The History of Warwick Castle, and What Makes It One of the Icons of England

The History of Warwick Castle, and What Makes It One of the Icons of England

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467470/fan_mail/new] As a great expert on the English castle, John has been thinking about one of the great icons of England: Warwick Castle.  This extraordinary building, created over centuries, has come down to us intact, not having been slighted after the Civil War in the 17th century – something exceptional. Equally remarkable is the mythology that surrounds the place, including the medieval legends attached to Guy of Warwick, after whom one of the castle’s famous towers is named.  Although Guy may never have existed, his story was revered by the Earls of Warwick as their foundation myth.  In an attempt to contain the Earl of the day, Henry I took away a portion of his earldom from the Earl of the day and bestowed it on a favourite, who built Kennilworth Castle, only five miles away.   The result was a rivalry that lasted through the Middle Ages, which was conclusively ended when Kennilworth was reduced to the ruin that it is now. Founded by William the Conqueror, when travelling to Yorkshire to inflict the vengeful punishment known as the Harrying of the North, Warwick Castle occupied a powerful position at the heart of the country, overlooking the river Avon.  The 16th Earl of Warwick became known as  Warwick the Kingmaker, from his ability to tilt the scales of the Wars of the Roses in favour of the side he supported at the time.  Later centuries associated Warwick Castle with the England of Shakespeare, who was born in Warwickshire.  It was arguably the first building to have been copied in recognisable form during the early Gothic Revival.   A visit to Warwick Castle still stirs the imagination.  Listen to John’s account and you’ll see it with fresh eyes.

The History of Greenwich, Masterpiece of the English Baroque

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467470/fan_mail/new] Clive has taken the riverboat to Greenwich, one of the most spectacular sites of London.  ‘Good Duke’ Humphrey, brother of Henry V, built a retreat here in the 15th century, which Henry VII developed into a palace.  This was where Henry VIII jousted in his early years, and where his armour was made.  To the early Stuarts Greenwich’s was important from its position at the mouth of the Thames: this was where foreign ambassadors landed on their way to the court: Inigo began a revolutionary building for James I’s Queen, Anne of Denmark, and finished it for Henrietta Maria who was married to Charles I.  The Queen’s House, as this structure became known, was where Charles kept some of the best of his art collection – alas, dispersed by the Civil War.  After the palace was roughly treated after the Civil War, it was earmarked to become once more a palace for Charles II.  He succeeded in building only one block before the money ran out.   Instead of a palace, the Royal Observatory arose at the top of a hill, as a place to study the heavens away from the smoke that was already obscuring the skies of London.  The terrible carnage of the Dutch wars of the 1660s and 1670s, fought at sea, touched the heart of the future Queen Mary, who would ascend the throne with her husband William III, Prince of Orange.  As a result, Greenwich became home to the Royal Naval Hospital, in a magnificent parade of buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren.  They include the Painted Hall, a masterpiece of the artist Sir James Thornhill, and a chapel that was redecorated in the 1780s by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart after a fire.   The complex that Vanbrugh built for his family on Maze Hill, next to Greenwich Park, also survives. .A generation ago, Greenwich – no longer a hospital but a naval college – was difficult for the public to see. Now it houses a university and a music school, and a dazzling restoration of the Painted Hall has proved, literally, a revelation – previously invisible details have been brought to light, such as the figure of Louis XIV who appears beneath William III’s foot in the ceiling.  John is as much enraptured as Clive.

A Tudor Treasure, The Gem of Lincolnshire: Doddington Hall

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467470/fan_mail/new] Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire is one of those country houses you find only in Britain.  The attics are full of old toys, military headgear, unwanted commodes and a giant figure of the White Rabbit, left over from an Alice in Wonderland-themed event.  A collection of Roman antiquities, some found on the estate, is displayed in the downstairs lavatory, along with a child’s pedal-operated aeroplane with patriotic RAF roundels.  From the roof, you can see Lincoln cathedral on a good day.  Built around 1600, Doddington has hardly been changed outside, and in half a millennium, it has never been sold. Best of all are the tapestries.   Due to the antiquarian tastes of its 18th-century owner John Hussey Delaval, the Georgian revamp was old-fashioned for the 1760s, and included bedrooms close-hung with tapestries in the manner of the William and Mary era.  The Doddington tapestries are now a rare survival, although not perhaps for the reason that might be imagined.  They are not of the first quality, but relatively workaday– and which is exactly the sort that have most commonly perished.   Clive and John are both enthralled by this house, which – thanks to the conversation of the stables to a shopping experience – is going through something of a golden age.   It was where Clive first rode an electric bike.

A Parade of Characters and Art: the Glittering Story of Stansted Park, Sussex

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467470/fan_mail/new] Clive and John have both been to Stansted Park, outside Chichester, though at different times.  Clive remembers it from the time he helped the owner Eric Bessborough revise a book in the 1980s, whereas John’s connection is more recent.  They both find it an astonishing example of an economic revival, apparently inspired by the Covid years when the public was desperate for open space.  As a result, the house and park are beautifully maintained, while estate buildings have been well developed as a retail experience.   Stansted has a long and colourful history, which ushers a glittering array of characters onto the stage.  Owners have ranged from kings to wine merchants, Dukes to the remarkable Lewis Way, who made it a seminary for converted Jews who were supposed to go out to the Holy Land and spread Christianity.  This enterprise was not successful but the poet John Keats attended the dedication of the chapel, made from a fragment of a Tudor building.   The main house was destroyed by fire in 1900 and rebuilt by a member of the Blomfield dynasty. In the 1920s it was bought by the 9th Earl of Bessborough, a Governor General of Canada, who furnished it with the contents of the family’s Irish country house, Bessborough House, in County Kilkenny, which had been removed before Bessborough was burnt during the Troubles.  Today, Stansted still looks out over a well-treed landscape with avenues created during the Baroque period. Few country houses have such a varied history or have been so happily revived.  Clive and John are enchanted.

Dons and Divinity: The Marvellous History of Cambridge

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467470/fan_mail/new] John has been to Cambridge to see the castle, the mound of which still survives.  Although a graduate of Peterhouse and now a Visiting Professor of Architecture, associated with the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Downing College, Clive comes new to this early history but many stories of more recent times.  Together the pair mull over the development of this remarkable city, famous for one of the most beautiful ensembles of buildings in England.   The castle reminds those who might have forgotten – or never knew – how important this fenland settlement was to William the Conqueror in the Norman period.  Scholars arrived from Oxford in the 13th century, to establish what became the university.  It rose to glory under the patronage of Henry VII, his mother Lady Margaret Beauford and his son Henry VIII.  King’s College Chapel was finished in this era; Trinity College, St John’s College and Christ’s College were all founded.  It is not only the buildings that give Cambridge its character but the open landscape of the Backs, one of the triumphs of the Picturesque.  Today Cambridge is a boom town, thanks to the knowledge economy associated with the university’s record in scientific and mathematical research.   There has been rapid growth in housing, served by two new railway stations, Cambridge North and Cambridge South.  Can the qualities for which Clive and John love the place survive the pressure?