Dyrham Park Garden

Our next home and garden was Dyrham Park, up very close to the Bristol Channel. There is a great house, 17th century and later, and a large deer park. We chose to walk the deer park first, then do the garden tour, then tour the house. We were in for a surprise.

In the deer park, Hinton Hill, an iron age hill fort, now a bovine stronghold; in
577, seriously, the culminating battle between the Britons and the Anglo/Saxons
was fought near here: the Battle of Dyrham: Cuthwine and Ceawlin slew three
Briton kings, Coinmail, Condidan, and Farinmail and took the cities of
Gloucester, Cirecester, and Bath; sadly, I can never hear nor read the word
"Briton" without remembering... "'Ooare the Britons?" "Well we all are! We are
all Britons. And I amyour king" "I didn't know we had a king! I thought we were
an autonomous collective" "You're fooling yourself! We're living in a dictatorship!
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--" "There you go,
bringing class into it again" ... sadly

In the deer park, a menage a trois of deer

A deer nursery

Looking down to the house; we have already walked downhill a good bit; this
house is in a hole!

And at the top of the hill, a statue of Neptune; what is going
on here?

It wasn't until the garden tour that we discovered what was going on...Dyrham
was most importantly the property of one William Blathwayt, a businessman
and civil servant who happened to be fluent in Dutch at just the right time, the
arrival of William and Mary; Blathwayt served as the king's secretary of state
for a decade and was by that time wealthy enough to build himself a country
estate with a Dutch water garden (think Versailles, smaller scale); ponds and
watercourses and falls and fountains; all this needed a water source higher than
the house and garden, and thus the house was in a hole; alas, within a century--
fashions and fortunes change--his descendants had plowed the whole thing up
and covered it over with more deer park (the map above is the only
representation of the original estate's gardens)

This rectangular pond is about all that remains of the original water park

But slowly, the Trust is restoring its beauty

Thus

Very slowly, very carefully; this is what a parterre looks like without the flowers
(taken out for some repairs on the house)

Our day at Dyrham ended in the parking lot, noticing a camper with Washington
state licence plates: and we later met David and Lou, doing pretty much the same
things we are doing...

St. Cyriac's Parish Church In Lacock Village

St. Cyriac's is a beautiful little parish church, Medieval in origin, renovated in the 15th century, with some lovely interior carving and the Renaissance tomb of Lord Sharington, the original owner, after Dissolution, of the Abbey. Outside, looking around the building, however, things get weird; and then weirder...

Lacock Village

Attached to Lacock Abbey is the scenic little village with its many quite old houses and buildings...

Including the Tithe Barn, which has seen many uses since
abbey times; and new stone roofs, too, presumably

The village gaol, where people were sent to cool off, dry out,
await justice

Interior thereof; looks positively spacious
by our standards

Pretty, old house

Said to have been one of King John's hunting lodges

Interesting design

And, always, flowers, everywhere

Lacock Abbey

From Avebury we headed generally north, with three great houses and gardens to see along the Bristol Channel. The first was Lacock Abbey, which I thought would be a quick stop, half a dozen pix, done. Lacock Abbey goes back to the 13th century, however, a wealthy womens' residence really (while spouses were off crusading, warring, plundering, whatever), then, after the Dissolution, a wealthy man's Renaissance  manor and residence, then a George/Victorian residence. But wait, there's more. Among the latter owners was William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the 19th century inventors of photography, so there's a good little museum on the development of photography there; and still more. When the Trust got Lacock, the whole village evidently was included, so you've got that to account for too, including an interesting old Medieval parish church. Did I mention that two of the Harry Poppins movies were filmed in part at Lacock? So there is really a great deal going on at Lacock despite the fact that it is hardly one of greatest houses.

Main entrance to present-day Lacock Abbey

Artsy-fartsy interpretation

In the original abbey part; this was possibly Professor Snapes'
classroom

On the hall in the cloister, bosses still polychromed

Peephole in the staircase to the abbess'
rooms, so she could keep an eye on things

Original Medieval floor tiles

Possibly Professor Snapes' classroom; or someone else's

This is absolutely all that Warner Bros. will let the Trust say
about Harry Potter

Back on the cloister, a pretty day

Moving right along from Medieval-land through Fantasy-land
to Victorian-land...did you know that in the later 19th century
England you could mail eggs? Now you have to use Federal
Express special handling, etc.

In the nursery

Flashing back to Lord Sharrington's tower and study...1600s

Murano glass chandelier in the Victorian long hall

Now in the much earlier Gothic Hall

Including Gandalf saying "I have no memory
of this place"

Fox Talbot, among the Victorians who
redefined "Renaissance Man": astronomer,
mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society,
chemist, linguist (he was one of the few who
could read cuneiform; won honors in his
Cambridge class for translating Macbeth into
iambic classical Greek)

His contributions to photography included getting an image
deposited on a chemically-treated piece of paper, and his
"mousetrap" camera (the little box on the table); and writing
and publishing the first book to include photographs, The
Pencil of Nature

Avebury 2013

Next morning we decamped and drove the two miles over to old friend Avebury and its henge, the largest of them all, too large to see or comprehend from the ground, center of a huge megalithic complex. All c. 2500 BC give or take...

Google view of Avebury; actually there are two smaller
circles inside the big one

A few degrees of the arc

Obviously Avebury enjoyed quite a few
visitors during the solstice too

A small offering from one of the worshippers

And another; plastic flowers...how nice

Vicki poses for scale by one of the medium-sized rocks

A bit of the huge ditch and bank that surrounds the thing

More of the arc

Adoration of the Mystic Sheep

At our favorite store in these precincts

And now driving back north toward more homes and gardens,
another White Horse, the Cherhill White Horse, a youngster,
done in 1780

And a neolithic bus stop, complete with small menhir