Clevedon Court

We wanted to see Clevedon Court for its great age--a manor house built originally in 1320, and pretty much unchanged architecturally--as well as for its literary associations...Thackeray, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. And we found much more.

Frontal view

Vicki holding up the portcullis for the next
timed entry

First surprise: one of the largest and most impressive glass
collections we've seen outside Murano and the V&A; the
pipes...

The rolling pins

Some miscellaneous; the collection filled the
better part of two rooms

Next surprise: baby furniture, some Medieval,
some Renaissance, some later, all over the
house

Baby rocker...back and forth and side to side

1580, I think

And another

Massive old table and chairs in the (new) main
hall (the original main hall was built 50-80
years before the main house and served as
the house's kitchen from 1320 to 1957; with
a few upgrades, hopefully)

Painting by a member of the family, showing the
trial of an accused poacher before the lord of the manor

18th century view of the manor

Family daughter Jane, with whom Thackeray
fell hopelessly in love; she figures largely in
Henry Esmond, much of which was written in
the house; the Eltons, the family that have
lived here going on 800 years, have been
quite artistic/literary at times

Nephew Arthur Hallam, the subject of
Tennyson's In Memoriam, A. H. H., one of
the 19th century's greatest literary works...
"tis better to have loved and lost..."

Moving right along, there are Coleridge and Lamb, flanked
by Bill and Dottie, other friends of the Eltons

Closer up (the light was awful); note the guy
outside, smoking 

Last surprise: the family more recently
included Edmund Elton, a noted ceramic
artist of the "Arts and Crafts" movement,
late 19th/early 20th century

The old main hall/later kitchen contains a
large collection of his work

The kitchen (1320-1957) hearth; note oven, left

And a final high/multi-use chair

View of Clevedon Court from the garden

Ladye Bay

We drove on to our next house, Clevedon Court, and found one of the best wild-camping sites yet, a few miles from the house, up by a park on the coastal path. Quiet, beautiful, in a good neighborhood too--mansions overlooking Ladye Bay and the Bristol Channel.

Ladye Bay, low tide, looking toward Clevedon Pier

Across the Channel, a bit of Cardiff and Wales, I think

Low tide pebble beach; hours later this will be under 20 feet of water

Clevedon Pier

Very serious tides here; in the spring people actually surf the tidal bores...going
on for miles and miles I suppose; Bristol is at the end of the Channel, and all
this gives rise to the expression "Ship shape and Bristol fashion"; before 1805,
when the first "floating dock" was constructed, ships docking at Bristol could
be on their sides at low tide; and everything had better be securely fastened...

And I was there

Next morning, tide coming in

The beach pretty much gone

Fishermen (-persons) like tides 

Tyntesfield House

And now the house tour...

Garden view

Main entrance; Gothic, yes?!

In the library; best organized library yet

Now in the dining room; Tyntesfield was one of the first great houses to get
electricity; the switches were carefully concealed in the glorious paneling and
woodwork

Wonderfully-carved side board in the dining room; we thought the walls were
covered in leather; but no, it is fabric, the pink background of which was painted
white by servants; four giant walls

"You rang, sir?" episode #23; out in the hall behind the dining room, the kitchens
behind us, the servants' main block beyond the door; a boy was stationed in the
hall here to monitor the bells and notify appropriate servants which rooms were
ringing

Gothic writing desk

Gothic fire place

Up the main staircase, family portraits

Including founder William Gibbs, Emperor of Guano,
reputedly the richest commoner of the age; his company
cornered the South American bat guano market; all these
British gardens require a lot of fertilizer

And then, after the bedrooms, quite a few rooms of furnishings the Trust
apparently hasn't decided what to do with...

Including this incredible bed; still has the Christies' auction
tag on it, I think

Now in the family chapel; serious Gothic; they were reportedly very devout

And finally, an outside view of the chapel

Tyntesfield Gardens

Our next stop was Tyntesfield, a relatively young house, Victorian, and a relatively recent National Trust acquisition, 2002, by way of L20,000,000 two-month public drive that rescued the house and all its contents from public auction. It is a neo-Gothic country house, suberbly done, all of a piece, with four generations of Victorian and later furnishings; plus several hundred acres of park and gardens. We started our visit with a garden and park tour.

A beautiful asian plane tree that caught my attention even before the guide said
it was her favorite tree at Tyntesfield

A giant purple beech, one of several

The interesting thing is, when you stand under a purple
beech, the leaves are green

Waste not, want not...well, that didn't exactly work out for the Gibbs family,
but they did save much, benefiting all the rest of us; these are spiral staircase
parts later used as a planter in one of the gardens

Garden view of the house; a giant monkey puzzle had stood here for years, now
replaced by this youngster

A disused azalea maze that the Trust hopes to rebuild; they have much work to
do here, as elsewhere

Beautiful green; it's summer now, despite the fact the
temperature has yet to go much above 70

Out in the building adjoining the walled (kitchen) garden and green-houses;
the green-houses were heated, so some of the servants slept out here, in the
little bunk cabins, to keep the fires going

Cherry tree on the kitchen garden wall

A chef's "chop and chat" out in the garden; wonderful free samples of breads,
strawberries, fruit drinks, etc.