West Berkshire Walking

My Friend from the North likes to come down South and enjoy my area.  I'm an economic migrant I suppose but I've got used to it down here.  And while C is here, I appreciate our lovely English Countryside. 

We start today with a coffee at the Dundas Arms on the Kennet & Avon in Kintbury.  Read more about this Georgian Inn

We follow the canal for a while

Then pop inland

Stopping for a picnic

Pensive or what? 
 
Then home, where Penistone's answer to Charlie Dimmock gets stuck in

I have a meeting later and wonder woman makes risotto for when I get home!

Combe Gibbet

My visitor from the North is here.  Hurrah!  After lunch we set off to relieve stress; nothing better than climbing the hill.  Read the dark tale of Combe Gibbet here

Then we go home for a spinachy meal and catch up

Pint in the Paddock

A lovely late summer's day.  We are in Hamstead Marshall at a social for the Save The White Hart campaign.  Aussie and a Barbie above, the old guard below. 

Sussex Seaside Part 2

A beautiful morning

Dog or seal? 

 

In the distance a lot of people are paddling.  We can't work out why none are swimming

 

Above lies the wreck of a floating pontoon which was once part of the Mulberry floating harbours used by the Allies to invade the French coast on D-Day 6 June 1944. It was a part of the Mulberry harbour which broke free in a storm on 4 June, the day before it was due to go over the channel to Arromanche. This particular section of Mulberry was abandoned and did not make it across the channel. It was washed up on the beach shortly after D-Day.

We walk back past the park and Kite Festival

Later we spend the afternoon on the beach and swim three times.

A weekend in Aldwick

The traffic is not too bad despite the bank holiday and soon I am taking Jospeh to the sea.  Above we are experiencing a squirrel distraction. 

Later we walk through the Aldwick Bay estate.  It's like being in Spain today, it really is.

 

Time to cool off.

Later we swim twice in this lovely sea.  I am content.

Peace and Penicillin

At last the weather is warm.  It necessitates a quick change of clothes before leaving, for which I am grateful later.  (I've not had much use out of my cotton trousers this summer except in NYC, but the jeans are duly discarded)   It's warm and muggy as Phyllis 2 and I whizz down hill for the early train. 

First stop is the Fleming Museum inside St Mary's Hospital right next to Praed St.  Why have I been coming to Paddington all these years and never popped into this little gem?  It's low tech but all you need, with a display, film from the past and a talk from a human in the actual lab where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, which is shown below. Fleming's own son slept in this room when it became a medical students residence years later.  Now it's been reconstructed as a private museum.  Fleming got to medical school thanks to a legacy.  Then, as now, it was difficult to get in if you were poor.  I am grateful to be a baby boomer and go though University on a full grant.  It was as it should be and nowadays we have regressed.   

Read about the museum here  and all about Fleming here and his discovery here.  These links will also tell you about the Florey group in Oxford and the two decade story leading to the successful use of penicillin.  And don't forget the Sheffield story

Next I have a coffee by the Italian Gardens in Hyde Park.  It's too busy and my filling falls out.  Tra la la.   

Quick call to the dentist and then I jump on the Central Line at Lancaster Gate and head for Holborn

I'm going to Lincoln's Inn Fields

Here the old 

mingles with the new

This is the London School of Economics where I am visiting the Women's Library

I am researching their archives on the Greenham Common Peace Camp for more information for our new visitor centre at Greenham Control Tower

It's a great resource in pleasant surroundings with lovely staff.  After two boxes I take a break for carrot cake at Fields

Unlike the rest of my day this is mediocre, but a nice setting

 

On the way back to the tube I spot big tomatoes on the vine which TT is craving and buy them as well as some raspberries

Back to Paddington then home to feta salad and raspberries

Day trip to Eastbourne

Today we looked at a flat that one of us wants to move to and the other doesn't.  I dont even want to talk about it.  But it was worth the six hours in the car to have my second sea experience of the year. 

This was followed by a visit to the wonderful Towner

 

The exhibition we want to see is 'Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship'.  Initally a little overwhelming, I soon setlle in to and appreciate the painintgs, ceramics and fabrics but not the sexual exploits of the over entitled and possibly misogynistic but very likeable non the less Eric R.

This exhibition, coincides with the 75^th anniversary of the untimly and sad death of Eric R. It explores the significant relationships and working collaborations between Ravilious and an important group of friends and affiliates, including Paul and John Nash, Enid Marx, Barnett Freedman, Tirzah Garwood, Edward Bawden, Thomas Hennell, Douglas Percy Bliss, Peggy Angus, Helen Binyon, and Diana Low.

The exhibition includes many of Ravilious’ key works shown alongside both well-known and less seen works by his contemporaries, including work by each artist that has never before been exhibited publicly, and focuses chronologically on key moments when the work and careers of these artists coincided, overlapped or was particularly pertinent to the others, such as their time at the Royal College of Art, the 1927 St George’s exhibition, their time spent at Furlongs and Newhaven in Sussex, and their various roles in the Second World War.

The exhibition represents the wide range of media in which the artists worked, from watercolours to woodcuts, lithographic prints, book jackets and illustrations, patterned papers, and wallpaper and fabric design.

Read more  here 

I love Eric R's later war time work which I find reminiscent of Stanley Spencer.

Here   are more paintings to view

Next to the cafe for tea with the view of the tennis courts from the balcony

And here is a view from one of the many traffic jams on the way home!

A day out in Oxfordshire: Chastleton House

Last night I watched Diana our Mother on ITV. I found it quite moving.  I'm not a Royalist but I liked Diana and was sad when she died tragically and senselessly, the weekend we moved to Newbury.  As someone who has lost their mother,  it was really quite therapeutic.  Like me, the sons didn't cry.  It's too much.

Blackcurrants from Greenham Common with my porridge to cheer me up.

Today we are meeting our Lichfield friends at the 'rare gem of a Jacobean country house'  Chastleton House, which was built between 1607 and 1612 by Walter Jones, a prosperous wool merchant and lawyer.  It was owned by this increasingly impoverished family until 1991, and the house has remained essentially unchanged for nearly 400 years.

First stop is a picnic lunch 

Then we head down to the house.  The estate was bought in 1604 from a Robery Catesby, whose residence was demolished to make way for the new house and no traces of the original building on this spot remain.  We walk past the Dovecote. 

The house is built of Cotswold stone, round a small courtyward, called the Dairy Court.

It is different from other houses of its type in several respects. It has never had a park with a long, landscaped approach such as many other houses of its era. Rather it was built within an existing settlement, Chastleton village, which provided many of the services for the house which would otherwise have been attached, such as a laundry, a fishpond and a bakehouse. Secondly, its treatment by the Trust was similarly unusual, with a policy of conservation rather than restoration, enabling visitors to see the house largely as it was when acquired.

 

Chastleton House is famous for an episode from the Civil War.  Arthur Jones, Walter's grandson narrowly escaped being slaughtered by the Roundheads.  Following the Battle of Worcester in 1651, the Royalists were defeated by Cromwell and Arthur galloped back to Chastleton with Cromwell's soldiers in hot pursuit. His quick-witted wife, Sarah hid him in the secret closet over the porch and although the pursuing soldiers found his exhausted horse in the stables they couldn't find him. Sarah saved Arthur's life by lacing the soldiers' beer with laudanum and saddling up one of their horses for his escape as the soldiers slumbered. 

The House was used as one of the locations for the television series Wolf Hall, representing Wolf Hall itself, the home of the Seymours.

The church is seen on the right as we approach.

 

The entrance hall

Here is the Long Gallery, which is indeed the longest surviving of it's kind.   Like much of the house, the Long Gallery ceiling has been subject to damage. The neglect of the roof for almost two centuries led to the failing of part of the plaster ceiling in the early 1800s, but it was not repaired until 1904-05, when two local men were engaged to make good the losses.

 

This chest is 16th century Spanish, they are not sure what it is doing here but it could be from the Armada 

 

Here we have a 19th century exercise machine! Note the spring.

 

A 17th century window in the Great Hall

In the 18th century no male heirs were available.  The lady of the manor whose name I forget cleared all the debts and mabe this beautiful quilt.  
 

Also of interest is the impressive Great Chamber. Designed for the entertainment of the most important guests and for the playing of music, the design scheme has its roots in Renaissance Italy.

This is the original ceiling 

The house was built on cusp of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and hence called Jacobethan.  The tudor rose persists

Here is the interesting story of the last owner Barbara Clutton-Brock 
quite a character!  This is her bedroom 

Other items of interest in the house include the Juxon Bible, which is said to have been used by the chaplain, Bishop Juxon, at the execution of Charles I. Juxon’s family lived locally in Long Compton until his family died out in the 18th century, when it is thought to have been given to John Jones II because the Jones’ were another family with Jacobite sympathies.

Here is the kitchen which was used till the 30s 

The garden at Chastleton has undergone a number of revisions since the completion of the house in 1612. There is no archaeological evidence of a garden on this site before this date: indeed, the North Garden is split by an old field boundary.

There is no map or written evidence to suggest how the garden was laid out by Walter Jones in 1612, but the walls that enclose the garden are 17th century and archaeological evidence that suggests that the garden has been laid out the same way for the last 400 years. 

Today, the middle terraces are the site of two croquet lawns, originally laid out by Walter Whitmore-Jones in the 1860s. His version of the rules of croquet became definitive, and Chastleton is considered the birthplace of croquet as a competitive sport.

The Kitchen Garden as it is now was enclosed in 1847 and was formed of the existent garden and from part of the adjoining field. It was laid out as four plots on one side of a broad path and two on the other side, and the kitchen garden today has been recently rejuvenated to form this pattern as well.

Lastly to the church where the sculpture Richard Westmacott is buried.  He left a fortune to the Royal Academy Schools.  

We finished a wonderful and interesting day in the lovely garden on the Tite Inn