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Planned visits ♦ Visit reports There are a few places left for the London Visit – please contact JEAN MONKS, URGENTLY, if you are interested. MONDAY 20TH – WEDNESDAY 22ND SEPTEMBER 2010
TWO NIGHTS BED AND ENGLISH
BREAKFAST AT 4* MILLENNIUM GLOUCESTER HOTEL, CENTRAL LONDON A two-night visit to London has been organised to include a guided Private Evening tour of the State Rooms, Buckingham Palace.
MONDAY 20TH
SEPTEMBER
The cost of this visit is
£260. Please complete and return the enclosed application form
by return if you are interested in this tour.
Visits contact and organiser is Jean Monks
Most recent visit reports: LITTLE MORETON HALL AND BIDDULPH GRANGE GARDENS – 16TH SEPTEMBER 2009 As a Brummie familiar with the black and white architecture of Stratford-upon-Avon and the Welsh Marches, who then moved to East Anglia and the timber buildings of, say, Lavenham, Kersey and Coggeshall, I half expected to be under-whelmed by Little Moreton Hall. How wrong can you be? Built over the course of some hundred years between the early 16th and early 17th centuries, this moated three-storey building with its flamboyant timber frame and sparkle of leaded widows looks too flimsy and top-heavy to have survived for 500 years. Even the afterthought of the Long Gallery which perches incongruously over the length of the south range of buildings (for the whole encloses three sides of a large cobbled courtyard) has not been enough to confirm James Lee-Milne’s image of “the absurd half-timbered structure….topping(like) an ancient pack of cards…to meet…its own reflection”. But it caused the National Trust a lot of headaches before the structure was successfully stabilised. It is a house in which one would not like to have to hang shelves or pictures. There isn’t a level surface or right angle in the place, thanks to the movement of the original green oak. One room has an impressive stone fireplace that seems to be falling over but is in fact plumb, and the floor, walls and ceiling swing around it. The three generations of Moretons who built the Hall were wealthy and keen that everyone should know it. So they used the very best materials – hard to beat the 30,000 leaded panes in the windows, nor the immense oak coffered ceiling in the Parlour – and the very latest ideas like the frieze in the Withdrawing Room, painted on paper with a biblical story, and pasted to the wall above the hand-painted ”panelling”. And then there’s the furniture – not much of it, but including three wonderful oak pieces mentioned in an inventory of 1599, among them the unusual “great round table” on an ogee-arched hexagonal base and a huge “cupboards of boxes” with drawers for valuable herbs and spices concealed behind a pair of locked doors. “Money no object” extends to the present day, it seems – we met a conservator cleaning oak panelling with a suede shoe brush, one hour per panel, and outside a gardener clipping the box hedges of the knot garden with hand shears, 80 hours of work a year. Moving on, we came to Biddulph Grange Gardens where mechanical trimmers were in full swing on the extensive and elaborate yew hedge partitions of the terrace “rooms”. This is a high Victorian garden, restored to the original design of James Bateman, and incorporating in its 16 acres a widely-ranging plant collection. We were there at just the right time to be amazed by the dahlia walk, with its rank upon rank of technicolour blooms, but this is a garden to be enjoyed at any time of year. Narrow footpaths twist and turn round rocky outcrops, through tunnels, over bridges and link themed areas – Egypt, with a clipped yew pyramid; China, with still green water, pagoda and idols; Italy, with formal symmetrical planting – but beyond the busy central area are long walks and vistas that our time there did not allow us to visit. As usual, thanks go to Jean Monks for her careful organisation, but also to David, not for acting as rounder-up of stragglers this time, but for driving us all in the Bakewell Community Bus, and getting us everywhere, and home again early and in one piece. JENNIE COFFEY VICTORIA BATHS AND THE MONASTERY, MANCHESTER – 14TH OCTOBER 2009 Our trip to Manchester was to see two very different buildings, both the subject of major restoration work after being rescued from increasing dereliction. The first was the Victoria Baths, a magnificent public bath complex designed by city architect, Henry Price, and opened in 1906 by Manchester Corporation. On arrival we had coffee and biscuits, after which we split into two groups to be shown round the baths. It soon became obvious why the agreed building costs of £39,316.10s. had increased to over £59,000 by the time the project was completed. From the elaborate two-tone brick and honey-coloured exterior to the lavishly decorated interior with its extensive areas of floor to ceiling tiling, stained glass windows and ornamental ironwork, to mention but a few features, it certainly fulfilled the city council’s desire to provide a bigger and better public baths. We saw the three swimming pools (25yds, none of course in use at present) with their separate entrances, their designations ‘Males 1st Class’, ‘Males 2nd Class’ and ‘Females’ reflecting the attitudes of the time. Needless to say, Males 1st Class had the widest pool (40ft) and the best entrance hall which was covered throughout with ornate dark green and cream tiling, with tiled balustrade and mosaic floor with a fish design. Females had to be content with a simple but pretty iron and wood banister and a plain floor. Females also had to make do with the third washings of water for their pool, filtered through sand each time after use by Males 1st Class and Males 2nd Class. Also of great interest was the Turkish Baths Suite, a series of rooms tiled over floor and ceiling in shades of aquamarine and ochre, with its accompanying opulent rest room for cooling off afterwards. At 2s. 6d. a time this was only for the better off! Other facilities included 64 wash-baths and an ‘aerotone’ (jacuzzi) installed in 1952, which looks like a giant stainless steel milk churn with perforated sides and base. There is room for one person at a time to enter down a short ladder and sit on a stool at the bottom to enjoy the bubbling waters. Next we went to Gorton Monastery, another magnificent edifice built almost solely by one Irish and six Belgian Franciscan friars who arrived in Gorton in 1861. Designed by Edward Pugin in high Victorian Gothic style, the church was acclaimed as ‘a triumph of Catholic architecture’. Unusually it was orientated north-south so that it rose from the surrounding fields standing broadside on to largely protestant Manchester. Moreover the spire rose forty feet higher than the tower of Manchester Cathedral – a statement indeed. We began our visit with a delicious lunch of soup, sandwiches and cake at tables laid out in the nave, a somewhat surreal experience in this huge empty space, overlooked by the great crucifix hanging high over the chancel steps. After lunch, still in the church, we were given an informative illustrated talk covering the history of the monastery, with many interesting details about the building process, its life, decline and subsequent restoration. We noted the way the plentiful natural light illuminated various architectural details, and discussed briefly whether the superb high altar, designed by Peter Paul Pugin, should be restored. Most of us felt that it retained a more poignant beauty in its now vandalised state. After a short while to wander round the church and grounds on our own, we boarded the coach to return home, well satisfied in all respects with another NADFAS visit. CAROLINE STORR
THE ANDERTON BOAT LIFT AND NANTWICH SALT MUSEUM – 19TH MAY 2009
This
web page is currently being revised to include reports and
photographic galleries of many previous CDFAS visits.
Photographs of members and items of interest seen on visits are
welcome for this web archive. |
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last edited
27/05/2010 00:33:38