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| Exeter Cathedral |
We all left Cambridge on Saturday morning, August 4, to return to London and then scatter to our various destinations. Judy Ramey and I boarded a train to Exeter that afternoon. Owing to the closure of all the rental car agencies on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, we had a longer time in Exeter than we had planned and found it to be an utterly delightful city with a magnificent cathedral, a lively downtown, a lovely park with parts of the old Norman wall still visible, a beautiful World War I memorial and a charming riverfront, which on Sunday morning was full of folks on bikes and in sculls on the river.
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| Minstrel's Gallery |
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| Astronomical Clock |
The Cathedral was started, like so many, not long after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and there were significant additions in the 12th and 13th centuries. There is a beautiful 14th century minstrel's gallery with carved angels playing various instruments and a very special astronomical clock, which was added in 1484 and shows the workings of the solar system. I love these amazing instruments, which are quite rare.
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| Alfred Wallis painting, 1934 |
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| Ben Nicholson (1920s) |
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Patricia Heron
"Camelia Garden" 1956 |
When the car rental at the airport opened, we took a taxi out there and were soon on our way to St. Ives on the north coast, which was home to the most famous artist's colony in Cornwall. Alfred Wallis, who was collected by Jim Ede of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, and Barbara Hepworth were among many artists who gathered there primarily in the thirties, forties and fifties. No surprise that St. Ives is home to a branch of London's Tate Museum. It is housed in a lovely building, built especially for the purpose, and has a collection with a focus on artists who worked in this part of Cornwall. There was a retrospective exhibit while we were there and we were able to see some wonderful pieces, poorly reproduced in my photos, but I like them too much not to include.
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| Sculpture in Barbara Hepworth's garden |
Barbara Hepworth's home and studio are also in St. Ives and open to the public. It's most wonderful feature is a small, but magnificent sculpture garden with some exceptional pieces, large and small. I particularly liked the pond which was the setting for this piece. All in all we found St. Ives to be a charming, though hilly coastal community, with sandy beaches separated by steep rock outcroppings. And it was crammed with Brits enjoying an unusually warm summer at the seashore.
Penzance, on the south coast of Cornwall, was our next destination, which we decided to reach by the scenic route. It was a hair-raising adventure almost to Land's End, driving down roads barely wide enough for one car, often with ivy-covered walls on both sides. Meeting the occasional tour bus was an unforgettable experience! But we did get to see some beautiful, wild country and drive by one of the centers of Cornish mining around Pendeen and St. Just. The chimneys and outbuildings look exactly as they do in the Poldark series on PBS.
Penzance has an early 18th century feel and I was utterly astonished to find myself walking past the real (and very old) Admiral Benbow Inn, which, you may remember, is where Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island begins. The Morrab Gardens offer a lovely walk and the Penlee House Gallery and Museum has some fine paintings of the Newlyn School of artists, who clustered in this area starting in the 1880s, much as French Impressionists gravitated to Normandy and Brittany for the light. Although long forgotten now (and previously unknown to either of us), they included Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes, Walter Langley and Norman Garstin. Judy and I walked into the first gallery to see a huge painting of a beach scene with the tide out. Painted in the late 1880s, it is so stunningly life-like and the light is so captivating that it took our breath away. Sadly, no photos allowed. Forbes was more interested in people than landscape for its own sake and the result is dozens of paintings that make the hardy folk of late 19th century Cornwall accessible to us today.
Our last stop, Truro, was a sentimental end to the trip, for it is the capital of Cornwall where so many important scenes in the Poldark series occur. You may remember the dance in the Assembly Rooms and various other adventures if you are as much a fan as I am. Lemon Street is full of fine Georgian and Regency buildings and there's an outdoor market as well. Indeed, by 1824 or so, Truro was being favorably compared to Bath in terms of its architectural and social scenery.
It is hard to imagine today that Truro, which is decidedly inland, was an important port as the 19th century began. The river was navigable by the ships of the day and the inland position of the city protected the boats both from bad weather and enemies of various kinds (this was, after all, the era of the Napoleonic Wars). It took the Church of England until the late 19th century to establish the archdiocese of Cornwall and to make Truro its capital and so the gothic style Cathedral is mostly early 20th century. Ah, well, you can't have everything!
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| An Example of Local Pride |
At dinner on our last evening, we got talking to an English woman and her daughter who were on a Poldark pilgrimage and they told us we had to go to Charlestown, where much of the series is filmed. It was a short detour from our trip back to Exeter and London and so we drove over to the coast on Thursday morning to find a tiny beach community thriving in the wake of the popularity of the PBS series. Our Cambridge group has so enjoyed visiting Grantchester just outside of Cambridge where much of the Grantchester mysteries are filmed and now we found ourselves virtually on the set of the Poldark series!
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| Charlestown, Cornwall |
There are several large sailing ships in the tiny harbor and most of the houses resemble Georgian cottages. There is also a 'period' inn and pub and the shoreline is suitably rocky with high bluffs. What an unexpected delight!
So ends another lovely visit to England. I'll be back in Seattle by the weekend and look forward to getting in touch in real time.
