England

Bolton Castle : A Northern Stronghold

Bolton Castle is the 14th Century ancestral seat of the Scrope family. Built between 1378 and 1399 by Richard, 1st Baron Scrope (whose son William is notable for appearing as a character in Shakespeare’s play Richard II), the castle was reputed to have cost around 18,000 marks. Nestled in the Yorkshire dales near Wensleydale, Bolton Castle has been a northern stronghold for centuries, providing sanctuary to Adam Sedbar, a ringleader of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537. (The Pilgrimage of Grace was a name given to the religious insurgents in the north of England who opposed the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII).

In 1568 it also served as the prison for Mary, Queen of Scots for the last six months of her life. Despite suffering some damage during the Civil War much of the castle remains intact, and it has been used as a filming location for period films such as Ivanhoe (1952) and Elizabeth (1998) and TV dramas such as All Creatures Great and Small. Bolton Castle has never been sold and is still the home of the Scrope family.

 

Shakespeare’s Birth Place

William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) birth place. Although regarded as the greatest playwright ever, little is known of Shakespeare’s life. Some intriguing theories have developed suggesting that Shakespeare did not actually write the plays that bear his name. None have survived in manuscript form and there is speculation that his education could not have given him the required knowledge to write the work credited to him.

Nonetheless he was born in this house on Henley Road, Stratford-Upon_Avon, and spent the first 5 years of his marriage to Anne Hathaway here. William’s father, John Shakespeare was a glove maker and wool dealer, and the house was originally divided in two parts to allow him to carry out his business from the same premises. It is now a museum and regarded as a pilgrimage for literary lovers.

 

 

Tallest Spire in England

Salisbury Cathedral was built in uniform Early English (or Early Pointed) Gothic style – characterized by the first pointed arches and flying buttresses and a feeling of austerity. Construction began in 1220.

The Spire was added from 1285 to 1315 and is the highest in Britain at 404 feet tall and 6400 tons. The oldest clock in England is found in this Cathedral as well as the largest Gothic Cloisters.

The largest and oldest choir stalls are also found here made of oak provided by King Henry III.

The Cathedral is also home to the best preserved of 1 of only 4 original editions of the Magna Carta (1215) – is a charter agreed by King John in 1215 to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown. In a revised format it became part of English statute law in 1297. Even after almost all of its content was repealed in thet 19th and 20th centuries, Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, Lord Denning (famous English judge) describing it as “the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot”.

 

Wilton House, gift of an English King

 

Wilton House is located in Salisbury, England. A priory was buit on this site by King Egbert around 871 which over time and with an injection of Kingly benevolence became wealthy Wilton Abbey. During King Henry VIII’s rampage against the Catholic Church he seized the abbey and gave it to William Herbert who became the first Earl of Pembroke in 1541. William Herbert was married to the sister of Henry’s future and last wife, Catherine Parr. The Herbert family has had it ever since. Due to fire and renovations the original Tudor style of the house was redesigned by Inigo Jones in the Palladian style.

Scenes from the movies “The Madness of King George” and “Sense and Sensibility” were filmed here.

The Palladian bridge over the River Nadder was built and designed by the 9th Earl in 1736.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us

Proudly adding this piece of local history written and contributed by Malcolm Gough, Principal of Sutton Valence Preparatory School, Kent, England.

A Walk in the Countryside in Kent

Not long after I arrived to take up my new post as Headmaster of Sutton Valence Preparatory School, Chart Sutton, Kent, in August 2012 and before the first term had started, on a glorious Summer’s late afternoon I decided to explore the beautiful surrounding countryside with my daughter. Our first walk took us below the school, into the farmer’s fields sloping down towards a thicket of trees and a little stream. A short distance away, and invisible, from the lane we came across a small cleared out space and a memorial. It was neatly kept, in contrast to its setting, the side of a wheat field near a wood in the middle of Kent.

 

It seemed different in nature from the kind of thing one would see for a family memorial, and so we determined to find out more about it. I did not realise that in fact my first official duty for the School was to be very closely associated with this spot. The memorial was for a young Hurricane pilot, one of ‘The Few’ who had sadly crashed in that exact place into the side of the hill. Since then, and up until 16 years ago, the identity of that the pilot was unknown, until some good detective work gave him a name and with that the person was revealed. The BBC reported on this last year and some of the story can be found here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/southeast/series1/plane-crash.shtml

The annual Battle of Britain Memorial Service for our area takes place each year in September at St. Michael’s Church, Chart Sutton, and everyone processes down to the memorial where The Last Post is played. It is attended by a couple of the surviving local ‘Few’ and their families, the local Air Cadet force, the Mayor of Maidstone, an Air Vice Marshall and many others. After that, when weather conditions are suitable, there is a flypast of a surviving Spitfire and then I host the tea for everyone, where there are speeches etc., at the School. In my second year the weather was such that there wasn’t a flypast, and one of the old pilots gruffly remarked to me that back then they ‘didn’t have the luxury or time to decide whether or not the bloody weather was favourable’!

This year at the tea, I spoke to an elderly lady quite by chance in the queue for cakes, and it turned out that it was she, as a young girl, who together with her sister had been sent by her father, a farmer, to see what had happened when the crash of the aircraft had happened; she would never forget the scene, which she thankfully did not get too close to, because she could see there was nothing that could be done, other than race back and call the emergency services.

This year I waited back at the School in case I was needed rather than go down to the memorial. The sound of trumpet drifted up from the fields below and my family and I were on our balcony when the Spitfire flew just a few yards overhead. I was struck by its sheer pace (many times more than a light aircraft today) and that unique guttural sound of the powerful Rolls Royce engine. I found myself reflecting on Pilot Officer Robert Shaw, who crashed about five hundred yards from where my family sleeps safely each night, and the sadness of his lost future. Also, the poor Belgian pilot who crashed up the road a couple of miles away into Staplehurst Rail station killing himself and a station clerk. I thought about my own family and in particular the grandfather, also a Hurricane Pilot, that I never knew and realised once again that history is often best appreciated and understood through lower key, local events and stories than in books and films that, whilst invaluable, can also serve to keep us at a distance from the realities of the past, as of necessity they dwell on larger generalities.

 

A Walk Along the Embankment: Cleopatra’s Needle

by contributing essayist – Malcolm Gough, Headmaster of Sutton Valence Preparatory School, Kent, England.

One of my favourite things to do on a sunny day when I am in London is to have a little stroll along the Embankment and perhaps cross over the Westminster Bridge to the other side. Most people at some point will take a quick look at Cleopatra’s Needle and then their gaze will return to the many other visual distractions of that lively area.

 

The other day I used the Needle as a meeting place for a friend and while I was waiting my eyes began to pick apart the detail of it. It is far older than London itself. London was first established by the Romans roughly 2000 years ago; the Needle is 3500 years old and has nothing to do with Cleopatra; indeed it was already 1000 years old when she lived. It was given to the United Kingdom in 1819 by the ruler of Egypt in commemoration of the victories of the British at the Battle of the Nile and the Battle of Alexandria. Originally it was going to be placed outside the Houses of Parliament, but they were worried that the great weight of it would damage the tunnels underneath and so they settled on the Victoria Embankment instead.

If you look at the monument closely, you will see little holes all over it and you will notice damage to one of the two sphinxes which flank the Needle.

 

On the night of the 4th September 1917, eleven Gotha bombers reached London and they dumped their explosive loads across the city. Aerial warfare was very new to the world and so this must have been a particularly terrifying night. That evening bombs fell in the East End and on the Strand. Just before midnight one fell on the Embankment next to Cleopatra’s Needle. A hole was blasted in the road alongside and gas mains, electricity and water mains were ruptured.

Very sadly, a passing tram driver was killed instantly along with two of his passengers.

When next you are there, spare a thought for whoever those three citizens were, now casualties of war along with so many, but tragedies no less devastating to families as those sustained in the trenches just a few miles away across the Channel. You might also marvel at the little holes in the plinth of the Needle, the damage to the sphinx and remember that it is made of solid granite. The force behind the shrapnel which caused them must have been huge to make such an imprint on 3500 years worth of resilience and is to my mind particularly evocative of the new age of explosive warfare.

 

White Horse Hill, Uffington

There is an image of an ancient horse in the lazy, rolling hills of County Oxfordshire, England. At 374 feet long it needs to be seen from the air to view its entirety. It is made of trenches filled with crushed chalk. Regular cleaning / scouring of the horse is needed otherwise its visibility is compromised. It has been dated to the Bronze Age (1000 – 700 BC) and there is a record of King Henry II (1100s) visiting it out of interest because it was “an ancient monument”.

 

Stonehenge

 

Stonehenge consists of a ring of enormous stones (some of which originated in Wales) built in stages beginning 5000 years ago. The stones weigh up to 4 tons each. The inner horseshoes are aligned along the sun’s axis on rising in midsummer and setting in midwinter. Despite the site’s sun influence, little is really known about Stonehenge’s purpose. It is referred to as the greatest mystery of the prehistoric world.

 

Oxford, England

 

The town of Oxford is known as the City of Dreaming Spires. Spires from around 30 colleges making up the famous university breach the mist on many a southern English morning. The town was established in the 9th century and the University in the 12th. Its romantic, medieval town center attracts tourists, scholars and royalty from all over the world and it is one of the most expensive places in England to live. When first starting out as a town it was an important military frontier town between Wessex and Mercia and was subject to frequent Viking raids.

Christ Church is one of the largest colleges in the University as well as being the Cathedral for the Diocese of Oxford. Alice in Wonderland was written here by Louis Carroll. Many scenes from Harry Potter were filmed here as well as Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

The college was founded as such by King Henry VIII in 1531. A gate tower designed by Sir Christopher Wren is in the great quadrangle and the bell in the tower, nicknamed Great Tom, is rung 101 times every night at 9 pm former Oxford time (9:05 GMT) for the 100 original scholars on the College plus 1 added in 1664.

 

St. Thomas Becket Church

 

This Church was built as a place of worship for workers working on Salisbury Cathedral in 1220. It was rebuilt again in 1475.

It is best known for the Dooms Day / Last Judgement mural (painter unknown) painted in 1475 but whitewashed over during the Reformation and uncovered again in 1881.

The mural depicts Christ and his apostles in the center with the blessed on the left side and the damned to the right.

Thomas Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1160 until his murder in 1170 in Canterbury Cathedral by knights of King Henry II.