Brodsworth Hall

Our next stop, now venturing into South Yorkshire, was Brodsworth Hall and Gardens, another English Heritage property. Brodsworth is notable for being a Victorian (and later) English country villa that has remained mostly unchanged since its building in the early 1860s. If you want to see a real Downton Abbey, this is a good bet. The lands had been the property of various Yorkshire worthies, with a Georgian house, for ages, but was acquired late in the 18th century by Peter Thellusson, a Swiss banker. For reasons that remain a mystery, to me, Thellusson left a will whose vast fortune skipped three generations (yes, it was challenged), finally divided by a pair of great grandsons in the mid-19th. The old Georgian house was pulled down, and a new Italianate hall was built in just two years and then stocked with fine furnishings, art, and the rest, all 30 rooms of it. The latter Thellussons were also into yachts, building the two largest then in existence in the later 1800s. Then the 20th century happened, recessions, wars, depressions, death-taxes, etc., and the lone surviving Thellusson descendant, by marriage, Silvia Grant-Dalton, spent the last 57 years of her life in the house, with minimal help, closing down rooms, dealing with a leaking roof, and also with land subsidence occasioned in part by the family's selling mineral rights to the local coal companies. The house and garden, now a mess, came to English Heritage in 1990. It was decided to leave the house and furnishings as found (though stabilizing the leaks, etc.), but to restore the garden to its Victorian glory. All that said, I'll let the pix speak mostly for themselves.

Entry hall

Lots of 19th century Italian sculpture

Bathroom humor set-up...

Victorian toilet seat covers!

As rooms were shut down, they accumulated the disused...which is much of
Brodsworth's interest...only a bit of which is shown here

More bathroom humor...

Family and guests, silver wedding anniversary, 1910

What you can't see is that it's thread-bare...

Guest rooms

 

Victorian taco shell molds 

No one left to ring

View from the gardens

Lincoln Cathedral

We drove on from the motor-home show, stopping to over-night in familiar, friendly King's Lynn. Our next stop was Lincoln, in Lincolnshire, much more challenging topography that we didn't want to undertake at the end of the day: it's quite hilly and urban. Parking by the cathedral in Lincoln next morning was indeed a challenge--it sits high on a hill overlooking the city--and we settled for street parking a half mile away. Downhill. We did the cathedral, a shortened version, but were nonetheless pleased with our visit, and moved on. Lincoln Cathedral is held in high regard by some. Ruskin said it was worth any two other British cathedrals. If your expectation is that every cathedral should be a French Gothic, then you'll like Lincoln. It was started late in the 11th century, like all the other Norman edifices. But Lincoln had a series of disasters...a fire, the collapse of a tower, an earthquake (!) that brought the whole building down, another collapse of the crossing, and then the main steeple blown down...perpetual rebuilding made it more a 13th or 14th century cathedral, and hence, Gothic, complete with flying buttress, windows, some height, etc. It's notable for its size, fourth largest in the UK, and for its height, avec steeple, the tallest building in the world for a time, but not so much anymore. Long story short is that if you want to see a French Gothic, go to France.

Castle not visited, despite the fact it houses one of the four "original" copies of the
Magna Carta; there were several iterations, of course, as King John kept denying
that he agreed to that, that it was really his signature, that he didn't have his hand
on the Bible, etc.; also omitting the market that featured ostrich eggs, free range
cheese, poacher pork, etc. Maybe it was the altitude...

Actually, the main reason we came to see Lincoln was for its west facade, the
largest in England, though not much adorned (no comparison with Wells);
and, actually, it is notable for being a false front; everything beyond the three
arched doors extends beyond the main building

So, with the construction and all,  we were losing interested pretty quickly

The only remnants of the Romanesque cathedral were these frescoes...Mouth of Hell,
personal favorite

Helpful model; shows the false front bit at the top left; or perhaps you could argue
it is cruciform with five transepts, or maybe four a large foot-rest (the west)

Knave view; note organ in the rood screen; again; in the C of E, they often explain the
rood screen as dividing between the sacred and civic bits of the building, as opposed to
dividing between priestly doings and knavely doings; never got the Council of
Trent memo from the Papists...

Peering further in...at this point, we were wondering whether this puppy was really
worth the 8L required for entrance

Nave elevation

Ceiling

Not funny; we exited through the gift shoppe to tour the exterior and other bits

Central tower

Apparently so grotesque it had to be covered up

Still processing this one

Chapter house; the flying buttresses surely an affectation (don't call me Shirley)

Port bow

Vicki ponders the greatness of Alfred "Lord" Tennyson, local
boy done good; and his pooch

Inside the chapter house

Cloister cafe

In the cloister

The main interest of which was the carved wooden bosses

We proceeded on

Norwich Motorhome and Camper Van Show

It really was just motor-homes and camper-vans. Had it included caravans (trailers), it would have been a far larger and more interesting show. The Brits are slowly getting into the motor-home thing, most still preferring to tow their caravans. We have no interest in caravans, but it would have been nice to see more accessories vendors and bespoke manufacturers. Oh well. We spent a pleasant morning at the show, dodging dogs and raindrops, collecting a few ideas, and making a few minor purchases; and moved on.

Lots of, um, interesting ideas

One-person camping car

Blows air over ice cubes; for 249L; ice cubes not included

Thinking ahead to next year in GB, or perhaps in Little England,
we again joined our favorite, the Camping and Caravanning Club

Thinking ahead to decorating our US camper, Le Sport

And what motor-home show would be complete without a
flavored gin shoppe?

I'll spare you all the interior shots of dozens of different
Class B campers

Anyhow, there we were...

At the Motor-home and Camper-Van Show...in Norwich, Norfolk...July 19th, 2019