University colleges with their own grounds, lecture theatres, quarters for students and amazing facilities. It is a place where one feels like going back to university for the pure enjoyment of the environment; it is also a place of a thousand bikes per 100metres.

Of course the standout building in Kings College and perhaps in Cambridge is the C15th Chapel of Kings so famous for its choral work especially its annual Christmas Carol service which requires considerable effort to obtain tickets for. It is in many ways a simple Gothic construction based to a degree on the St Chapelle Chapel in Paris with its high straight stained glass windows.  The view is interrupted by the remarkable vault holding the large organ in the centre of the Chapel. The fan vaulting in the ceiling is remarkable as are the highly carved choir stalls. The Communion table is simple and dominated by the large Rubens painting “The Adoration of the Magi” above.  There is a brilliant explanation of the Chapel’s history and political ups and downs  in a side corridor. Of particular interest is the link with the Eton chapel and St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.

The Honourable Richard Fitzwilliam, 7th Viscount of Merrion (1745-1816) bequeathed his substantial art collection, library and the substantial sum of 100 000 pounds to provide “a good substantial museum repository” for the collection. The collection has grown through the years and a further generous bequest i 1908 by Charles Brinsley enabled the Gallery to be doubled in size.  The original building has a fine Palladian external appearance and the entry foyer and staircase with the dome is simply stunning.

Everyone sees different things in a Gallery/Museum. The Fitzwilliam is brilliantly curated and the setting is majestic. At the moment there is a “personal treasures” exhibition which includes all of those things that folk of different ages have seen as desirable for their homes since earliest times. In addition there is Ruskin’s contribution of 48 paintings by Turner beautifully displayed and annotated and a very detailed display of English landscape painting and on loan from the V & A the Gilbert collection of jewellery and trinket boxes.  A further highlight is the Rothschild Michelangelo sculptures. Their origin is contested but a powerful defence of their authenticity is mounted with the display and in any case both pieces are stunning.   All of this is in addition to a remarkable art collection of all periods, strong in French impressionism, mediaeval Italian and of course English artists of all periods as well as a large number of bronzes and sculptures of both G E Moore and Jacob Epstein.  This is in addition to very significant holdings of early Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts of the highest standard especially the Egyptian sarcophagi and the Greek vases. All in all this is a stunning gallery indeed.  A very personal selection with limited photographic skills is included here….wonderfully curated gallery..needs a week. We gave it two hours!

Monday 31 August

As I sit down to write this blog I can’t help feeling overwhelmed being in Europe at this time of moral crisis occurring over the Asian and African refugee crisis. Hundreds of thousands of folk fleeing war and oppression in Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Nigeria are pouring into Greece, Macedonia, Hungary, Italy and Malta and making their way by any means possible to northern Europe, preferably Germany, France, Sweden or Britain. The complexities of the source of these problems is massive …political, historical, economic, international, religious and humanitarian. Britain is already a multi-cultural nation and in the motel industry which we now know well fluent English speakers are running at about 50%.  This is a nation of opportunity but it is struggling under the massive burden of dealing with the numbers.

Visiting stately homes also unveils a microcosm of similar historical changes ..vicious religions persecutions, the civil war with atrocities on both sides, destruction of works of art for all sorts of reasons, divisions between social classes and destructive wars between the nation states that make up the British Isles.  I honour William Morris’s socialist goal to remove all  differences of wealth between people…is it possible? It seems Jesus did not think so. Should we strive to care for those who call upon us? Yes of course..what if the numbers are overwhelming as in Rwanda or Viet-Nam who can cope? …We do what we can.  Should we forego the seemingly trivial….art? stately homes? collections? historical artifacts? literature? Buddhist statues in Afghanistan? Palmyra ruins? No I don’t thinks so. Human artistic, philosophical, literary, political, scientific, musical, historical, aesthetic, architectural, economic, religious, social reformation works are what makes us truly human.  So, stately homes with their treasures do not mean anything in themselves…they are pointers to the deep values and the beauty that is possible in every person…if we have enough of these values and enough heart, determination and faith we can and will solve the refugee crisis as well!

And so to Burghley House!

On the last day of Summer in England it was raining cats, dogs and everything in between so we set off for another warm and dry stately home and found it in Burghley House in the village of Stamford in Northamptonshire on the border with Lincolnshire. Burghley bills itself as the GREATEST Elizabethan house in England but there is so little of the Elizabethan left inside the house that that honour should probably go to Longleat.  Nevertheless if it is just the outside to be considered then Longleat’s severe rather blockish design must yield I think to the exciting towers, domes and spires of Burghley though no doubt many of them are later than Elizabeth 1’s Golden Age also. A claim that is more accurate I think is England’s greatest “treasure house” although here also the upstart  C18th challenger Waddesdon might object.

It doesn’t really matter…Burghley House is a most wonderful place, the home of the Marquesses of Exeter for  eight generations and of the Cecil family of Lords Burghley for over 600 years and built by William Cecil, Lord Burghley and sometime friend and counsellor to Elizabeth 1. Members of the Cecil family still live there. The House is now owned by a charitable trust and only the title Lord Burghley is hereditary not the house and contents so its place is relatively secure providing the trust does its work well. The Cecils have been a key family in English history in many areas and are also responsible for the remarkable Hatfield House closer to London.

Once again we land in the midst of wonderful parklands created by Capability Brown in the C18th but once again also there are formal gardens and fountains, a recreated garden of surprises. Once again there are vast tracts of arboretums, deer forests and in this case remarkable fields and accommodation for horse trials which for three days every year and starting on this coming Thursday,  shuts the Village and surrounding roads for three days. There are three restaurants on the property and for all this week a market food court is operating with many yummy options. In addition there is a substantial museum of ancient Chinese and Japanese porcelain collected by one of the Marquesses and beautifully curated.

The sixth Marquess Lord David Burghley won the 400 metres at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and a silver in the relay at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. He was played by Nigel Havers in the film Chariots of Fire running around the quad at Cambridge with full glasses of champagne against Jewish Brit Harold Abrahams.  Apparently the Lord Burghley in 1981 when the film was made refused to participate in the making of the movie because the real Lord David Burghley actually won the quad race within the minute, one of only two men ever to do so and it was with full matchboxes and not champagne glasses and probably about four years later leading up to the 1928 Olympics not the 1924 Olympics in Paris. This is their version of the lack of participation anyway.

There are over 300 paintings in Burghley House..here we have Verrio’s Hell on the ceiling over the “Hell staircase”; six Elizabethan portraits; A school of Cranach portrait of Luther; and a scary painting of the Cyclops interpreted in human terms.

As with Waddesdon, highlights of Burghley House are too many to list.  Although many of the painting masters were sold in earlier years to pay death duties, there are still over 300 magnificent paintings including a portrait of Luther (school of Cranach), the extraordinary ceiling painting of Hell by Antonio Verrio over the “Hell Staircase” and “The Death of Seneca” by Giordano.

Other highlights include exceptional porcelaine collections (pre 1917 Chinese and Japanese and impressive Maiolica; the extraordinary Royal bedrooms in the State rooms; wonderful cabinet furniture and desks, four fireplaces with silver grates and fittings and the second largest silver wine cooler in the world weighing in at 18 stone (second only to one twice as large at the Hermitage in St Petersburg acquired by Catherine the Great; the humungous kitchen; the servants quarters with a 44 bell system; the baronial hall with gallery including a vast library of books; the stunning views of the gardens from every room and so on.

 From left: 18 stone solid silver wine cooler and Richard enjoying yet another amazing library in the Baronial dining Hall

 blue and white Chinese porcelain and an early Chinese screen

 an amazing model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and Italian maiolica on a table composed of polished volcanic materials from the eruption of Vesuvius

Sculptures and an antique pram in the crypt beneath the Hell staircase

A feature of Burghley is the attention to the beds and bathrooms in the State rooms provided for royal and other guests. There were many such rooms so they clearly had many guests.

It was a joy to see in this massive house a very large chapel permanently set up which is used on special occasions by the Village for worship as well as for services for the staff including weddings and funerals. The Cecils were always Protestant from their Elizabethan beginnings and sympathies but had a tough time during the English civil war because Burghley was occupied by a Royalist garrison and attacked and overrun by Cromwell’s men with much damage to the interior. It is good to see the Chapel maintained as a place for worship.

Sunday 30th August 2015

This morning we checked out of our Premier Inn in Highwycombe, north of London and ventured to ancient St Albans Abbey Church for the 9.30am Family eucharist. It was fantastic to see children running into the church with their parents puffing behind and it was difficult to get a carpark in the next door St Albans’ School carpark.

The very large cathedral was basically full and once the children came back from their learning activities for Communion it was decidedly full and delightfully noisy. The hymns were all oldies but goodies and sung enthusiastically eg Dear Lord and Father of Mankind to the traditional tune..one of my favourite hymns…Good to hear it again and we finished with Charles Wesley’s “Ye Servants of God, Your Master proclaim..”

The sermon by the Dean, the Very Revd John Jeffrey was on the Gospel from Mark 7:1-8 ..Jesus’ dispute with the pharisees over external rules and internal values. He spoke about shame and guilt societies. Shame societies care less about what folk do provided the external stuff is well handled. Guilt societies major on personal responsibility for doing good even if no one is watching. Christian societies have traditionally been guilt societies and it gets a bad press today because of course too much guilt can lead to depression and other psychological illness.

Nevertheless the Dean argued that a sense of guilt is a good thing which provokes our conscience and challenges us to the highest standards whether other folk are aware or not. For, as Jesus argued to the Pharisees it is what comes out of a person’s heart in speech and action that matters, not just keeping up appearances, Christian or otherwise.

We came away from St Alban’s with a sense of excitement for the Christian community there. They have a Christian education leader and an advertised program which included a five week course on Abraham,  another in Intermediate Latin and a third study group on the Greek New Testament!

As for the cathedral building, they are about to celebrate their 900th anniversary from their Norman beginnings so there is an old stone Norman abbey section to which a later Gothic flint covered vast extension has been added.  The stone rood screen in front of the crossing remains and new sanctuary furniture sits in front of it for the family service.

The more traditional 11.00am service meets “on the abbey side” and the organ sits atop both and meets both needs. They have effectively created two separate worship centres and although it could be said that the architectural line from front to back has been permanently interfered with, my view is that it is a triumph of ecclesiology over architectural intention. The ancient Cathedral has adapted to the C21st and is alive and kicking. We came away very encouraged.

After church we journeyed from St Albans across to encounter Waddesdon House the amazing Baroque mansion built for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in 1874 and bequeathed by his descendant James de Rothschild to the National Trust in 1957.  On first sight we felt we were back in the Loire Valley looking at a French Chateau with its turrets and towers and formal gardens and this was certainly Baron Ferdinand’s goal. This is once again a massive house with multiple storeys and many rooms.

Inside, however, the house  is deliberately structured more like an art gallery as the Rothschilds have been serious collectors for generations. Making their money from the English banking system they have, over several generations, build up quite outstanding collections of paintings (English portraits, Dutch masters and some more modern material), one of the world’s largest porcelain collections (mainly Sevres but some significant Meissen), substantial collections of C18th and C17th French furniture, clocks, tapestries and carpets, musical instruments, lace, buttons, a full scale working aviary, fountains, and exhibition spaces for modern art events. Phew! No doubt I missed plenty e.g. all the amazing interior wall panelling no longer required in huge aristocratic hotels and homes in Paris.  Currently a major sculpture exhibition of the work of G E Moore is on view.

Just discovered how to add all these at once…now have to work out captions! Above left is the formal parterre garden  visible from all the formal reception rooms in the house; above right is a small “green dining room” for intimate gatherings. The modern light fitting has cutlery sticking out at all angles but iPhone photography is again defeated. Below is just a tiny sample of bits and pieces that appealed to us.

This extraordinary light fitting has a clock beneath (for telling visitors when to leave?) and a birdcage above (if the conversation flags?)

This elaborate C18th Franch desk makes me think I should update my plywood study desk at Berwick!  The huge Meissen turkey  and the goat to follow are items made to order. We saw six of these at Longleat but unfortunately managed to delete the photos after a rush of blood finding space on the iPhone!

The two vast Guardi  paintings of Venice in this entry hall do not look much but they are actually huge  and would barely fit in a standard tfbv lounge room.  The Goat as above is Meissen

Everything at Waddesdon is over-sized.  I am still some distance from this garden urn which must have required a crane to place it.  It is huge!  The collection is still growing as the Rothschild Foundation is still behind the collection. This evocative painting of a boy making a house of cards is by C18th French artist Jean-Simon Chardin.

These are all Sevres plates and this is a tiny fragment of three large rooms full of Sevres porcelain opened by the Queen in 1993

These are two of the Bakst “Sleeping Beauty” panels which are quite wonderful in a specially designed round room. The poor unfortunates sitting below are, like we were we, exhausted patrons trying to look excited by wonder after wonder.

The house sits high on a hill in Aylesbury with a vast forest and cultivate arboretum surrounding it before you come to the manicured lawns and formal gardens.  It would be a week’s work to view carefully everything this magical place has to offer. We gave it three hours and retreated to Cambridge through some heavy rain for a quiet night.  Our conclusion is that although this house is quite majestic, our preference is for the humble, straightforward and more homely atmosphere of the William Morris country retreat by the Thames in Kelmscott. Too much of a good thing may well be too much of a good thing!

Saturday 29th August 2015

Today we completed our William Morris quest by driving straight back down from Wightwick Manor via the M5 to Gloucestershire to the small village of Kelmscott on the Thames, not far from its source in the Cotswold hills.  Kelmscott Manor was a C17th farm house, outbuildings and gardens which William Morris leased with his wife Jane and his companion/her lover Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1871.

The Morrises were living at their much loved “Red House” in Kent but it was too far from his London business which was taking off.  The scandalous Rossetti/Jane romance was also taking off and it was socially  convenient for Morris to move the whole triangle to Kelmscott. During this difficult period Morris several times spent six months at a time in Iceland. He had learned the language and was interested in the northern sagas as in all mythology. Rossetti eventually left in 1874 never to return.

William Morris never owned the house but after his death and burial in the graveyard at St George’s Jane bought the house and lived there with her daughter May. The house was bequeathed by May Morris to Oxford University with very severe restrictions re change which led to the house and garden falling into serious disrepair. The Society of Antiquaries to whom Oxford passed on the Manor were able to overturn the will and have spent millions restoring the Manor to its original dignity. It is now a place of wonder and delight set in one of the most engaging villages in England.

The area is agricultural and fairly flat (Rossetti complained about how boring a place it was) rather than hugely romantically beautiful like say Stourhead gardens but it is quiet, picturesque and just 2 minutes from the Thames where Morris liked to fish. In 2003 the river flooded and fast work was needed to save the contents of the Manor House.  In the village there are a number of other early village homes and some newer very impressive additions together with the Memorial hall and three cottages all commissioned for the village by Jane and their two daughters. It was quiet, well away from London and a place for lots ot thinking. The memorial hall was officially opened by George Bernard Shaw a century after William Morris’s birth in 1834.

The rambling house has three floors and many outbuildings and the gardens have been beautifully restored after falling into disrepair after the death of May Morris who lived there after William and Jane had passed away.  All of the original furniture  from both the Red House and Kelmscott Manor was sold at the time  but the Society of Antiquaries has managed to find and repurchase many items of furniture as well as a complete collection of William Morris’s writings and the bookcases are filled with books by Ruskin, Scott, Dickens and many others that Morris read voraciously from.

A number of original prints from Burne-Jones are there as well as some very famous Rosetti portraits of Jane Morris. In addition Morris’s large collection of Durer prints is there, a number of significant quilts and tapestries, the original kitchen, paintings including a wonderful Brueghel of a garden, silk hangings and works of Morris from his various sojourns in Iceland.

It is impossible to acknowledge the depth and  complexity of the gifts of William Morris…a craftsman expert in design of every sort, wood, furniture, textiles and fabrics, tiles, painting and tapestries. His writing varies from learned works of ethnography and linguistics to theology and ethics, translations of the Odyssey, Icelandic sagas, the legends of the Nibelungs and accounts of Greek mythology such as Jason and the Argonauts as well as his own mythologies. He wrote poetry, sagas, literary criticism, art theory and history and these are only the areas I am familiar with. Although a child of wealth and well educated he was passionately committed to Christian ethics and the idealistic goal of abolishing the differences between rich and poor in society and these passions led him to join the Socialist Party in England at a time when the gentry were not supposed to be involved in such thing. All of this while maintaining a highly successful London design business.

Morris’s  Kelmscott Press set new standards for quality publishing and even facsimilies now fetch huge prices. This is a work of some genius, illustrated by Morris and containing Chaucer, The Romance of the Rose, Boethius and much more besides. Morris was also passionate about authentic arts and crafts, and, like Ruskin, was horrified by the mediocrity of mass produced and repetitive designs compared with unique and crafted art and workmanship produced by those who love their work and were not just compelled to be there. To have his skill in languages, poetic gifts, moral strength and to hold together his workaholic writing, designing, business, political, intellectual and public responsibilities at the same time managing to keep a tempestuous loving marriage and home together in the face of outrageous pressure from Rossetti is an achievement unlikely ever to be repeated.  For me William Morris is a true Renaissance man who elevates everything he touches and who puts his learning to both artistic, practical and moral intent.

For Ann it is William Morris’s skill in textile design, weaving and understanding of materials that has inspired her now fifteen year passion for the time and design intensive art of quilting. She has produced over thirty quilts of varying sizes but her magnum opus to date is the heirloom quilt she made for her niece Sarah Lang, also an artist and a teacher of Art as well as a talented musician and event entrepreneur. The particular challenge of this quilt is that each square of flowers was hand appliquéd and indeed, all of Ann’s quilts have been worked by hand. The design for Sarah’s quilt is based on Jane Morris’s handworked quilt which can be found in Kelmscott Manor (currently for some reason on William Morris’s bed!)  The similarities between the quilts can be clearly seen in the attached photos.

Clearly yesterday’s visit to Wightwick Manor and today’s journey to Kelmscott meant a great deal to both of us.  May and Jane Morris embroidered the following poem around William Morris’s bed canopy as can be seen in the photo above. I think the poem speaks for the man.

Friday 28th August 2015

This morning we left our Premier Inn home in  Chippenham in the southern Cotswolds to drive north to the Midlands to our one night Premier Inn home in Wolverhampton North near Birmingham. Along the way we stopped off at the very ancient Church of the Virgin Mary in Tewkesbury which was a Saxon site in the C9th and  Dominican Abbey prior to the Reformation with the church consecrated in 1121.  The Abbey survived Henry V111’s predations because the town of  Tewksbury paid him off for the sum of 453 pounds  (the cost of the lead and the bells!).

T S Eliot wrote in The Four Quartets,   

You are not here to verify,

instruct yourself,

or inform curiosity

ore carry report.

You are here to kneel where prayer has been been valid

                                     As soon as I walked into Tewkesbury Abbey this is how I felt. In many of the churches we have visited I have found myself “reporting” on this or that or seeking to “instruct myself” about this or that bit of history, art or architecture. Here in Tewkesbury Abbey with its massive round Romanesque columns and simple, stately architecture I felt strongly that people had been praying in this place for a very long time indeed. So here I did pray ..for peace in our troubled world and for peace in my own heart.

The C17th organ in this Abbey today was allegedly played by John Milton. He was someone else who loved beauty and peace and I felt a kindred spirit with him today as yesterday at Stourhead House where Milton was twice honoured in the library.  This church has everything, remarkable painted ceilings, naughty misericords, wonderful roof bosses, a tiny Dominican prayer place, a Raphael painting in the Lady Chapel (Madonna del Posseggio) and some wonderful new stained glass windows. It is indeed a place of prayer and peace.

Travelling on up the M5 we turned off at Wolverhampton to find our place of rest and to explore Wightwick Manor House, the newest house ever bought by the National Trust in 1947 (at which time the house was only fifty years old. ) There has been a house on the site since at least the Doomsday book as it is noted there.  In the 1600s a wooden manor house was built and remains still exist in the Malthouse today.

The current house was built in 1887 by Theodore Mander and his wife Flora and they doubled its size in 1893. Mander was an industry king (industrial paints for vehicles), a politician, Lord Mayor and highly decorated public figure. He was also an aesthete and together with his wife they set to recreate the perfect “Tudor House” (architect Edward Ould) and formal garden down to the last detail complete with tiny set windows in odd places, a secret staircase from the front reception room to an upstairs bedroom if Flora didn’t like the person who came to the front door, a huge baronial hall with a balcony, two large staircases, room after rambling room with large fireplaces and much more besides.

Both the Manders and their son Geoffrey and his wife Rosalie were also strongly influenced by the Arts and Craft movement, and Victorian art in general and were avid collectors of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian artwork. Each room with one exception is wall papered with William Morris designs and significant artworks are found on every wall (probably the largest Pre-Raphaelite collection in one place in England). Works by Burne-Jones (including Love Among the Ruins), Millais (including the scandalous portrait of Mrs Effie Ruskin painted at the time they fell in love when Millais was staying with the Ruskins in Scotland),  Ford Madox Brown,  and many paintings by Pre-Raphaelite women including Lucy Madox Brown, Evelyn de Morgan (the amazing Flora), Lizzie Saddal, May Morris,  and Marie Spatali Stillman.

In addition the house contains two early and rare copies of the Kelmscote printed Chaucer and there are many fine examples of William De Morgan tiles.  It would take a whole day to explore this house and garden. We gave it three hours and found it to be another very restorative experience, not unlike Stourhead the previous day. The National Trust in Britain has done a brilliant job with both properties.

Thursday 27th August 2015

We had a half lay day today first of all finding and using a laundromat in Chippingham and secondly negotiating with Europcar over the health of our Vauxhall Estate Car which had quite a high mileage for a rental (not that much due to us!).  In recent days when the poor old Vauxhall was started up in the morning we had been receiving dire orange warnings on the desktop such as “oil pressure low”  “do not drive” , “service car immediately” etc   With my normal vast expertise in car mechanics I have been ignoring these warnings and still driving to Wales etc. because the signs seemed to disappear after a few seconds.

This morning as well as dire orange warnings we had all sorts of bells and whistles when we started it up. At first I thought it was the local bell ringers but eventually even I realised we shouldn’t keep driving the poor old thing so after some phone argybargy we drove to the nearest Europcar  centre in Bath, the home of the Georgian circle and the perpendicular Bath Abbey not to mention the hugely chlorinated and very expensive Roman baths!  After even more argy bargy (because of course no signs dared appear when a real mechanic was watching)  I was reduced to threats of being marooned in the wilds of Scotland (we are going to Edinburgh!)

They agreed to change vehicles after seeing the look on Ann’s face and we are now the proud drivers of a pretty well brand new white Kia SUV! This is a huge embarrassment to me because I have been a long time critic of SUVs and their drivers’ arrogance predicated on size. Apart from anything else all the lanes in England our satnav keeps sending us down will have to be immediately widened as the Kia is a seriously wide vehicle!

By the time we sat in the vehicle to drive off it was teeming rain, the vehicle was parked on a seriously steep gradient with a brand new  company van about a foot away in front, and a returning customer having parked a vehicle not far behind us.  In addition I was back with an old fashioned pull up hand break instead of the flash automatic button on the Vauxhall which simply released when we took off.  Pride would not allow me to take Ann’s sensible suggestion to ask them to move their vehicle so my first reverse wet handbrake start was not the greatest but did do the job and we emerged with all vehicles intact (phew!)

We tootled off through the glorious southern Cotswold hills and valleys over the amazing canal and boat systems and found the wonderful Red Lion pub in the hamlet of Wolverton where we felt we had deserved a baguette or two.

So it was 3.30pm when we arrived at our destination for the day, the wonderful National Trust property of Stourhead House and gardens in the tiny village of Stourton in Wiltshire. Aussie National Trust earned half its cost today saving us thirty one pounds entry fee which is over $60 Aussie in real money!

This property was built in the Palladian style by the Hoare family in  the early C18th and is much newer than the other stately homes we have been visiting except of course for the neo-Gothic house at Cardiff Castle. The Hoares have accrued four generations of banking leadership and the Hoare Bank is the only bank still in private hands in London.

In 1902 the House was badly damaged by fire but much of its contents were saved. It was rebuilt in identical style from photographs.  It is in some ways a sad story. The final heir Henry Hoare and his wife had their own property when they inherited  Stourhead and reluctantly moved there to set it up for their son Harry who was heavily involved in helping to develop the property and loved living there. Unfortunately Harry was killed in action in World War 1 and the couple had to decide whether to keep living there which they did and ended up further developing the property for over 30 years, dying within six hours of each other on the same day in 1947. The House was donated to the National Trust with an allowance for an extended family member to continue living there.

The House includes an impressive art and library collection although key items from both were sold over the years to raise funds. There is also some significant furniture and the house itself stands impressively on a hill surrounded by a village, forest and beautiful pasture land.

The real gem of Stourhead however is the garden.  Landscaped around a large man-made lake achieved by damming a small stream it is a vast forest of deciduous and evergreen trees of every shape, size and origin alongside vast areas of lawn and  glorious herbaceous borders, a very effective green house, and wonderful tracks with vistas to the lake, to various temples and follies and to the hills beyond.

It is certainly a place to lose yourself in and in some ways it is reminiscent  of the great Victorian gardens in Mt Macedon and the Dandenongs. There are literally forests of rhododendrons, maples, ash and liliodendron trees and all open to the village (which is a little remote) to walk in till dusk with their dogs.

The village also contains a more than useful pub, a wonderful small art gallery, St Peter’s 700 year old early Gothic parish church of Stoughton and many fine old village homes. This is a placee to seriously lose yourself for a day or a year! We loved it!

Wednesday 26th August

Today with the rain moving East to London we took off West to the sunshine of South Wales but first detoured to the beautiful harbour city of Bristol to find Bristol Cathedral. The church historian and architectural scholar Pevsner describes this Cathedral whose nave was not completed until the 1860’s as superior to anything else built in England and indeed in Europe at the same time. This is high praise but the Cathedral does make an impact.  The reason for this is that the nave, choir and aisles are all at the same height creating effectively a mediaeval “hall church” …a lofty and elegant space with a series of elegant arches.” With the technology then available, flying buttresses were no longer required and the result is a very “clean” building with flowing lines.

Originally a Norman  “hall church”  was built within the abbey in 1298 but  Henry V111 ordered the dissolution of the abbey in 1539 and only the choir remained until the nave and west front was added in Gothic Revival style in the 1860s.

It’s latest claim to fame is as the site for the filming of Hilary Mantel’s impressive Reformation novel  Wolf Hall detailing the contribution of Thomas Cromwell to Henry V111’s  court and to the Reformation.  The chapter house and church were both substantially used in this BBC production and the church was turned into Westminster Abbey for Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn

Moving on from Bristol we crossed over into Wales via the amazing suspension technology of the bridge over the Severn River.

Our first goal was Llandaff Cathedral in the city of Cardiff. It is approached from a carpark high above the building by a series of steps …”The Dean’s steps” and one then arrives at a quite small front door which opens to four or five steps down to the floor of the cathedral so that you enter with a total overview of the whole interior from above.

A church has stood on this site since 546. The C12th early Romanesque/early Gothic building fell into decline during the Reformation and Puritan era and was severely damaged by wild storms.  In the mid C18th restoration began but the building was again severely damaged by a German landmine in World War 11. Architect George Pace lead the reconstruction after the war which included a brand new chapel (The Welch Regiment Memorial), strengthening of the C19th tower and the extraordinary introduction of a concrete chancel arch which holds the former organ case on which was suspended the figure of Christ in Majesty  by Sir Jacob Epstein.

Artistically there are many treasures here including a set of porcelain panels by C19th Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones  showing the six days of creation above the communion tabel in the Dyfrig Chapel, and “The Seed of David” triptych in the Euddogwy Chapel by another Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti. In addition there is the very modern “Annunciation” by Clive HIcks-Jenkins completed in 2010 and a memorial of St Francis of Assisi in bronze. This is a cathedral of surprises and it is completed by the installation in 2010 of a huge new organ  (the largest wholly-new British built organ to be commissioned in a UK cathedral for 50 years).

After lunch we ventured back into Cardiff Central, past the beautiful homes in Cathedral Place and the sensational Millennium Stadium and found a lucky park near to the C12th Norman Cardiff Castle and keep.

This huge walled site has also had a chequered history through all the wars and ups and downs of Welsh and British history too complex to describe here. Eventually it came into the hands of the Marquesses of Bute and one John Stuart who employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to create a Georgian mansion on the site alongside the fortified castle keep. With wealth from the coal industry this family continued to expand the buildings, destroying most of the mediaeval components in the process.

In the first half of the C19th John Crighton -Stuart employed archtect William Burgess to create a bizarre Neo-Gothic Revival house superimposed on the existing mansion and this is now what the National Trust cares for today. It has a romantic, almost Disneyland happy feel and on a beautiful summer’s day it was a nice place to be.

Tuesday 25th August

Today we headed south east from Chippenham past the thatched rooftops of the homes of ancient Laycock and its even older abbey and later on past the even more ancient stones of Stonehenge to the relatively “new” C16th house of the Herberts, the Earls of Pembroke.

Once again it is the homes of families who have somehow been able to maintain hereditary continuity who have most been able to cope with the vagaries of political religious upheaval and C20th Government taxation/death duties policy. The Herberts have hung on in Wilton House, very near Salisbury although they have had their moments as did many other royalist sympathisers during Cromwell’s Commonwealth.

The current Earl and Countess of Pembroke are a young couple with young children and a youthful approach to “Stately home leadership”.  They open the house and gardens regularly for charity and hold many functions of various types on the property. They also refuse to “rope off” sections of the State and other rooms so when paying visitors come they don’t feel “kept out” of the rooms but are able to freely walk around. Indeed all of the house is still used by the family and apparently the family can often be seen mingling with the visitors. We were not sure if that was the case while we were there. I think it may have been possible. Another impressive feature was that special exhibitions were not charged at an additional rate.

On our visit two exhibitions were open as well as a professionally made film of the history of the house which was quite outstanding. The exhibitions were firstly, the current Earl of Pembroke’s fast car collection and secondly an exhibition of Cecil Beaton’s photographic works. Cecil Beaton was an English fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and academy award winning stage and costume designer for films and theatre. He also often photographed the Royal Family for official publications. The cars were to die for and some have been successful in races.

Cecil Beaton loved Wilton House, visited often, and his view of Wilton bears repeating:

Wilton House is perhaps the most wonderful piece in all Wiltshire’s heritage of domestic architecture. Formerly an abbey and later designed at various stages by Holbein the Younger, Inigo Jones, Watt and Wyatt, with its cube rooms and the crimson velvet curtains, with its fantastic Palladian bridge and the lawns flanked with cedars of Lebanon, its gardens where Shakespeare acted and Philip Sydney wrote “The Arcadia”, Wilton is at every time of the year , in all weathers , unfailing in its beauty.

I can’t add to this except the impressive collection of paintings (Rembrandt painting of his aged mother, the largest collection of van Dyke portraits in England, Brueghel the younger and older, Titian, many Italian Renaissance paintings, over 100 classical busts and so on), the pair of Fred Astaire shoes, the wonderful Japanese inspired water garden and the wonderful front gate with a sculpture of Marcus Aurelius atop the gate!  Shakespeare did have a special connection with Wilton House and the house has a history of dramatic performance. Like many British stately homes Wilton was used as a hospital during World wars.

Once again photography was not permitted inside the house so no serious pics inside. The gardens and cedar lined lawns are to die for and the quality of the internal presentation of the house  has few peers.

A small highlight for me is that in one bookcase in a drawing room Ann spotted  two beautifully bound volumes of the Revd Humphrey Prideaux’s Prideaux’s Connections. Humphrey Prideaux was a distant ancestor of mine and became the Dean of Norwich. I have a copy of Prideaux’s Connections, found for me by the late Bishop John Wilson, much less grand than the two volumes in Wilton House. The work is a scholarly attempt to relate the the Old and New Testaments theologically and historically. It was good to see them there.

Monday 24th August

Today we experienced our first seriously rainy day of touring and it certainly makes a contrast to the high thirties we experienced for a month in Italy.  We drove from Chippingham 35 minutes south to the C15th mansion of Longleat, ancestral home of the Thynne family who survived Tudor politics, serious Cromwellian warfare and the ups and downs of aristocratic life and who still own their house today.

The present Marquess is an artist and patron of artists who has added to the over 1000 paintings and portraits in Longleat his own quite impressive political and social comment art as well as two mazes and many other garden additions. In 2010 he handed over the running of the estate to his son Viscount Seymour.

The estate is vast although not as big as in Elizabethan days.  It still measures 1000 acres of immaculately kept parklands initially established by famous English landscape designer Capability Brown. In addition there are 4000 acres of farmland which includes a running farm and another 4000 acres of woodland.

It was Henry Thynne (1905 -1992) who saved Longleat from the English death duties  taxation system (and in the process many other stately homes).  Against significant ridicule he opened the house to the public on a regular paying basis thereby setting a standard for many eventually to follow. In addition as an amazing entrepreneur he created an impressive wildlife safari park and a holiday campsite. Many major public events are held at Longleat and many films have been made there. Longleat is generally regarded as the most impressive still standing Elizabethan house in England.

The House itself contains just one space, the baronial  hall  remaining from Elizabethan times but that itself is an impressive space. Many ot the changes that have been made were completed in the C19th by architect Sir Jeffrey Wyatville  but what made an impact on us were the rich furnishings throughout the house and the high standard with which the interior and furnishings have been maintained. In addition the very committed and enthusiastic staff made an impact by their passion for the house. What made an impact on me was the library of over 44 000 books in seven extraordinary rooms! Hmm…

Leaving Longleat after a very pleasant lunch in the crypt of the mansion, we journeyed back to Chippenham via the beautiful small Cotswolds town of Bradford on Avon which contains three very historic churches.  We were able to visit two of them. The most ancient is a small and simple Saxon Church, the Church of St Laurence whose existence is noted by William of Malmesbury in the 1120’s but thought by him to date back to the time of St Aldheim (died 709) although this date is contested and the original Saxon site may have been on the site of the present Holy Trinity Anglican Church. This is an ancient church indeed and reminds me of the simple chapel we saw in Glendalough Monastery in southern Ireland some years ago.

Holy Trinity is also an ancient church in Bradford on Avon although substantially rebuilt in the 1860’s. It certainly dates from the C12th on this site and ancient features include a faded wall painting in the sanctuary dating from c1300, the C15th tower, a funeral tomb for Anne Yew dating to 1601, the memorial to Charles Steward who fell off his horse in 1698 and the amazing “squint” or “hagiograph”…a long small corridor with a window into the sanctuary to enable leprosy sufferers to see the priest and hear what was happening in the sanctuary. In the former monastery in which the chapel was built there was a leprosy hospital. The Church will soon celebrate its millennium and is a lively and spiritually active community.