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That's (a bit) better
Jun. 30th, 2007 07:22 pmWeather not having becoming Biblical, I went to Stamford today - one of my favourite places, and somewhere you should go, especially if you';r etravelling up the A1, which goes within a mile of it (and indeed used to go through the centre).
The main purpose was to go to Burghley House (apologies for awful misspelling last night - I was tired). Burghley, as the picture there attests, is a magnificent place - one of the dozen or so most impressive houses in the country, and one of the least well-known. Obviously, it depends whether you're suspectible to stateley homes as a breed, but if you are, then it's definitely worth checking out, especially for the fabulous painted rooms by Antonio Verrio, and the hammerbeamed-ceilinged Great Hall. As the home of William Cecil, it's also of interest to Elizabethophiles, and as the site for much of the filming of the recent Pride and Prejudice, of interest to bonnet-nuts.
Basically, it's a stonker. An expensive stionker, but a stonker nonetheless.
The other thing which makes it worthwhile is that, as well as the obligatory rolling acres by Capability Brown, it also has some speciality gardens, including a wonderful Sculpture Garden. This is great fun, because you never know what you will find, escpecially as it is completely reset every year. A couple of my favourites had gone since my last visit - especially the Thing rising from the lake - but there were plenty of new delights, including the Three Bears in a secluded glade, and a wonderful scene of hundreds of lemmings, many with ingenious ideas for surviving the upcoming plunge, and watched over by Lemming Royalty.
As if that wasn't surprising enough, there is also a Garden of Surprises, based mainly around water features. These include a Neptune Grotto full of shells, Transforming Obelisks, and various unexpected fountains and showers, which can catch you unawares. There was also a mirror maze, which was great fun - although as I don't especially seeing one of myself in the mirror, seeing several dozen of myself really messed with my mind.
Anyway - Burghley, it's great. Go. Even those cool 'n' groovy cats on Flickr have been there
It is amusing, incidentally, the things you hear people saying in stateley homes. One of my favourites was heard today - "You know, these rooms aren't any bigger than ours". Yes, madam, but are yours decorated with exquisite plasterwork ceilings and 17th century tapestries? Thought not.
I think this comes form the absolute need in the modern world to realte everything to our own experience - that because in our own minds we are masters of our fate and captains of our souls, we cannot accept that anything is beyond our means or comprehension. This is of course a bit of a bugger for religion - I don't know is Dawkins or his one of his crowd has ever pointed out that all too often Man creates God in his own image, but the insatiable desire to bring God down to our level does tend to make coping with Ineffability a logical impossibility.
Anyway, after so rudely interrupting myself, the other thing I did was spend some time in Stamford. One of England's most solidly beautiful towns, and home to two really cracking second-hand bookshops, it is a place I deeply love. You might recognise it from films etc, because when looking for "classic English stone town", it's a sight easier to film on Broad Street early one morning than to try and turf half a million tourists out of either Oxford or Cambridge. It's a small place, but still has four excellent churches, several old schools, and some fine water-meadows. And the George Hotel, a fine coaching inn, beautifully preserved and exceedingly pleasant.
So - a good day. Even a woman with a voice like a foghorn on the train home, and a two-year-old with a tambourine didn't quite manage to destroy my composure...
The main purpose was to go to Burghley House (apologies for awful misspelling last night - I was tired). Burghley, as the picture there attests, is a magnificent place - one of the dozen or so most impressive houses in the country, and one of the least well-known. Obviously, it depends whether you're suspectible to stateley homes as a breed, but if you are, then it's definitely worth checking out, especially for the fabulous painted rooms by Antonio Verrio, and the hammerbeamed-ceilinged Great Hall. As the home of William Cecil, it's also of interest to Elizabethophiles, and as the site for much of the filming of the recent Pride and Prejudice, of interest to bonnet-nuts.
Basically, it's a stonker. An expensive stionker, but a stonker nonetheless.
The other thing which makes it worthwhile is that, as well as the obligatory rolling acres by Capability Brown, it also has some speciality gardens, including a wonderful Sculpture Garden. This is great fun, because you never know what you will find, escpecially as it is completely reset every year. A couple of my favourites had gone since my last visit - especially the Thing rising from the lake - but there were plenty of new delights, including the Three Bears in a secluded glade, and a wonderful scene of hundreds of lemmings, many with ingenious ideas for surviving the upcoming plunge, and watched over by Lemming Royalty.
As if that wasn't surprising enough, there is also a Garden of Surprises, based mainly around water features. These include a Neptune Grotto full of shells, Transforming Obelisks, and various unexpected fountains and showers, which can catch you unawares. There was also a mirror maze, which was great fun - although as I don't especially seeing one of myself in the mirror, seeing several dozen of myself really messed with my mind.
Anyway - Burghley, it's great. Go. Even those cool 'n' groovy cats on Flickr have been there
It is amusing, incidentally, the things you hear people saying in stateley homes. One of my favourites was heard today - "You know, these rooms aren't any bigger than ours". Yes, madam, but are yours decorated with exquisite plasterwork ceilings and 17th century tapestries? Thought not.
I think this comes form the absolute need in the modern world to realte everything to our own experience - that because in our own minds we are masters of our fate and captains of our souls, we cannot accept that anything is beyond our means or comprehension. This is of course a bit of a bugger for religion - I don't know is Dawkins or his one of his crowd has ever pointed out that all too often Man creates God in his own image, but the insatiable desire to bring God down to our level does tend to make coping with Ineffability a logical impossibility.
Anyway, after so rudely interrupting myself, the other thing I did was spend some time in Stamford. One of England's most solidly beautiful towns, and home to two really cracking second-hand bookshops, it is a place I deeply love. You might recognise it from films etc, because when looking for "classic English stone town", it's a sight easier to film on Broad Street early one morning than to try and turf half a million tourists out of either Oxford or Cambridge. It's a small place, but still has four excellent churches, several old schools, and some fine water-meadows. And the George Hotel, a fine coaching inn, beautifully preserved and exceedingly pleasant.
So - a good day. Even a woman with a voice like a foghorn on the train home, and a two-year-old with a tambourine didn't quite manage to destroy my composure...
