Month: September 2023

Bridgerton settings and the case of the missing hangings

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I had planned to visit Belton House anyway en route to Norfolk, but was even more keen after Ellen told me it was used in the recent Bridgerton prequel about Queen Charlotte and King George.

I loved that series, not only for the costumes, which are always fabulous, but also loved the sets. I am one of those people who always wants to know where things are filmed. Thank God for Google so I can find things and add them to my list of places to visit.

Ellen’s friend, Nancy, was actually there while they were filming as she used to work there. The location they used was the beautiful conservatory, which became George’s observatory.

This is located at the back of the gorgeous Italian garden behind the house.

Inside there were some beautiful examples of furniture, including my favourite, needlepoint chairs, and as is common with these era houses, a Chinese bedroom.

One of the main reasons for visiting Norfolk apart from a reunion with some former work colleagues, was to visit Oxburgh Hall. I have wanted to go for about 20 years, ever since first visiting Hardwick, as this is where the companion stitching to the ones there by Bess and Mary Queen of Scots are. Except ….

I had met up with my friend Linda from Spain, who was staying nearby with relatives. We did have a very lovely day out, despite the lack of hangings! It is a stunning moated property and it has been beautifully restored.

There were some very gorgeous Elizabethan era portraits, I love the lace in these. The whole house was so ornate with painted ceilings and leather wallpaper.

I will have to try and organise another visit to see the hangings, hopefully before another 20 years is up!

The rest of the week at Sandringham was very peaceful, I spent a lot of time with my friends which was lovely and quite emotional. Sadly the School of Education, where I worked for 20 years, has been closed and many people have lost their jobs. I feel so sad for my colleagues, who have always worked so hard and wish them all the best for the future.

I will be back soon with more of lovely Norfolk, it has been so nice to have time to explore and I have been lucky to have mainly very good weather. Until next time have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

Steampunk, 7 years on.

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This Lincoln Asylum event was, as Facebook helpfully reminded us, 7 years since we first attended, although due to the missing Covid years, it was the 5th time of being in Lincoln.

We loved the new activities such as the trinket swap and the 30 blue plaques to find, celebrating those who have contributed to the events.

As always we had an excellent time. We participated in the Fashion Show on the Friday night at the Assembly Rooms, which are a gorgeous reminder of Lincoln’s Georgian past.

I wore my Glories of Bombay jacket, and Ellen her House of Worth dress. She had a new tiara for the event which made her look very regal.

She also had a completely new outfit for the weekend, her Monster Hunter one, complete with Stitch in chains and Grogu in a net!

This is the same pattern she has used before and the bolero jacket and skirt look great with leggings and her Nu Rock boots. She embroidered the arm patch herself and bought the monster alert device and the hat cogs at a previous event. She even has Grogu earrings!

I wore the tablecloth jacket again on Saturday, but with the seamstress hat.

Sunday there was a Steam Trek meet up so I wore my Captain Jane way outfit and hat. Forgot to get any close up pictures though. There were some brilliant costumes at the meet up.

This trio were my favourite, so cool!

I will leave you with some of the other amazing outfits, as always such creativity. I am definitely tempted by a Slyvanian families one in the future!

There was definitely a bookworm theme going on and one lady had the, ‘What Katy Did ‘ books on her hat!

Love the Wonka family above, they always have amazing outfits.

I am currently staying on a site with no WiFi, so things may be a bit quiet here for a while.

I have lots of lovely more Trust property visits planned this week and next, and then am on to Suffolk for a week where I am looking forward to more pretty villages and coastline.

Until then have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

Stops along the way

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I like to plan some Trust properties or other sites of interest to break up my journeys so here are a few I have visited recently.

Ellen’s best friend from University, Becky, now manages the Droitwich Spa Heritage Centre, a lovely little museum about the salt industry. The town has lots of left over industrial heritage from those days and some beautiful Tudor buildings.

They had a special exhibition a while ago that I just had to go and see, Lisa- Jayne Smith, a retired theatre costume designer, had decided to make 85 Barbie costumes, representing fashion from 1066 to the 1980s.

Such beautiful details on all of the costumes and such a lot of work!

As you can imagine I was thrilled and the costumes are amazing. I must get on with the Tudor one for my dolls that I have been meaning to make since lockdown.

I managed to make a quick visit to Wollaton Hall in Nottingham the same day. If it looks familiar it is because it was designed by Smythson, who also designed Hardwick Hall. It is now the Natural History Museum so the interior is very different.

I also met my friend Lynne from Spain, at Gainsborough Old Hall, a beautiful building with a very unique kitchen complete with serving hatches.

Apologies for the abrupt ending to the last post, whatever I did I could not get it to save anything, so after a week just gave up. As always I hope you are all well and happy. Have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

Lincolnshire skies

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After the Slumber on the Humber festival I went to stay at Mablethorpe for 10 days. I had a really lovely relaxing time here on the coast and was joined for the weekend by my friend Sharon, from Marsden. She is thinking of buying a campervan so had rented one for the week to get an idea of what type she would like.

The weather was really good and I spent most of the time along the coast, and looking at the clouds. Lincolnshire is very flat and the campsite was next to fields, so apart from the windmills in the distance, all you could see was sky and there were some brilliant sunsets.

I went for a few walks to local beach nature reserves, there are lots of salt marsh reserves here and there were amazing clouds over the beaches.

I particularly love this last picture where it looks like there is a fight between the good and bad clouds with the evil.darkness about the envelop the fluffy white one.

We loved the patterns that the water made flowing through the sand and found shells that had worn away to form beautiful patterns of holes.

We did do a little bit of National Trust visiting, to Gunby Hall, which had the most gorgeous gardens and orchard.

The family that lived in the house in the Victorian era had lots of links with the famous writers artists and thinkers of the era. One of the daughters, Emily Massingberd founded The Pioneer Club in 1892 to support women’s suffrage.

Another daughter, Sybil, was friends with Gertrude Bell, the traveller and Middle Eastern specialist who I have blogged about before.

I really enjoy learning about links between all of these inspirational women. It sets all of their lives into context.

We had a lovely time and Sharon enjoyed her cute little campervan. Hopefully she can find one of her own and we can have more adventures together.

I am very much enjoying my time here in Norfolk, after a busy weekend at the Steampunk Festival in Lincoln after my stay in Mablethorpe and then a week at Ellen’s decorating.

Medieval maps and other finds

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As you may know I love old maps, I also love new ones but old ones are of particular fascination to me. I am in awe of the early sailors who tried to interpret what they saw in map form and love looking at them.

I have had the Mappa Mundi, at Hereford Cathedral, on my wish list for a very long time and so that had to be part of my recent Hereford explorations.

The Mappa Mundi is very different to other maps, being a representation of the earth as an example of what are known as TO maps. They are circular, often with heaven at the top, and the world at the bottom. The O is the whole map, and the T inside it divides the world into three sections.

Most of these maps have Jerusalem at the centre as they represent the Christian world. The Mappa Mundi has the East at the top and has Europe in the lower left section. The maps have drawings of real and imaginary beasts and buildings.

This map is one of the largest in the world, at about 5 by 4 feet, and is made of a single piece of calf skin. It dates from about 1300. It is an amazing thing to see, and the interpretation explains it really well.

The cathedral also contains the world’s largest chained library, as books were very precious. The library has a range of volumes from different centuries and scholars would be allowed to come and look at the books by resting them on the shelves below. So different to our public libraries now.

The needlework in the cathedral was also particularly impressive. The choir stalls had beautiful needlepoint cushions, many with heraldry on. There was so much stitching here, a real treasure trove of church needlework.

There was also a wonderful two panel applique telling the story of St Thomas, whose tomb has been restored to how it would have originally looked in the medieval period.

This is such a brilliant way to interpret the tomb and the piece was beautifully executed. There was no information about who made it but congratulations to the stitching team for such a wonderful piece.

I will definitely have to go back to the Hereford area, and the bordering counties as there was so much to see. I still have many Trust properties to visit in the area and due to bad weather didn’t get to do the black and white houses village trail. This area has such a wealth of medieval and Tudor history, having been the site of many border conflicts with Wales.

My next post will be about my time in Lincolnshire, an area I had never really been to before this year. That is part of what my plan was for this summer, in-between the festivals, to really explore very different parts of the UK.

I will see you all hopefully again soon, until then have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.

Herefordshire heritage

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I had a lovely time a few weeks back when I was staying at the Hereford Caravan and Camping Club site.

There are lots of Trust properties in that area so I was pleased that I managed to visit two as well as Leominster for the embroidery exhibition.

The first of two that I went to in one day was Croft Castle. Like Dunster, in Somerset, this started life as a castle and was then modified into a family home.

The family had close links with the court of Elizabeth 1st, so there were some wonderful portraits in the entrance hall.

One of the exhibits was a, ‘Croft Cloth’, that was made in 2018 to celebrate the centenary of the Representation of the People Act, which gave more people the vote.

The cloth has oak leaves with the names of staff, volunteers and visitors, this being the symbol of the Trust. I love collaborative projects like these, reminiscent of the signature quilts from Victorian era fundraisers.

There was also some interesting embroidery in the form of a collage featuring the castle done in 1960 by Frances Kay.

There were some stunning ceiling and wall decorations that I will add to my possible future designs for needlework, these would look amazing in white work.

The other visit was to Berrington Hall, a Georgian property with a surprise textile treasure.

A dress owned by one of the Georgian occupants of the house, Ann Bangham, was acquired at auction and there is a display of the dress and its construction.

The dress consists of many parts so the textile historians had to reconstruct it. It dates from the late 1700s.

As well as this very good interpretation there is a room devoted to a display by the needlework volunteers who each created their own version of the missing stomacher.

It is brilliant to see so much information about these wonderful people. Often there is no information and little credit given to the volunteers who also produce such high quality garments for visitors to dress in at the house.

The detail on the embroidered jacket here is wonderful, well done to all who contributed to this collection.

I shall be back as soon as I can as I have lots more to share with you. The app for mobile is very slow and as I have only limited WiFi as well posts take a long time to do. Meanwhile I hope that you have fun, take care, stay safe and thanks for visiting.