Fri, 8/23/2013: Blickling is a
gorgeous Jacobean house incorporating an Elizabethan one. 400 year old yew hedges framing the hall
(stand maybe 12’ high). Huge – life
sized, even—portraits of ancestors in every room.
Certain amount of
back-and-forth w/ S about whether we’d stop there. Stopping at Cromer and Blakeney &
Salthouse took us to about 2 PM (including a fairly slow-served lunch of
grilled sardines – v. salty, but fresh tasting and (I assumed) local.
I argued, somewhat
in martyr mode, that we didn’t have time to both visit Blickling and arrive at
Lavenham before dark. But we (barely)
managed both.
S had a long talk w/
a docent about casement windows – how ours used to freeze and crak. She replied, Blickling did a huge amt of
maintenance to keep the windows intact.
S also inquired
about the English Heritage vs. National Trust.
National Trust is the private charity; English Heritage is funded by
taxpayers.
I missed the first
floor – got interested taking pix of the portraits in the Great Hall. There were a series of kitchens from the late
1700’s, mid 1800’s, a930, with comments from the people who worked in them.
The upstairs rooms
were amazing. Huge, long gallery, filled
with books, but the original purpose of the room was exercise – people walking
back and forth—not 15th century elipticals.
Spent the morning
walking around Lavenham – I complaining when S stopped to read the booklet from
the info center, because when I stand still, my back is sore.
The timbers on the
houses were mostly originally covered w/ plaster – not meant to show. Houses leaning at all kinds of crazy angles,
no 2 alike. Lavenham church v. pretty –
tiny brass to a baby boy who died at 10 days – before Mom was even
churched. So sad. Talked w/ a 90 yr old flower lady – she
saying that volunteers were getting thin on the ground.
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| Lavenham Church - carving in the chancel. One of the small figures below is holding a skull, indicating she'd died before the memorial was built |
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| Carving under a misericord (choir seat) |
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| Bronze to a baby who died at 10 days. |
Went to Dedham
(birthplace of Constable). We made a
wrong turn in Hadleigh on the way to Dedham – I trying to navigate from S’s
British road atlas, which really didn’t work, once you got to the B-level roads
that are v. sparsely signed.
We followed the
wrong road (not the B1070) to the wrong town, and had to go extra stops on the
A12, and S spent the first part of our time in Dedham pointing out how I could
have been a better navigator, with me retorting that he should have bought a
larger-scale map to navigate from. But
we had lunch (steak and kidney pie for him, sweet potato and chick pea curry
for me) and bought a large scale map, and peace was restored.
We (and ½ the world--really
– there were Moms pushing strollers, oldsters like us, a young guy holding a 12
pack of diet coke on his head, another young man w/ flip-flops and crutches,
families w/ Granny pushing a walker. The
River Stour was filled w/ rowboats w/ inept rowers – often the rest of the
passengers paddling or dangling feet or hands or shrieking or trying to push
off when they ran into the banks.) walked to Flatford, had tea at the Bridge
cottage – I also had a black-current scone (the National Trust scone of the
month).
V. flat,
unremarkable scenery, really, or only remarkable in that Constable was so
attached to these few hundred meters of the River Stour. If you were a Romantic landscape painter, why
not travel to the Lake District, with really gorgeous hills and fells and
lakes? But he wasn’t a British Bierstat.
V. nice dinner at a
v, v fancy restaurant, but room was too warm, and the staff looked shocked when
S asked was there beer on tap.
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