Graffham And Polo

It was time for a campground, so we spent the night at the Graffham campground, near Petworth, joining the Camping and Caravanning Club, "the friendly club." The C&CC has a short-term over-seas visitor membership scheme that fits our needs well.

Thus

On our confused exit from the area, we encountered the local
Saturday morning polo competition

The white horse breaks away on a deep outside pattern...

But the puck is intercepted!

Action at mid-field

Thus

Horse team now in the red zone

Play under review

Ambulance on hand for the human team

More action downfield

A fast break by the horse team

Commercial break

Vicki was not impressed by my play-by-play

So, with the score, Humans 1, Horses 3

We proceeded on; and I still don't understand the connection 
between polo and swimming pools

Midhurst

During our Petworth visits, we spent two nights at nearby Midhurst, a beautiful old town we had not seen before...

At the Grange Carpark...2L a day

By the wisteria at The Spread Eagle

A Midhurst institution

Since...

1430...and with plenty of documentation...nearly
600 years of ownership records, lists of guests,
including British royalty, and, infamously, von
Ribbentrop and Goering, in July of 1939

Bygone politics

In Midhurst's impressive little town museum, a depiction of
Cowdry Hall, a Tudor structure, which burned in 1793

In the museum

Sic transit, Gloria...the sanitarium of yore...now, luxury apartments

"By Order of the Magistrates, All Vagrants Found in this Parish
will be apprehended and sent to prison"...should we be concerned?

Cowdry Hall

In its walled garden

Another view

Scone cake in a Midhurst bakery

1660; nice, interesting place

Petworth House, 2016

We visited  Petworth in 2009, and again in 2013. It is one of our favorites, largely because of its extraordinary paintings collection...20 Turners, 20 Van Dykes, enough Gainsboroughs and Reynolds and others to make any museum envious. Did I mention the Bosch? The Hobbema? There are also the furnishings, the Gibbons wood carvings, the Molyneux Globe, the Chaucer manuscript, and sculpture to nearly match the paintings. And then the Capability Brown-landscaped grounds. I blogged about all this in 2013...one post on the house and grounds, http://roadeveron.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/petworth-2013.html, and one on the paintings, http://roadeveron.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/petworth-paintings.html. I solemnly promise not to reproduce any of the paintings photographs here. Our visit this time stretched over three days, trying to get the right weather and tours. 

The first tour was the tunnels tour, exploring the communications
between  the main building and the servants/service buildings

The pump room, with a 1920s electrical pump; before that,
the pump was powered by a donkey

In the cavernous ice house; ice brought in from
Canada and later Scandinavia; seriously

Moving right along, on the grand staircase heading up to the
bedrooms tour; the twine was added for child-protection only
in 1925

Giant frescoes on the staircase, actually a family portrait

Ceiling

Guest bedroom #1; after which I was reminded of the no fotos
policy on the bedroom tour

Van Dyke's Katherine Bruce, Mrs. Murray; in
what Vicki described as the low-cut room

There are four great Turners on the dining room's inside wall--
there for the guests who didn't get the view of the grounds; I
have tried photographing them every time we were here, but the
light in that room was always wrong, here is another try; The
Lake, Petworth, A Stag (all of them earlier 1800s)

Brighton from the Sea

The Lake, Petworth, Fighting Bucks

Chichester Canal; the framing on all these is Gibbons carving

"You said it, man. Nobody messes with the Henry"

The Egremont Seascape, Petworth's first Turner acquisition

It's the 300th anniversary of the birth of
Lancelot "Capability" Brown, the great
landscape designer of the age, and Petworth
was one of his most famous achievements; of
course, not everybody is all that fond of
Brown, many Brits referring to him as
"Calamity" or "Culpability"; we'll see more of
him as we travel around

A beautiful vast Snyders, oddly, in the Capability Brown
exhibit room

Two exquisite pieces from an embroidery
exhibit honoring Capability

Never mind the paintings, look at the Gibbons carving
throughout this great room 

Thus

The Leconfield Aphrodite, Praxiteles, 4th C, BC

Outside the chapel