Category Archives: England

Sandringham

Photos are not allowed inside Sandringham House, but mere tourists like me are allowed to take pictures outside and in the nearby museum. This is the very grand entry, used by tourists and guests invited for grand occasions. I just learned that the Queen was recently in residence, possibly while I was there. But I’m sure there is a very private entrance for her and her personal guests. (I think there’s a separate ballroom entrance, which is an exit for tourists).

Yesterday Prince William and his newly-expanded family left London for Anmer Hall, their newly-expanded mansion on the Sandringham estate. I thought I’d post a few photos from my recent visit there.

Sandringham is only open to tourists for a few months a year. At other times, it is the strictly private property of the Royal Family, bought during Victorian times as a retreat. The gardens have been open to the public since 1908. King George V created and opened the Museum in 1930, with an admission charge of 3 pence. In 1977, the present Queen Elizabeth decided to open some rooms of the house to tourists for a few months a year–very good PR, I think. The place certainly won me over.

The museum, in the old stable block, is as interesting as the house. It contains, as the British would say, a lot of “bits and bobs” about the Royal Family.

The family follows traditional pastimes at their country home. This old photo shows royal children looking very serious in 1905. Princes Edward, Albert and Henry and Princess Mary are taking instruction in marching from the Piper, Forsyth.

Among many fascinating retired vehicles, there’s a picnic wagon which was in use until fairly recently, when it was replaced with a new one. The picnic wagon has a place for everything, including wine bottles and fine china. It’s housed in a large building with murals that show the Royal Family and their friends enjoying the great outdoors in their beautiful grounds. I’m sure family picnics will continue for the newest great-grandchildren of the Queen.

Who knew that the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, is a painter? He’s pretty good. Who can resist this little informal portrait of the Queen reading the morning paper?

The room guides in the house are the Queen’s regular trusted servants. They’re friendly and happy to chat. In the grand formal dining room, I asked whether the Corgis have the run of the house. Of course they do! The Queen feeds them personally in the Gun Room, and they mill around under the dining room table, probably cadging scraps like any other dogs. Right now there are seven Corgis. An elderly dog, the Queen’s beloved Monty, died recently.

This year, Queen Elizabeth will become the longest-reigning British monarch in history. She has had to overcome her share of family troubles and occasional anti-monarchy sentiment. But as far as I can see, the Brits really love their Queen. And right now it seems most British folks also love the very appealing young family of William, Kate, George and Charlotte.

The new little Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge will no doubt be delighted by the Queens’s Corgis. I’m sure the Queen will be a doting great-grandmother!

Affordable Europe: The Old Farmhouse, Windsor

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I chose The Old Farmhouse because it is close to Heathrow–a good place to unwind after a long flight or to depart without stress. I don’t like paying exorbitant airport hotel rates for rooms that are just OK at best. After three nights in this house, I’m hooked. I’ll go back any chance I get.

The Old Farmhouse is a destination in itself–peaceful flowery grounds, just three guest rooms, and a cooked-to-order breakfast that comes with a huge fresh fruit plate. No one actually lives in the house–the very professional staff arrive in the morning to bustle around making breakfast and cleaning, cheerfully answering questions and generally being friendly. They’re on call the rest of the day and night.

It’s actually a 14th and 15th century house, modernized over the centuries but keeping the historic charm that brings Anglophiles like me to England. It’s not rock-bottom cheap, but it’s about a third of the price of a comparable nice hotel in the town of Windsor–and way less than anything in London. I spend my trips to England using my National Trust pass to visit historic houses. It’s a real treat to stay in one.

My bedroom had ancient beams–complete with original wood pegs from the days when there were no nails.

The entry has a beautiful and very old fireplace, decked with flowers in spring.

There’s a pretty lounge downstairs with comfy sofas and a piano. Wifi is free and fast.

Is there anything I didn’t like? Well, I have to say that flights out of Heathrow begin at around 6:30 in the morning. But Heathrow planes fly over all of Windsor. And there are not that many flights. The Old Farmhouse must be on one of many flight paths.

When we left, it took about 25 minutes to drive to the rental car return at Heathrow–which I had saved as a location on my GPS, because finding it is confusing. Heathrow is huge, and the car rental is not only at Terminal 5, but way outside the terminal. I think a taxi ride to the Heathrow departure level for a specific terminal would be a lot faster. I understand there is also a bus.

The location makes for an easy daytrip into London. An inexpensive train ride from Windsor to Paddington Station takes about half an hour, including an easy change at Slough. Trains run every 10 minutes. We had a rental car to drive to the station, less than two miles away. But the location is so close to Heathrow and Windsor that it would also work with taxi rides, kept pretty inexpensive by following the advice of staff and calling a particular company.

Hampton Court Palace, where Henry VIII kept everybody shaking in their boots in the 1500s, is a 30-minute drive from Windsor. Henry’s Great Hall is intact, complete with some wood carvings of Anne Boleyn’s initials. Most of the marks of Anne’s time as Queen were removed along with her head, but even Henry VIII was not able to control every detail.

Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!

Lord Nuffield ( the “Other” William Morris)

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William Morris wanted to be a surgeon, but his working-class family could not dream of sending him to university. So at the age of 15 he was apprenticed to a bicycle repair shop. After awhile, he politely requested a raise. When his boss refused, he went down the street and opened his own repair shop. Soon he was building and selling superior bicycles, which he personally raced, winning national awards for distances from one to fifty miles. His bikes, with a distinctive gilt wheel, attracted customers from all over Great Britain.

He met his wife because she loved cycling too. As a side business, the enterprising Mr. Morris ran a taxi service. Soon he was repairing taxis. It was just one step further to building his own car–simple and easy to repair. How hard could it be?

Soon he was selling huge numbers of Morris motorcars –and selling them at a price that middle-class and even working-class people could afford. Just as Henry Ford did in the United States, William Morris pioneered mass production, turning out fleets of fine affordable cars in ever-shorter times.

He was a master of marketing, too. He offered affordable car repair plans. He published a colorful magazine that showed ordinary people tootling along the roads of Great Britain, enjoying excursions that were once reserved for the rich and their chauffeurs. But Mr. Morris gave away his money as quickly as he made it. All over Great Britain, self-made men were building stately homes that rivaled royal palaces. But Lord Nuffield gave most of his money to charities. He lived happily at his fairly modest home, Nuffield Place, now a National Trust property.

In gratitude for his philanthropy, the King “created” him Viscount. He became a close personal friend of both King and Queen. He took the name “Lord Nuffield” from the village near Oxford, where he had a home. On the eve of coronation in 1937, the Queen wrote him a sweet note of gratitude.

Rather reluctantly, because they were modest people, Mr. Morris and his wife decked themselves out in the ermine-trimmed red velvet robes needed for the coronation.

When World War II broke out, the Morris factories had to meet the tremendous need for military vehicles. Soldiers set forth from England to battlegrounds all over the world in Morris vehicles. Lord Nuffield was too old to fight, but he saw another need: anesthesia for field hospitals.

Again, how hard could it be? In no time, he had designed a portable machine to administer ether. He gave away thousands of them. No longer did soldiers fresh off the battlefield have to endure excruciating pain in surgery.

The war ended at last. Then in the 1950s, there was an outbreak of poliomyelitis, in England as in the United States. Lord Morris designed and manufactured an iron lung. One of them is on display at Nuffield Place. It is hard to imagine life inside one of these machines, but the machine saved many lives. Lord Nuffield gave away over 5,000 of these machines to patients all over Britain and the Commonwealth. Polio victims could get through the worst stage of the disease. Without such a machine they died because they could not breathe. Many of them were able to recover. They might be left with some paralysis, but they were alive.

So William Morris, who richly deserved the title “Lord Nuffield,” ended up saving and improving countless lives. What would he have accomplished as a surgeon? Most likely he would have been equally creative and generous as a physician.

England has hundreds of very grand castles, palaces and stately homes. But one of my favorite sights is Nuffield Place, the fairly modest home where William Morris chose to live.

I wrote about Lord Nuffield and his home after a visit last fall, at https://castlesandcoffeehouses.com/2015/04/21/nuffield-place…-practical-man/

I’m off to England again soon. If I can, I’d like to pay another visit to this inventive, practical, generous man’s home. Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!

Welcome to the Princess of Cambridge!

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The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge greeted their second baby yesterday, and she will indeed be a princess: Princess of Cambridge. In Windsor last evening, carillon bells rang out over the streets lively with celebration.

There’s no word yet on the baby’s name. Speculation on possible names is intense. Bets are being feverishly placed. Reportedly Alice and Charlotte are the front runners. Victoria, Elizabeth and Diana are also popular. Royals often are given about four names, so there are quite a few possibilities.

I was just in beautiful rural Norfolk, where William and Kate will reportedly make their primary home. Tourists like me are allowed to visit the Royal Family’s private retreat, Sandringham. The house and grounds are breathtakingly beautiful and tranquil. William and Kate’s house, still under renovation, is on the Queen’s estate lands–in fact it is right next to Her Majesty’s horse breeding and training grounds.

There will be plenty of fun for a child on Her Majesty’s idyllic grounds. The little race car above was presented to Prince Charles when he was a child, and it has seen a lot of use by other royal children–boys and girls.

Prince William has chosen to work as a helicopter rescue pilot, and much of the time he will be stationed in Norfolk. That pleases me. I remember reading that when he was a child, his mother Princess Diana used to take William and Harry out on unofficial private visits to homeless shelters. It seems to me that aside from official working visits to hospices and daycare centers and so on, this generation of the Royal Family does genuinely care for those less fortunate.

The local parish church, St. Mary Magdalene, has a lovely guardian angel over the entrance door.
The angel is tenderly holding a baby. I wish the new royal baby a life of being cared for, and of caring for others.

The baby’s photo at the top of the post is from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32567875.

Why I Love England…Especially in Spring

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I’ve found that April is really a better month than May in England. It actually rains less in April than in May. It’s cool, but I just wear an extra layer. No one expects to completely avoid rain in England, but sunny days are a big plus.

On a clear spring evening in Windsor, Queen Victoria stands sturdily on her pedestal and gazes majestically over the town. In this land of tradition, royalty begins to make sense even to an American puzzled by the idea of hereditary privilege. Victoria seems like a benign grandmother to one and all. No doubt she would approve of the very traditional name given to the new Princess of Cambridge, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana. Certainly the phenomenon that was Diana caused turmoil for the Royal Family, but then Victoria had troublesome children of her own. I imagine she took the long view.

Spring flowers are in full bloom. Lilacs are fresh and fragrant.

Stone fences neatly divide fields where every square foot has been lovingly farmed over many centuries.

Public footpaths on private lands crisscross the entire country. The British consider keeping them public to be a sacred right, open to everyone. They’re muddy in rain, but easily walkable in dry weather.

The British love their dogs (and their cats too). The little fellow above was dressed in a stylish fur-lined hoodie for a slightly chilly outing in Cambridge with his doting person.

I get lonesome for pets left at home. B and Bs in the countryside often provide loaner pets on request, if you ask nicely. My new friend Ruby lives on a pretty farm in rural Suffolk.

Photo by nicogenin, Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike

I had never been to the area north and east of London before–it’s off the main tourist trails. In fact Rick Steves does not even mention the area, except for Cambridge. That may change, with William and Kate settling in Anmer, close to the coast in Norfolk. And I think I had a Johnny Depp sighting! Rumor has it that he bought a mansion in Burnham Market, a very posh but rural little village near Anmer. I think I spotted him driving right past me in a nifty Griffith sports car. If the “east of England” is good enough for the royals and for Johnny Depp, it’s good enough for me.

I really do love England, in any season!

The Queen’s Church at Sandringham

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Every Christmas I see pictures of Britain’s Royal Family walking from Sandringham House to the local parish church, St. Mary Magdalene. They’re always beautifully turned out, of course, and there’s always at least one pretty child ready to present a bouquet to the Queen. Now I’ve seen the inside of the church, and it’s one of the most beautiful rural churches I’ve ever seen.

The altar and ceiling are wonderfully carved and painted. The atmosphere is full of light and joy.
A beautifully carved angel administers Communion in the choir. There are no royal tombs here, just exquisite memorials to various Royal Family members.

The two angels above lovingly hold a silhouette of Queen Victoria, who had the foresight to buy Sandringham House as a privately owned family retreat.

This post is an experiment–I’m trying to post from my phone. If it works, it will be a whole lot easier to post while traveling!

Back to Blenheim

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Every now and then the stars align favorably. I was lucky enough to visit Blenheim Palace last fall, and doubly lucky to be in England again in the spring. When I bought my Blenheim ticket last fall, I stopped at a kiosk and made it into a year-long pass–at no extra charge! What a deal! I’d probably go back even if I didn’t like the place, but I happen to love it.

Blenheim was used for the exterior scenes of the great film Hamlet, with Kenneth Branagh as director and and playing the melancholy Hamlet himself. He was perfect. English major and Shakespeare lover that I am, I’ve watched the film quite a few times. I like to turn on the subtitles so I can get all the glorious Shakespearean words, but it is very dramatic and easy to follow even without caring much about the dialogue. It even ends with some swashbuckling worthy of Jack Bauer in 24. The acting is stellar, featuring, besides Kenneth Branagh, Charlton Heston, Julie Christie, Billy Crystal, the late Robin Williams, Derek Jacobi, Kate Winslet, Michael Maloney, Timothy Spall, Richard Attenborough, Brian Blessed, Judi Dench, Geraard Depardieu, John Gielgud, Rosemary Harris, and Jack Lemmon (he was still with us in 1996!)

Toward the end of the film, one scene shows the new King arriving after the tragic events of the story, riding up to the palace with his retinue.

The palace, decorated with military mementos of the First Duke of Marlborough, was just the right location. The 11th Duke of Marlborough had a cameo appearance as one of the nobles accompanying the new king. I’m guessing it was one of the highlights of his long and distinguished life. After all, he was appearing with fine actors in a great film that showcased his ancestral home. Plus the new King was played by Rufus Sewell, in fine smoldering form. Who wouldn’t want to appear in that film?

I last saw the 11th Duke last fall on my visit. He was usually a very visible presence, striding around his palace and really seeming to welcome visitors. When I was there last, his brother was being married in the palace chapel. So the Duke was jovially greeting his guests. He looked frail, though, and I was sad to learn that he died just a few weeks later. During my visit, I saw his lovely wife, and I also saw the soon-to-be 12th Duke with his wife. I recognized them all from photos in the house. The heir is in the photo just behind the 11th Duke.

I previously wrote about Blenheim at https://castlesandcoffeehouses.com/2014/11/06/blenheim-the-s…kings-waterloo/

I wrote about the death and funeral of the elegant 11th Duke at https://castlesandcoffeehouses.com/2014/10/30/what-are-plus-fours-anyway/ ‎ and https://castlesandcoffeehouses.com/2014/10/29/farewell-to-th…of-marlborough/

The 12th Duke has now moved to the front of the photo displays in the palace. Yesterday I toured the several of the family’s private rooms in the East Wing. The rooms are sumptuous, but lived-in. (Think of the most elegant possible version of Shabby Chic). There are 12 bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and dressing room–but they are off limits. No photos were allowed. The 12th Duke was in the house–his flag was flying. But he must not have been told that I had come to see him, because he was nowhere in sight. As an American, I’m always puzzled but intrigued by British aristocracy and royalty. I wish the 12th Duke many years of carrying on his family’s heritage, and I’m sure he’s as dedicated to the task as his late father was.

Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!

Nuffield Place: Home of a Practical Man

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Last month I visited the home of William Morris–not the Arts and Crafts genius, but another kind of genius.

He rose from poverty to invent and manufacture the Morris Minor motorcar, the British equivalent of Henry Ford’s Model T. He made an automobile affordable, for the first time, for the newly emerging middle class in Britain. Many families could even afford two of them.

He was “created” Lord Nuffield, making him a Peer of the Realm, because he was one of England’s greatest philanthropists besides being a fine inventor. He gave away the equivalent of over a billion dollars in today’s money.

He and his wife lived modestly in their beloved country home starting in 1933. Lady Nuffield died, childless, in 1959. When Lord Nuffield died in 1963, he left their home to Nuffield College, which he had founded in nearby Oxford. The bequest stipulated that the house remain as they left it.

What did the college do with the house? They must have maintained it, at least. It’s very livable, with all the original bed linens, china and towels. Maybe it was used to house special guests. The house remained a time capsule until it was given to the National Trust and opened to the public in 2011. Now it’s one of my favorite NT properties, because it’s such a contrast with the conspicuous consumption I’ve grown to expect when I flash my NT pass.

Although he was a close personal friend of the King and Queen, Lord Nuffield liked nothing better than to go home to Nuffield Place, where he could tinker with his inventions and walk his Scottie dogs.

Nuffield Place is just one more reason to love driving around the English countryside with my trusty National Trust pass!

Brits Love Their Queen

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Queen Elizabeth II, photo from “Telegraph” article cited below

Today is Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday: 89 years young, and still going strong. Were there big birthday celebrations? No, because Elizabeth very sensibly prefers to celebrate in June, when the weather is usually better.

Her official birthday involves any number of soldiers, dignitaries, retainers and nobles on parade, so it’s not just her own personal comfort that concerns the Queen. The models above are on display at Blenheim Palace. They depict a royal Jubilee procession.

When in England, I consider myself an honorary Brit. So I didn’t mind when the carillon bells in the church tower next to the place where I’m staying rang out for about 5 minutes on the hour and half-hour all day long. And I’m waiting breathlessly for word of a new royal grandbaby any day now.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/11549870/Happy-89th-Birthday-Queen-Elizabeth-II-her-life-in-pictures.html

Mompessons: Resting (With a View) in Salisbury

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In glorious Salisbury Cathedral, I came upon these two striking effigies, looking much more colorful than most of the effigies lined up along the nave. They somehow looked startled. Also they lay in the opposite direction of most of their companions. The closer I got to them, the more curious I was.

Who were they, and what was their story? As luck would have it, the photo I took of their names did not turn out. What to do? I posted my photos on one of the Facebook history groups I belong to, and had the answer within minutes.

I was looking at effigies of Sir Richard Mompesson and his third wife Katherine. Sir Richard was a local gentleman and politician, a Member of Parliament. He died in 1627. He had made judicious marriages and enjoyed a comfortable life. His family owned an early version of nearby Mompesson House, which is now a beautiful National Trust property.

I think I read a placard in the cathedral stating that the tomb of the Mompessons was facing a different direction from most, because it had once been repositioned during a change in the Cathedral.

The Mompessons must enjoy their view of the very beautiful Gothic ceiling of soaring Salisbury Cathedral. If those wonderful arches were my view, I’d keep my eyes wide open too.

Salisbury is one of my very favorite cathedrals. I’m looking forward to entering its welcoming doors again.

Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!