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| School Shakespeare Attended, Stratford |
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| Holy Trinity Church, Stratford |
Stratford is hardly a small town, but in spite of the enormous enterprise that is the Royal Shakespeare Company, it is really quite a gentle little place. On Monday, I had several opportunities to wander. The school at left is still right in the center of town as is Holy Trinity Church where he was baptized and buried.
At the entrance to the theater complex there is a wonderful boat basin formed in the Avon River and a grand walk along the canal that borders that side of the town. (The canal goes on to Birmingham.)
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| Holy Trinity Church from the Boat Basin |
On Tuesday, Miriam and I drove the hour or so it took to get to Stowe, a National Trust Property. The house, which is now a "public" school is still in the process of restoration, but the park is open, enormous and the landscape views are stunning. One speaks of English gardens, but there are really two kinds. One is a flower garden, usually dense with blooms with many different plants arranged together into a harmonious whole. Stowe is really not a garden in this sense at all. Rather is is what the 19th century novelists I read so often would call a "park" and what is now called a landscape garden. There is hardly a flower to be seen. Instead, neoclassical structures are 'arranged' in stunning settings of woodland, meadows, streams and lakes. And each setting is designed to be discovered from a different angle as one walks along the paths. Stowe is done on such a grand scale that it is absolutely breathtaking.
Although the weather was cool, cloudy and somewhat windy, we enjoyed our three-mile jaunt enormously.
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| Palladian Bridge, Stowe Garden |
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| Queen's Tample |
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Temple of Concord and Victory
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