Cornwall

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.

Minstrel's Gallery

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.

Alfred Wallis painting, 1934

Ben Nicholson (1920s)

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.  

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!

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!

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.

 

In and around Cambridge

Norwich Castle and Market Stalls

Our weekend excursions this year were to Norwich and Ely.

Norwich Arcade

As England’s second city from medieval days through to the Industrial Revolution, Norwich has always been enormously prosperous and culturally active. Norman invaders built the imposing castle and the spired Anglican cathedral. As the city grew, so did its still intact medieval street pattern – said to be the largest in Europe.  Today, it occupies a much lower perch in the economic pecking order, the wool business having long since moved elsewhere, but it boasts a wonderful pedestrian walking area, lots of shops, including a lovely covered arcade, a vibrant street market and a fine cathedral.  We were there the day of the Gay Pride parade, so the city was full of people in brilliant garb and high good spirits.

Women's lives in the time of Cromwell

In Ely the next day, we had a tour of the Oliver Cromwell House and the precincts of the Cathedral before we heard a heavenly Evensong in the Church Choir.  The house in Ely is the only extent dwelling Oliver Cromwell is known to have occupied.  He remains an incredibly controversial figure in England and the battle rages over whether he was a great or a wicked man.  
                                                                       The lovely thing about the house is the emphasis on how the Cromwell family lived, what they ate and wore, how they spent their time.  Even our guide was dressed in period costume.

Ely Cathedral & octagonal dome

Cromwell died in bed and was given a state funeral, but once Charles II became King, Cromwell was disinterred and executed, his head cut off and put on a pike in London.  When it finally fell down, it disappeared, rumored to have been spirited off to Cambridge where it was given to Sydney Sussex College, which he had attended, and buried somewhere on the College grounds, a secret passed down all these years.  You'd think somebody might have got it out of one of the Masters of the college, but they have remained mum for more than 350 years.  (Historical note:  Some say the head was simply buried at Tyburn, but I like the Sydney Sussex story better.)

Ely Cathedral and Lady Chapel (right)

Ely Cathedral, which dates back to 1083, has one of the longest naves in England and a rather peculiar octagonal tower where the nave and transept cross, the result of the original tower having fallen down.  It has also lost the tower to the left of the great front door, the result of inadequate foundations and poor understanding of how to support the weight of all that stone.  The precincts are extensive, the old monastery long gone and many other buildings repurposed for the Cathedral School and various residences.  This was a wealthy church because of the pilgrims who came to pray to St. Ethelreda, a 7th century Anglo-Saxon princess and saint.  Although the church and convent she built were sacked by the Danes, it was re-founded by the Benedictines in the early 10th century and rebuilt again as a great Cathedral after the Norman invasion.  The Lady Chapel is especially large and very beautiful.

Kettle's Yard

Detail, Kettle's Yard

I should say something about Kettle's Yard in Cambridge as our visit comes to an end.  Kettle's Yard was owned by Jim Ede, a curator at the Tate, who turned several tumble-down cottages into a lovely, though simple home, near St. John's College.  He had a wonderful eye and the home is absolutely charming, full of some fine works of art, but a huge variety of simple objects made special by the way he arranged them.  He invited undergraduates in every afternoon and eventually gave the home to the University of Cambridge with the condition that the house be kept exactly as he left it.  It has recently been remodeled and a new art gallery added, but the essential features of his home remain and are well worth a visit.  What's especially nice is that you can sit in the chairs or on the bed to see the art works the way he would have wanted you to see them.  It all goes together so beautifully.

Friday evening was our celebratory "close of term" dinner and today we're off to London again.  Judy and I will be in Exeter on Saturday night and then on to Cornwall.  I'll be driving so I hope the local newspaper has put in an announcement asking the local population to pull in their trees😉!

Too Darn Hot!

Back in London, I reunited with several friends from the Women's University Club who were gathering for our two-week courses at the International Summer School in Cambridge.  Of course, it is impossible to stop over in London without seeing a play, visiting a museum and going to a good restaurant.

On Friday night, several friends and I saw a new play called Pressure, a wonderful production created by, and starring, David Haig as Dwight Eisenhower's weather forecaster for D-Day.  It's a terrific story, as we all know, and beautifully dramatized in this spell-binding production.  On Saturday, Miriam managed to get me a ticket for the Monet and Architecture exhibit at the National Gallery.  Although Monet in particular and the Impressionists in general are thought of as landscape artists first and foremost, this exhibit explored Monet's fascination with structures from simple farm buildings in his early years to the magnificent series of the Cathedral at Rouen and the Houses of Parliament in London.  Apparently he worked on dozens of these later canvases all at once, adding bits to each as the hours of the day progressed and the light changed.  Our final evening included a celebratory dinner at Nopi, Ottolenghi's outstanding London restaurant.  We shared a variety of small plates that were absolutely outstanding, including the ever-wonderful truffle polenta chips, roasted eggplant, zucchini and edamame beans, roasted beetroot salad, some mackerel done on a grill and a beautifully prepared bavette of beef.   An exquisite chocolate confection topped it all off.  Every time I go there, I just think "Wow!"

Selwyn College's brown lawn

It was warmer than usual in Stratford and warmer than usual in London, but by the time we arrived in Cambridge, it was just too darn hot.  England has had a month of extremely high temperatures and no rain.  Cambridge, which is always green and often quite chilly because of its proximity to the North Sea, was shockingly brown.  No green grass and many flower beds turned over and abandoned.  And because of its almost invariably moderate temperatures, it is supremely un-air-conditioned.  After a month of temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s, the class rooms and dorms were sweltering and the dining and lecture halls were ovens.

Suzy and the 13 fans

Suzy Lantz, the leader of these trips, had arrived a few days before and discovered only one shop in Cambridge that still had any fans at all and they were all small personal fans -- but better than nothing.  So on Monday afternoon, after my classes, she and I headed out to buy up whatever was left.  By then, even that shop was sold out too so we took a taxi out to big box heaven on the outskirts of town to a place called Wickes and there found a sufficient supply of 12" oscillating table-top fans for the whole group.  So we bought 13, called our beloved Panther Taxi Company to send a van, and returned triumphant!  We left one in the Selwyn Porter's lodge for a member of our group staying in another college and managed to get the remaining 12 to Suzy's room using two hand trucks, only to discover that they were not assembled inside the box.  We helped each other figure out how to do that and then, while the rest of us were attending our evening lecture, Suzy put together the remaining 10.  She was the heroine of the day and many were the huzzahs celebrating her accomplishment!  A better sleep was had by all.

I like my two classes quite a bit.  The first, taught by Seán Lang is on England at War:  From Wellington to Churchill.  Lang is a wonderful story-teller, as I discovered last year when I studied the French Revolution with him, and always well-prepared.  What a surprise to discover that his brother Aiden has just become the director of the Seattle Opera.  Small world indeed!  My second class, Living Film, taught by a film-maker and lecturer in film named Fred Baker, is also excellent.  He began with some scenes from a documentary he created titled "Shadowing the Third Man", which is a retrospective on that great film.  The camera work is just wonderful and I hope to be able to find it when I return to Seattle to watch the whole thing.  He's also shown us bits of other movies, a Chinese film with the (English) title "I'm in the Mood for Love" and a German film called "Run, Lola, Run", which has one long scene of a girl running that is absolutely the most thrilling thing I've seen in ages (think of great chase scenes like in "Bullit" only this isn't a chase).  I must find that one too.

In spite of classes and lectures, there's also been time to do some shopping in town, have tea at the Orchard in Grantchester, visit the Fitzwilliam Museum and Kettle's Yard, and just enjoy this charming town.  Another home away from home.