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Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however, we are very far from Cavendish Mews, and in fact far from London. Taking advantage of their employers’ attendance of an amusing Friday to Monday country house party in Scotland, Lettice’s maid, Edith, and her best friend Hilda, the maid of Lettice’s married Embassy Club coterie friends Dickie and Margot Channon, with permission, have arranged to take a weekend trip to Manchester where they are staying for Friday and Saturday nights, before returning to London on Sunday so that they are ready to receive their employers upon their return on Monday. Both maids landed upon the idea to visit their friend Queenie on the Saturday. She lives in the village of Alderley Edge, just outside of Manchester, which is easily accessible via the railway, allowing them to take tea with her at a small tearoom in the pretty Cheshire village.
Queenie, Edith and Hilda all used to work together for Mrs. Plaistow, the rather mean wife of a manufacturing magnate who has a Regency terrace in Pimlico. Queenie was the cheerful head parlour maid, so both Edith and Hilda as younger and less experienced lower housemaids, fell under her instruction. Queenie chucked her position at Mrs. Plaistow’s a few years ago and took a new position as a maid for two elderly spinster sisters in Cheshire to be closer to her mother, who lives in Manchester. Still in touch with Edith, Queenie writes regularly, sharing stories of her life in the big old Victorian villa she now calls home, half of which is shut up because one of the two sisters is an invalid whilst the other is in frail condition and finds it hard to access the upper floors.
However, life for Queenie proved to be not as bright as her letters indicated, and all three maids were made to feel unwelcome at Mrs. Chase’s Tearooms in Alderley Edge because of their working class backgrounds by the snobbish proprietor and equally class conscious patrons, and Queenie revealed more sad stories after they left Mrs. Chase’s establishment, leaving both her friends aghast.
Now we find ourselves back in Manchester along Deansgate* where after returning to the city from Chester by railway, Edith and Hilda are taking advantage of their free time before dinner at their cheap, but respectable, hotel for single and travelling women, by taking in a few more of the sights of Manchester and are currently shopping at a beautiful manchester and linen shop along the ground floor of a tall four storey building towards the north end of Deansgate.
The soft linens covering the surfaces of tables and counters, as well as hanging from the walls of the shop serve as a buffer against the noisy sounds outside the large plate glass windows as heavy foot traffic fills the pavement of Deansgate, and electric trams** rattle noisily along the thoroughfare, their sound mixing in with the chug of motorcars and buses and the vociferous sound of human chatter. The smell of freshly laundered linen filling the air of the establishment, and keeping out the miasma of mechanical motorcar and lorry fumes, reminds Edith of her mother, who is a laundress, and of the kitchen of her family home in Harlesden where she does all the ironing on the big, round kitchen table. Extra protection from the acrid fumes outside is provided by the fragrance of fresh flowers which stand about in pretty vases on the surfaces of tables and chests of drawers, adding a bright shock of colour to the otherwise mostly snowy white surrounds of the establishment.
“This is nice, Edith.” Hilda remarks, picking up a dainty lace doily from a round table covered with a long lace tablecloth which is covered in napery and dollies, all arranged around a squat blue and white vase filled with brightly coloured pansies. “You could add this to your glory box***.”
“Hhhmmm…” Edith mutters distractedly, glancing up from where she thumbs a bunch of crisply pressed white sheets.
“For your glory box, Edith.” Hilda says again.
Edith considers the dainty piece of diamond shaped intricate lace in her best friend’s sausage like fingers. “No, I don’t think so, Hilda. Mum has already acquired a whole lot of beautiful lace doilies for me from flea markets.”
“Yes, but just imagine having something new like this.” Hilda enthuses. “No one has ever used it before.”
“If they’ll take my grubby maid’s wage here.” Edith mutters sulkily, releasing the sheet from between her index finger and thumb.
“Here, here!” Hilda exclaims, carefully replacing the doily amidst the pieces carefully arranged for display on the table and hurries over to her friend. “You mustn’t talk like that, Edith.” She winds her arms around her friend’s back and squeezes her upper arms beneath her plum coloured coat comfortingly.
“Why not?” Edith asks grumpily. “It’s how I feel.”
“And here I was thinking I was the one most put out by Mrs. Chase’s snobbery and that of her snooty customers.”
Edith sighs with frustration. “Evidently not, Hilda.” She runs her fingers over the knobbly woven lacework of a tablecloth that has been rolled up and stacked on top of the sheets she was considering for potential purchase.
“You mustn’t let this afternoon spoil our holiday.” Hilda insists, giving Edith’s shoulders another squeeze, before releasing her and moving alongside her at the table covered in table linen. She looks her friend squarely in the face. “Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. Yes, that nasty Mrs. Chase, or whatever her name was, was a nasty snob. But you said yourself that in a big city like London or Manchester, we can blend in with everyone else, and no-one knows who we are, or what we do for a living. You’re money’s every bit as good here as some mill owner’s wife or manchester merchant.” She nods seriously.
“Oh you’re right.” Edith sighs again. “I don’t mean to be out of sorts, but it’s more than the snobbery that’s gotten to me, Hilda. It’s the other business Queenie mentioned that really upset me the most.”
Edith’s mind drifts back to the charming Cheshire village of Alderley Edge where she and Hilda had had cream teas at Mrs. Chase’s Tearooms. After hurriedly finishing their scones and tea, scoffing them in less than ladylike gulps, the three friends had retreated to the relative safety of the street, where the late winter air around them felt warmer than the atmosphere of the tearooms. Following Queenie as she walked down the high street towards the Victorian villa owned by her employers, the Miss Bradleys, Hilda and Edith remained in awkward silence as they waited for their friend to explain why they had been made to feel so unwelcome in Mrs. Chase’s. The wide street, lined with neat Victorian and Edwardian double story shops, many built of red brick with slate roofs and Mock Tudor gabling, was relatively empty, with only a handful of smartly dressed people going about their business and a smattering of automobiles and lorries trundling past them in either direction, their chugging more noticeable in a village setting than in the busy streets of London where such noises are constant.
“At least no-one can make us feel second rate here on the footpath.” Hilda had said. ‘We have just as much right to be here as anyone else.”
Finally, Queenie stopped walking and sank down onto a public bench near the kerbside. She apologised to her two friends for spoiling their visit. “I should have insisted that I come to Manchester and meet you there. It’s just that when I received your postcard****, Edith, you and Hilda had arranged everything so nicely. You’d obviously worked out the railway schedules so you knew what time you would arrive and which train to take to get back to Manchester at a reasonable hour, so I just thought I’d take you to the only tearooms I know of that are nice in Alderley Edge. I didn’t want to spoil your plans.”
Queenie went on to explain that whilst Alderley Edge was a beautiful village, living in such a small community was different to living in a big city like London, which afforded anonymity. In her new home, everyone knew who Queenie was, and that she was the maid-of-all-work to the Miss Bradleys, and dining in the same establishment as a maid did not sit well with the snobbish mistresses of the neighbourhood who frequented Mrs. Chase’s Tearooms as well.
“You really need to leave here, if this is how things are, with everyone knowing who you are and judging you unfairly for it. Edith said to Queenie in concern. “Come back to London. There are plenty of jobs for parlour maids. With your experience, you could have the pick of the lot.”
“Well, it is true that I am currently looking for a new situation.” Queenie admitted. “However, it has its own complications, and I’m not looking to come back to London. I want to stay in Manchester, so I can be closer to Mum.”
“What complications?” Hilda queried from her seat beside her friend on the bench.
“Well, I haven’t told either of you, but old Miss Ida, the infirm Miss Bradley, had a fall and died about two months ago.” Queenie elucidated. “She hit her head on the patterned tiles in the hallway. She must have been trying to go upstairs in the night, although goodness knows why. Her mind seemed to have been slipping in the months prior. She was always looking for things she thought she’d lost, and at odd times of the night. It was almost as if she couldn’t rest until she’d found what she wanted. And she called me Nellie too, which Miss Florence told me was the name of their maid when their father was still alive, and she’s been buried in the churchyard many a winter. Once I caught Miss Ida trying to go out of doors at three in the morning, dressed only in her nightdress and bedcap, barefoot and raving that she would be late for school!”
“School?” Edith asked with wide eyes.
“Like I said, she was losing her mind, and I think Miss Florence knew it, because she instructed their lawyers to summon their nephew, Mr. Skellern to come and stop for a while. He’s been staying with us ever since just before Miss Ida died, but unlike the Miss Bradleys, he’s not a nice person. He’s haughty, demanding, and more of a snob than the ladies in Mrs. Chase’s, if you can believe that.” She paused for a moment, contemplating whether to continue. “He never calls me by my name: as if calling me Queenie, like I was christened, is too lowering for him. He calls me ‘girl’ instead. ‘Girl come here!’ ‘Girl, do that.’ ‘Get out of this room at once girl.’ ‘Do as I say, girl, and don’t question me.‘ And he’s accused me of trying to thieve from the sisters, which I’d never do!”
“Of course you wouldn’t!” agreed Hilda and Edith in their friend’s defence.
“I caught him counting the silverware one afternoon, and he accused me of stealing a carving set with silver collars that belonged to his great uncle, the Miss Bradley’s father, which I had never seen. I had to go to Miss Florence in her bed to plead my case, and she cleared up the matter with Mr. Skellern.”
“How did she do that?” Hilda asked.
“She told him that the set he mentioned, which Mr. Skellern had only ever seen in a photo taken of Mr. Bradley before he was even born, had been given away as a donation for a charity auction to raise money for wounded Boer War soldiers, years before I ever came to work for the Miss Bradleys.”
“That’s awful!” Edith cried in horror at Queenie’s story.
“What’s worse is that,” Queenie blushed red as she spoke the next words. “You implied in Mrs. Chase’s that I might have been with child, which I’m not,” She put up her careworn hands in defence of herself. “But only because luck’s a fortune.”
“Did Mr. Skellern try and take advantage of you?” Edith asked Queenie anxiously.
Queenie confirmed Edith’s worst fears with a shallow nod. “In the library. I was dusting the books, at his instruction, and was up the library steps. He tried to get his hands up under my skirt, and my camiknickers***** from John Lewis****** down, but I fought him off.”
“That’s disgusting!” Hilda burst hotly. “Good for you, Queenie!”
“Yes, but Mr. Skellern took offence to my refusal of his advances, and now I’m concerned that he’s trying to put his aunt into a convalescent home. He keeps threatening to dismiss me without a reference, and I’ve only been saved from that disaster by Miss Florence’s presence. Miss Florence won’t hear a bad word said about her nephew, nor will she contemplate writing me a reference because as far as she is concerned, she isn’t leaving her home, and I’ve been very happy within the employ of she and her sister. So, I’m trying to find a job as a hotel chambermaid in Manchester.”
“A chambermaid, Queenie?” Hilda asked in horror.
“They are less picky about references, and the pay’s better.” Queenie admitted a little guiltily.
“But you may be assaulted by a man like Mr. Skellern, Queenie!” Edith gasped. “You’ve heard the stories.”
“I don’t have many other options without a reference from Miss Florence. Thus is the plight of a poor, humble parlour maid. I could do far worse than be a hotel chambermaid, Edith.” Queenie cocked her eyebrow knowingly. “I’ve been told by more than Mr. Skellern that I’m pretty.”
“Don’t even consider it, Queenie!” Hilda shuddered. “Please!”
“Not all men are like Mr. Skellern.” Queenie replied with a cheeky glint in her eyes. “There have to be nice, wealthy men out there, who are just waiting to meet their Cinderella and sweep her from the ashes.”
The subtle clearing of a male throat near to her interrupts Edith’s reminisces about the conversation she and Hild had with Queenie in Alerley Edge earlier in the day. She gasps and looks to her left.
“I’m so sorry, madam.” a suited man says politely in an educated Mancunian accent. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s quite alright.” Hilda replies for her friend.
“I was just wondering whether there was anything I could assist you with, today, ladies.” he goes on.
“Ladies?” Edith pulls a face and nods at Hilda. “Well!”
“It isn’t often we get two such well dressed visitors from London in our humble establishment. You are from London, aren’t you, ladies?”
“Indeed we are!” Hilda answers for she and Edith in surprise.
“It’s your accents.” the floor walker goes on, answering Hilda’s unspoken question. “You’re either from London, or perhaps Cheshire?”
“London, most definitely.” Edith affirms.
“Then is there anything I can show you two London ladies that might be of interest?” he asks politely.
“See, I told you,” Hilda hisses to her best friend. “They aren’t all like Mrs. Chase and her cronies.”
Edith smiles at her friend before addressing the male assistant. “I was wondering what you had in the way of napkins, but not white ones. I’m rather partial to ecru or yellow.”
“Well, as you may have seen on the table over there,” he indicates with a sweeping, open palmed gesture to the round table where Hilda had found the dainty diamond shaped doily. “We do have some rather pretty mats with a yellow embroidered trim, and some rather fetching yellow napkins.” He reaches under the counter, out of sight of Edith and Hilda, and withdraws several placemats and napkins neatly folded and pressed into triangles. “Perhaps these might be of interest.”
*Deansgate is one of Manchester’s oldest thoroughfares. In Roman times its route passed close to the Roman fort of Mamucium and led from the River Medlock where there was a ford and the road to Deva (now Chester). Part of it was called Aldport Lane from Saxon times. (Aldport was the Saxon name for Castlefield). Until the 1730s the area was rural but became built up after the development of a quay on the river. The road is named after the lost River Dene, which may have flowed along the Hanging Ditch connecting the River Irk to the River Irwell at the street's northern end. ‘Gate’ derives from the Norse gata, meaning way. By the late Nineteenth Century Deansgate was an area of varied uses: its northern end had shopping and substantial office buildings while further south were slums and a working-class area around St John's Church.
**In the first half of the Twentieth Century, Deansgate was a route for trams operated by the Manchester Corporation Tramways, and subsequently carried numerous bus services when the trams were decommissioned.
***A hope chest, also called dowry chest, cedar chest, trousseau chest, or glory box is a piece of furniture once commonly used by unmarried young women to collect items, such as clothing and household linen, in anticipation of married life.
****One hundred years ago, postcards were the most common and easiest way to communicate with loved ones not only across countries whilst on holidays, but across neighbourhoods on a daily basis with the minutiae of life on them. This is because unlike today where mail is delivered on a daily basis, there were several deliveries done a day. At the height of the postcard mania in 1903, London residents could have as many as twelve separate visits from the mailman.
*****A camiknicker is a one piece form of lingerie which comprises a camisole top, and loose French Knicker style bottom. They are normally loose fitting enabling the wearer to step into them although some feature poppers or buttons at one side to give a more fitted look or a self tie belt to accentuate the wearer’s figure.
******John Lewis opened a drapery shop at 132 Oxford Street, London, in 1864. Born in Shepton Mallet in Somerset in 1836, he had been apprenticed at fourteen to a linen draper in Wells. He came to London in 1856 and worked as a salesman for Peter Robinson, an Oxford Street draper, rising to be his silk buyer. In 1864, he declined Robinson's offer of a partnership, and rented his own premises on the north side of Oxford Street, on part of the site now occupied by the department store which bears his name. There he sold silk and woollen cloth and haberdashery. His retailing philosophy was to buy good quality merchandise and sell it at a modest mark up. Although he carried a wide range of merchandise, he was less concerned about displaying it and never advertised it. His skill lay in sourcing the goods he sold, and most mornings he would go to the City of London, accompanied by a man with a hand barrow. Later he would make trips to Paris to buy silks. It is said that in 1905 John Lewis walked from Oxford Street to Sloane Square with twenty £1000 notes in his pocket and bought the Peter Jones department store. Sales at Peter Jones had been falling since 1902 and its new owner failed to reverse the trend. In 1914 he handed control of the store to his son Spedan. Lewis was regarded as an autocratic employer, prone to dismissing staff arbitrarily. The stores had difficulty retaining staff (there was a strike in 1920) and performed poorly compared to his rivals such as Whiteleys, Gorringes and Owen Owen. His management style led to conflict with his sons who disagreed with his business methods. It was only after his death that the company was transformed into the John Lewis Partnership, a worker co-operative. By the 1920s, when this story is set, there were John Lewis stores up and down Britain, including in Manchester. Today located in the Trafford Centre, John Lewis Manchester is one of the largest department stores in Europe, carrying half a million product lines.
This may look like a wonderful array of linens you might like to lay upon your table, but you might need a smaller surface for them, as this whole scene is made up of 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection including pieces I have had since I was a child.
Fun thing to look for in this tableau include:
All the lace around the shop come from different places, including: Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom, Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom, and Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. There are also a few miniature artisan pieces from private collectors and there are even a few life size lace doilies cleverly disguised in this scene. The two lace doilies on the central table in the midground I have had since I was a child, and were acquired from a high street specialist shop who stocked 1:12 size miniatures. The placemats with their hand sewn gold trim and the lemon yellow napkins I acquired along with an artisan picnic basket from America. The lace tablecloth on the round central table is in reality a small lace doily that I bought from an antique shop in Inglewood in provincial Victoria. The dainty floral edged piece hanging on the wall at the back to the far left also came from there. The blue and yellow embroidered floral cloth in the foreground is an old hand embroidered doily from the 1920s that I have had in my possession for a long time. The starched sheets tied with ribbon on the table in the foreground and the clothes horse you can just see the edge of to the left of the photo come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.
All the floral arrangements come from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
Edith’s green handbag and Hilda’s brown one are handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
The black umbrella came from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
Explainer: While I wish I could fully dress, wig-up and make-up regularly, those days are rare. So I post these AI renderings. FYI: the photos are AI generated, from actual photos of me, enhanced slightly with FaceApp and then dressed from outfits I see and love on the interweb. Enjoy them or not! I do, that's all that matters! Love, Crystal
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we have headed south-west across London, away from Cavendish Mews and Mayfair, over Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to the comfortably affluent Kensington High Street. Here, amidst the two and three storey buildings that line either side of the street, Edith, Lettice’s maid, walks amidst the other pedestrians with purpose. Dressed in her three-quarter length black coat which she bought from a Petticoat Lane* second-hand clothes stall and remodelled herself, and wearing the black straw cloche decorated with purple satin roses and black feathers she picked up from Mrs. Minkin’s - a Whitechapel haberdasher recommended by Lettice’s char**, Mrs. Boothby – she tries to blend in with the other affluent local women on pleasant pre-Christmas shopping outings. However, if she is concerned about how fashionably she is dressed, no-one else around her seems to give it a thought. Christmas is not far away now, with only a few weeks until Christmas Day, and signs of festive cheer abound with bright and gaudy tinsel*** garlands and stars cut from metallic paper hanging in shop windows on either side of the busy thoroughfare. The windows themselves are full of the latest fashions, toys and gadgets for the ladies of Kensington to choose their perfect Christmas gifts from. The shops are busy, and the pavement is crowded with meandering shoppers and window shoppers alike. Yet as her heels clip along the footpath, Edith has no time to tarry admiring window displays. She has an important errand to run in Kensington on her Wednesday off before heading north to the working-class London suburb of Harlesden, where she will pay her usual weekly visit to her parents.
Finally Edith reaches the splendid blue and white tile decorated façade she has been walking brusquely towards. Stylised and elegant gilt lettering on the windows to either side of the central double doors reads: ‘Langham’s – meat, fish, poultry, game and ice’. She peers through the large plate glass window at the splendid Christmas fare on display. A huge turkey sits in pride of place on a large silver platter, decorated with ornamental feathers and surrounded by greenery and raw vegetables. She sighs and walks quickly through the door of the butcher’s shop. The shop bell releases a cheery tingle as the wood and glass door closes behind her, shutting out the constant chugging of the engines of passing traffic and red double-decker London motorbuses, and the burble of human traffic passing by, and enveloping her in serene silence. Edith closes her eyes for a moment before opening them again. As her eyes adjust to being indoors the now familiar layout of the butcher’s shop emerges. Edith remembers with awkward embarrassment the first time Frank had brought her into Mr. Langham’s butcher’s shop and how intimidated she was by it. Unlike Mr. Chapman’s, the local butcher’s shop in Harlesden where she grew up, which has a warm and cosy feel to it, Mr. Langham’s establishment is spacious, stylish all about show. The floors are tiled in luxurious black and white chequered linoleum, just like the kitchen floor at Cavendish Mews, with not a wood shaving**** in sight, as most of the butchering is done by Mr. Langham and his sons out of sight of customers in a back room. The walls are lined from floor to ceiling with white tiles with a few bands of decorative green ones, and hung with brightly painted metal signs advertising condiments. Rather than a wooden counter like Mr. Chapman’s, which encouraged shoppers to lean in and tarry for a gossip, Mr. Langham’s counter is made of panelled glass and filled with the most wonderful displays of meat, fish and poultry. Yet as soon as Frank introduced Edith to his friend Percy, dressed in a uniform of a navy blue vest and a blue and white striped apron just like Mr. Chapman’s, her nerves fell away. He smiled at her broadly and welcomed her warmly, even if she was most likely the only girl from Harlesden ever to be served by him in his establishment. A mature, rather portly man with a jolly disposition to match his apple cheeks, Mr. Langham was delighted to meet his friend Frank’s young lady, and was only too happy to be of service to her once Frank explained what Edith’s plans were. And ever since then, a fortnightly ritual had occurred where she visited Mr. Langham before going on to see her parents on her Wednesdays off.
“Well, if it isn’t my favourite maid from Mayfair!” Mr. Langham remarks with his usual smile and easy manner from behind the counter as he sees Edith walk through the door.
“Oh Mr. Langham!” Edith blushes at his compliment. “You do know how to make a maid feel like a lady!”
“Come to get away from the Christmas rush out there then, have you, Miss Watsford?” the butcher chortles as he carefully adjusts the position of a fat turkey on a white raised platter on his counter, fussing over several large feathers used to decorate it until they fan out perfectly.
“Oh yes,” remarks Edith with a timid chuckle. “It’s so busy out there this week.”
“Never get between a Kensington housewife and her Christmas shopping, Miss Watsford.” Mr. Langham says jovially. “That’s my advice.”
“And very wise and welcome it is too, Mr. Langham.” Edith replies with a sigh as she walks up to the counter.
Over the ensuing months since Frank first brought her to Mr. Langham’s butcher’s shop in Kensington, Edith has discovered, much to her delight, that whilst it might be glass and used for the successful display and promotion of his fare, Mr. Langham’s counter is every bit as welcoming as a place to perch and chat as Mr. Chapman’s is in Harlesden. Edith places her green leather handbag across the glass countertop and hooks her black umbrella over the slightly raised maple edging and she leans in to peer at what lies under the glass. Trays of fat sausages and rich beef mince sit alongside steaks and chops, whilst a whole boar’s head with an apple stuck in his mouth peers back at her from another raised platter with squinted eyes and a broad smile.
“Fancy having that sitting in the middle of your Christmas table, Miss Watsford?” the butcher says in an ebullient voice, noting where Edith’s eyes have strayed to.
“No fear, Mr. Langham!” Edith replies, holding up her purple glove clad hands in defence. “I’d rather not have my meal looking at me as Dad prepares to carve it!”
“Well,” Mr. Langham says, looking down upon the boar. “He’s destined for a house in Rosary Gardens in Chelsea next week for a pre-Christmas dinner party. Mrs. Phyllida Cavendish is hosting a cocktail party, and he is to be the centre of her light buffet supper. To amuse her guests, he will be sporting a festive Christmas crown that she is making for him,” He sniffs. “Or so I have been told by Mrs. Cavendish several times.”
“That sounds positively frightful, Mr. Langham!” Edith pulls a face.
“Quite so, Miss Watsford.” agrees the butcher. “But then again, Phyllida Cavendish is an artist, so no doubt she and her odd bohemian friends will find some macabre humour in it. Perhaps they shall dance some pagan rights with him in her rear garden after midnight.”
“You do have some odd customers, Mr. Langham.” Edith remarks, clasping at the scarf at her throat.
“Only the ones from bohemian Chelsea.” he replies with a chuckle.
“Well, I think I’ll just stick to a nice old fashioned and succulent turkey from your shop this Christmas, Mr. Langham.”
“Come to pay off the final instalment have you, Miss Watsford?”
“Just as we agreed, Mr. Langham.” Edith nods cheerfully.
“I’ll just go and fetch my accounts book from the office.” he replies as he moves away from Edith, almost gliding across his elegant black and white linoleum floors as befits the owner of this elegant establishment.
As he does, Edith smiles to herself. How surprised her whole family will be when a fine, fat turkey arrives at her home in Harlesden just before Christmas, big enough to feed her parents, her brother – who will be home for Christmas on shore leave, Frank, Frank’s Scottish grandmother Mrs. McTavish and herself, and have leftovers for after Christmas. Christmas in the Watsford household has never been a lean one, even during the Great War with rationing, especially with her father’s canny ability to procure certain foods at a reasonable price, like the smaller turkey he acquired two Christmases ago, and her mother’s ability to make a feast out of anything left laying around her kitchen. However, even with those skills, George and Ada have expressed concerns about being able to feed everyone sufficiently on Christmas Day, even with Mrs. McTavish suphome-madee of her homemade Christmas puddings. Edith had caught her mother looking through old recipe books for imitation foodstuffs to supplement or replace real ones usually used by her at Christmas, and seen her carefully count the housekeeping money, scrimping and saving where she feels she can, to allow for extra expenditures for Christmas. Despite her mother’s refusal to take any of her wages from her, Edith wanted to contribute to Christmas this year especially since it was she who had suggested inviting Frank and his grandmother to Christmas lunch. When Frank mentioned how Mr. Langham was a butcher friend he had, and it was from him that he procured a small roast chicken for he and his grandmother every year, Edith knew immediately how she was going to contribute to Christmas 1923.
“Well, Miss Watsford,” Mr. Langham announces as he returns with her account. “I’m very pleased to accept your final payment for your family’s Christmas turkey. And a fine one he is too, if I may say!”
“Thank you, Mr. Langham. You may.” Edith replies with pride in her voice as she fetches out her small reticule***** from her handbag and counts out the last few shillings payment for the turkey.
“No, thank you, Miss Watsford, for being such a polite and promptly paying customer. I wish more of my customers were like you.”
“Oh I’m sure the likes of Mrs. Cavendish spend far more than I do.” Edith replies, indicating to the boar’s head.
“Oh, Phyllida Cavendish is very good at filling up my account book, but she is far less prompt paying what she owes.” Mr. Langham says with a cocked eyebrow and a knowing look. “No,” the butcher continues cheerfully as he accepts Edith’s shillings and pops them with a clink into his gleaming brass till. “I wish I had a daughter like you. It isn’t every day a daughter buys a turkey for her whole family for Christmas.”
“Well,” Lettice replies, blushing again. “Langham and Sons sounds and looks far more impressive over the front door than Langham and daughter.”
“Be that as it may, I’d give anything for my lads to offer to pay for our Christmas turkey, Miss Watsford, let me assure you!”
“Will you be supplying your own turkey then, Mr. Langham?”
“If not me, then who else, Miss Watsford? Mrs. Langham is expecting a fine turkey this year, and that is what she shall have if I know what’s good for me and want a peaceable festive season.”
“Oh you are a wag, Mr. Langham!” Edith laughs, flapping her hand at the middle-aged butcher. “I’m sure Mrs. Langham is the most charming and delightful wife in Kensington.”
“That she is, Miss Watsford,” agrees the older man. “But if you don’t mind me saying, she isn’t half as pretty as you.”
“Oh Mr. Langham!” Edith puts her hands to her cheeks as she feels the warmth of the colour filling them.
“I know! I know!” Mr. Langham raises his hands in defence. “You’re spoken for. That Frank Leadbetter is a lucky chap, stepping out with a girl as thoughtful and beautiful as you.”
In an effort to change the subject, Edith asks, “So the turkey will be delivered on what day, Mr. Langham?”
“Friday the twenty-third, Miss Watsford,” the butcher replies. “To the address you’ve given me here.” He taps George and Ada’s address in Harlesden on the top of Edith’s account with his grey lead pencil. “When will you tell your Mum?”
“Well, now that it’s paid off, I might tell her today.” Edith contemplates. “I’m off to visit her now. And,” she adds. “If I tell her and Dad today, then Dad won’t go and organise something else in the meantime, like he usually does.”
“Good thinking, Miss Watsford.” Mr. Langham replies cheerily, tapping his nose in a knowing fashion.
“Well, I must be going, Mr. Langham.” Edith announces, taking up her handbag and umbrella from the shop counter. “I have to get over to Harlesden, and that’s no short trip from here.”
“Well, you must take a slice of Mrs. Langham’s Christmas fruit cake for the journey.” the butcher replies, indicating to four thick slices of cake encased in a thick layer of white royal icing sitting on a tray directly below one of his wife’s beautifully decorated Christmas cakes on a raised platter sitting on the counter next to the till.
“Oh I couldn’t possibly, Mr. Langham!” Edith declines vehemently. “They are for your customers to promote your wife’s excellent baking skills. Have you sold many of Mrs. Langham’s Christmas cakes this year?”
“Quite a few as a matter of fact.” he announces proudly. “Certainly enough to have had her baking a few extra cakes in the last few months.” He smiles at Edith. “But at this late stage in the lead up to Christmas, no-one is going to want to buy one of her cakes now. Those slices will only go to the children who visit me with their parents, or go to waste as they dry out sitting there.” He goes on, “And since this will be the last time I see you before Christmas, Miss Watsford, consider it a Christmas present, and a small token of both mine, and my wife’s esteem.”
He picks up the square silver dish and holds it out to Edith.
“Well…” Edith acquiesces hesitantly.
“That’s my girl!” Mr. Langham’s eyes light up. “Take a slice for your Mum too. I’m sure it isn’t every day she gets the treat of a cake baked by someone other than her.”
“Indeed no, Mr. Langham. She taught me how to bake, but even I don’t dare serve her one of my cakes. She’s a seasoned baker is my Mum.”
“Well, so is Mrs. Langham, Miss Watsford.” He smiles broadly. “I’ll just wrap them up in some brown paper and twine. Merry Christmas Miss Watsford.”
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Langham.” Edith answers happily.
*Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
**A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
***One of the most famous Christmas decorations that people love to use at Christmas is tinsel. You might think that using it is an old tradition and that people in Britain have been adorning their houses with tinsel for a very long time. However that is not actually true. Tinsel is in fact believed to be quite a modern tradition. Whilst the idea of tinsel dates back to Germany in 1610 when wealthy people used real strands of silver to adorn their Christmas trees (also a German invention). Silver was very expensive though, so being able to do this was a sign that you were wealthy. Even though silver looked beautiful and sparkly to begin with, it tarnished quite quickly, meaning it would lose its lovely, bright appearance. Therefore it was swapped for other materials like copper and tin. These metals were also cheaper, so it meant that more people could use them. However, when the Great War started in 1914, metals like copper were needed for the war. Because of this, they couldn't be used for Christmas decorations as much, so a substitute was needed. It was swapped for aluminium, but this was a fire hazard, so it was switched for lead, but that turned out to be poisonous.
****Regardless of where the butchers shop was, whether a suburban or up-market shop or a small concern in a village, the standard practice was to dust the wooden floorboards of the shop behind the counter where the butchering was done with sawdust. The idea was that the sawdust would sop up any spilled blood or dropped offcuts of meat that was easy to sweep away and helped prevent slips.
*****A reticule also known as a ridicule or indispensable, was a type of small handbag or purse, typically having a drawstring and decorated with embroidery or beading, similar to a modern evening bag, used mainly from 1795 to before the Great War.
This smart and stylish upper-class Edwardian butchers is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The dressed turkey on the counter and the stuffed pig’s head and trays of cuts of meat inside the counter come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The joints of meat in the background, on the bench, in the meat safe and hanging from hooks above it also come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.
The cranberry glass footed platter on the counter is made of real, finely spun glass, and comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The beautifully decorated Christmas cake atop it is a 1:12 artisan miniature which also comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures. The slices of fruitcake in front of it on the silver plate is a 1:12 artisan miniature I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom.
To the left of the photo is a food safe. In the days before refrigeration, or when refrigeration was expensive, perishable foods such as meat, butter, milk and eggs were kept in a food safe. Winter was easier than summer to keep food fresh and butter coolers and shallow bowls of cold water were early ways to keep things like milk and butter cool. A food safe was a wooden cupboard with doors and sides open to the air apart from a covering of fine galvinised wire mesh. This allowed the air to circulate while keeping insects out. There was usually an upper and a lower compartment, normally lined with what was known as American cloth, a fabric with a glazed or varnished wipe-clean surface. Refrigerators, like washing machines were American inventions and were not commonplace in even wealthy upper-class households until well after the Second World War.
The shiny metal cash register comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The red and black painted scales and weights, I have had since I was a teenager.
Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. The black umbrella came from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
The advertising signs in the background come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom.
DRS have been very generous over the years providing many visitors to the Mid Norfolk Railway for their diesel galas, and 2022 was no exception, with 57312 featuring on the Saturday and Sunday. The GM loco arrived late on Friday evening, initially having been stopped at Colchester with a governor problem, and then getting stuck behind at Greater Anglia service at Diss which had hit a pheasant. Wearing plain blue having had the Rail Operations Group vinyls removed after a period of hire, 57312 is pictured at Wymondham Abbey with the 12:00 from Dereham, double heading with resident D1933 Aldeburgh Festival.
Leaving Deal and driving out into the countryside, I see the octagonal shingled tower of Worth, and winder if it was open.
I drive down the one of the two roads into the village, they meet at the pond, the same corner which the church sits.
Jools went to check if it is open, and I am rewarded with a thumbs up from over the wall of the churchyard.
A lady is on duty all day, armed with a book, newspaper and CD player, I tank her generously as her dedication and of people like her, make ride and stride and heritage weekend possible.
Despite wanting to get back insode for nearly a decoade, truth is, once inside there isn't too much I missed, just the detail, really.
Some fine Victorian tiles, some with a round camel motif, can't say I've see that before, if I'm honest.
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WORD.
WRITTEN formerly Worthe, is the next parish eastward from Woodnesborough, which latter is the original Saxon name, the letter d in that language being stricken through, making it the same sound as th. (fn. 1)
There are three boroughs in this parish, viz. Felderland, Word-street, and Hackling; the borsholders for the two former of which are appointed at Eastrycourt, being within the jurisdiction of that manor; for the latter at Adisham, which manor claims over a part of this borough.
THE PARISH OF WORD lies very flat and low, and is very unhealthy; it is in shape very long and narrow, being near three miles from east to west, and not more than one mile across the other way. The village called Word-street, containing twenty-nine houses, having the church close to it, is situated nearly in the middle of the parish; at the southern boundary of which, is the hamlet of Hackling, containing five houses, the principal estate in which, called Hackling farm, belongs to Mrs. Eleanor Dare, of Felderland. At the western extremity of the parish is the borough and hamlet of Felderland, or Fenderland, partly in Word, and partly in Eastry, formerly esteemed a manor, the property of the Manwoods, afterwards of the Harveys, of Combe, and now belonging to the right hon. PeterLewis-Francis, earl Cowper; adjoining to which, in the same borough, is the farm of Upton, situated about a quarter of a mile westward of the church, the estate of which likewise belongs to earl Cowper.
At a small distance further the marshes begin, where there is a parcel of land called Worth, or Worde Minnis, and belongs to the archbishop, the present lessee being Mr. Thomas Rammel, of Eastry. Here are two streams, called the south and north streams, which direct their course through these marshes northwestward towards Sandwich; the latter of these was formerly the famous water of Gestling, through which the sea once flowed, and was noted much for being the water in which felons were punished by drowning, their bodies being carried by the current of it into the sea. The marshes here are called Lydden valley, (from the manor of Lydde-court, in this parish, below described, called formerly Hlyden) which is under the direction of the commissioners of sewers for the eastern parts of Kent; and to which the north stream is the common sewer. The marshes continue beyond this stream about half a mile northward, where the sand downs begin.
These sand downs are a long bank of sand, covered with green swerd of very unequal surface, and edge the sea shore for five miles and upwards from Peppernesse, which is the south east point of Sandwich bay, as far as Deal. They are about a quarter of a mile broad, except about the castle, which is, from its situation, called Sandowne castle, where they end with the beach, but a little way within the shore, about the middle of them is a cut, called the Old Haven, which runs slanting from the sea along these downs, near but not quite into the river Stour, about three quarters of a mile eastward below Sandwich. The castle of Sandowne is situated about half a mile from the north end of the town of Deal; it was built with Deal castle, and several others, by king Henry VIII. in the year 1539, for the desence of this coast, each being built with four round lunets of very thick stone arched work, with many large portholes; in the middle is a great round tower, with a large cistern for water on the top of it; underneath is an arched cavern, bomb proof; the whole is encompassed with a fossee, over which is a draw-bridge. It is under the government of the lord warden, who appoints the captain and other officers of it, by the act of 32d of king Henry VIII. This castle has lately had some little repair made to it, which, however, has made it but barely habitable.
This parish contains about fifty houses. The lands in it are of about the annual value of 3000l. The soil is very rich and fertile, and may properly be called the garden of this part of Kent, and is the most productive for wheat, of any perhaps within the county. There are no woodlands in it. There is no fair.
THE PRINCIPAL MANOR in this parish is that of LYDDE-COURT, written in Saxon,Hlyden, which was given by Offa, king of Mercia, in the year 774, to the church of Christ, in Canterbury, L. S. A. as the charter expresses it, meaning, with the same franchises and liberties that the manor of Adisham had before been given to it. After which, this manor continued with the priory of Christ-church, and king Edward I. in his 7th year, granted to it the liberty and franchise of wreck of the sea, apud le Lyde, which I suppose to be this manor; and king Edward II. in his 10th year, granted to the priory, free-warren within their demesne lands within it; (fn. 2) and in this state this manor continued till the dissolution of the priory in the 31st year of king Henry VIII. when it came into the king's hands, who settled it, among other premises, in his 33d year, on his new erected dean and chapter of Canterbury, by whom it was afterwards, in the 36th year of that reign, regranted to the king, who sold it that year to Stephen Motte, and John Wylde, gent. and they alienated it to Richard Southwell, who in the 1st year of king Edward VI. passed it away by sale to Thomas Rolfe, and he afterwards conveyed it to William Lovelace, serjeant-at-law, who died possessed of it in 1576, and his son Sir William Lovelace, of Bethersden, alienated it to Thomas Smith, esq. of Westenhanger, from whom it descended down to Philip, viscount Strangford, who sold it to Herbert Randolph, esq. and he passed away a part of it, called afterwards Lydde Court Ingrounds, with the manor or royalty of Lydde-court, in Word and Eastry, and lands belonging to it, in 1706, to Sir Henry Furnese, bart. of Waldershare, and his grandson of the same name, dying in 1735, under age and unmarried, his estates became vested in his three sisters, as the three daughters and coheirs of his father Sir Robert Furnese, in equal shares, in coparcenary. After which a partition of them having been agreed to, which was confirmed by an act next year, this manor, with the lands and appurtenances belonging to it, was allotted to Selina, the third daughter, (fn. 3) who afterwards married E. Dering, esq. and entitled him to this estate. He survived her and afterwards succeeded his father in the title of baronet, and continued in the possession of this estate till 1779, when he passed it away by sale to Mr. William Walker and Mr. James Cannon, of Deal, Who are the present owners of it.
The house, called the Downes house, is the courtlodge, but no court has been held for many years.
THE REMAINING, and by far the greatest partof this estate, called, for distinction,
LYDDE-COURT OUTGROUNDS, was likewise in the possession of the Smiths, of Westenhanger, and was demised by Thomas Smith, esq. of that place, to Roger Manwood, jurat of Sandwich, for a long term of years, at which time the outer downs were enwarrened for hares and rabbits.
From Thomas Smythe, esq. this estate descended down to Philip, viscount Strangford, who sold the whole of it, with the manor, royalties, &c. as has been mentioned before, to Herbert Randolph, esq. who passed a way the manor and part of the lands belonging to it, to Sir Henry Furnese, bart. and the other, being by far the greatest part of it, since called Lydde Court Outgrounds, to Richard Harvey, esq. of Eythorne, who in 1720 alienated it to Sir Robert Furnese, bart. before mentioned, in whose descendants it continued down to Catherine, his daughter and coheir, who carried it in marriage, first to Lewis, earl of Rockingham, and secondly to Francis, earl of Guildford, to whom on her death in 1766, she devised this estate. He died possessed of it in 1790, and his grandson, the right hon. George Augustus, earl of Guildford, is the present possessor of it. This estate comprehends all that tract of land, partly sandy, partly marshy, and the whole nearly pasturage, lying on the south side of Sandwich haven, bounded on the east by the sea shore, and on the west by the ditch, along which the footway to Deal leads, and which is the eastern boundary of Lydde court Inngrounds.
In the year 1565, there was a suit in the star chamber, respecting a road from Sandowne gate and Sandwich, to the castle in the Downes, which was referred to the archbishop and Sir Richard Sackville; who awarded, that there should be a highway sixteen feet broad over Lyd-court grounds.
SANDOWNE, so called from the sand downs over which it principally extends, is a manor, which lies partly in this parish, and partly in that of St. Clement's, in Sandwich, within the jurisdiction of which corporation the latter part of it is. This manor was antiently the estate of the Perots, who held the same, as the private deeds of this name and family shew, as high as the reign of king Henry III. Thomas de Perot died possessed of it in the 4th year of that reign, at which time he had those privileges and franchises, the same as other manors of that time; Henry Perot, the last of this name, at the beginning of king Edward III.'s reign, was succeeded by John de Sandhurst, who left an only daughter and heir Christian, who married William de Langley. (fn. 4) After which it continued in his descendants till it passed to the Peytons, and thence in like manner as Knolton above described, by sale to the Narboroughs, and afterwards by marriage to Sir Thomas D'Aeth, bart whose grandson Sir Narborough D's Aeth, bart. now of Knolton, is the present owner of it. A court baron is held for this manor.
There are no parochial charities.The poor constantly relieved are about twenty-five, casually as many.
THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanryof Sandwich.
¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, is a small mean building, having a low pointed wooden turret at the west end, in which are two bells. The church consists of a nave, two isles, and a chancel, the north isle extending only about halfway towards the west end. In the south wall of the chancel is an arched tomb, on which probably was once the figure of some person, who was the founder, or at least a good benefactor towards the building. In the south isle are several gravestones for the Philpotts, of this parish; and an altar monument for Mr. Ralph Philpott, obt. 1704.
In the church-yard are altar tombs to the memories of the same family of Philpott.
The church of Word, or Worth, has ever been esteemed as a chapel to the mother church of Eastry, and continues so at this time, being accounted as a part of the same appropriation, a further account of which may be seen in the description of that church before. The vicar of Eastry is inducted to the vicarage of the church of Eastry, with the chapels of Shrinkling and Word annexed to it.
It is included with the church of Eastry in the valuation of it in the king's books. In 1578 here were communicants one hundred and forty-four, in 1644 only one hundred and fourteen.
The rectorial or great tithes of this parish, as part of the rectory of Eastry, were demised on a beneficial lease, to the late countess dowager of Guildford, whose younger children are now entitled to the present interest in this lease.
The lessee of the parsonage is bound to repair the chancel of this church.
Divided reverse. Letter generously translated by xiphophilos authored on 20th May 1916 and addressed to a Herr Johann Halder in Wengen (Allgäu).
Infanterist Josef Holzer advises his cousin he is in positions in the mountains (Upper Alsace) and that he is faring well. The 6.Bavarian Landwehr Division was rated as fourth class, it was only used in the calmest sectors of the front.
______________________________________________
Notes:
Name: Josef Holzer
Geburtsdatum: 29. Mai 1876
Geburts-ort: Grund Gem Großholzhausen O A Wangen Württemberg
Truppengattung: Infanterie
Formation: Ersatztruppenteile der Landwehr-Infanterie-Regimenter
Truppenteil: bayer. Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment No. 12 Ersatz-Bataillon
b. Landwehr-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 12
Aufgestellt in Neu-Ulm (R.Stb., I., II.) und Neuburg/Donau (III.)
Unterstellung:2. gem. L.Brig.
Kommandeur:Oberstleutnant Frhr. v. Bouteville (Unteroffizierschule
Fürstenfeldbruck)
I.:Major z. D. Streling (Truppenübungsplatz
Hammelburg)
II.:Major a. D. Bolte, Johann
III.:Major a. D. Schleicher
Verluste:7 Offz., ca. 350 Uffz. und Mannschaften.
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Annapurna trekking region of Nepal enjoy with magnificent view close to highest and impressive mountain range in the world. Day exploration in Pokhara and morning morning flight to Jomsom or drive to Besishisahar from Kathmandu begin of trek. High destination, Muktinath 3800m and in generally highest point of whole Annapurna is 5416m. Thorangla la is situated in Buddhist Monastery, an eternal flame, and Hindus Vishnu Tempe of Juwala Mai making it a pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Buddhists and Muktinath is on the way down from popular trekking it call Thorang la pass which is incredible view in Annapurna region. Whenever possible we will arrive at lodging mid-afternoon, which should leave plenty time for explore the local villages, enjoy the hot springs at Tatopani, continue to Ghorepani where there is forever the possibility of sunrise hike to Poon Hill for spectacular views of Dhaulagiri, Fishtail, Nilgiri and the Annapurna Himalaya range. Continue on to Birethanti finally between with the Baglung road where we will catch cab to Pokhara, next day drive or fly to Kathmandu.
region, although fairly effortless compare to some of other trek, takes you high along trails to Tengboche monastery Everest Solu Khumbu is the district south and west of Mount Everest. It is inhabited by sherpa, cultural group that has achieve fame because of the develop of its men on climbing expeditions. Khumbu is the name of the northern half of this region above Namche, includes highest mountain (Mt. Everest 8848m.) in the world. Khumbu is in part of Sagarmatha National Park. This is a short trek but very scenic trek offers really superb view of the world's highest peaks, including Mt. Everest, Mt. Lhotse, Mt. Thamserku, Mt. Amadablam and other many snowy peaks. Fly from Kathmandu to Lukla it is in the Khumbu region and trek up to Namche Bazzar, Tyangboche and into the Khumjung village, a very nice settlement of Sherpas people. This trek introduction to Everest and Sherpa culture with great mountain views, a very popular destination for first time trekkers in Nepal. Justifiably well-known world uppermost mountain (8848m.) and also for its Sherpa villages and monasteries. Few days trek from Lukla on the highland, takes you to the entry to Sagarmatha National Park and town of Namche Bazaar is entrance of Everest Trek. Environment of the towering Himalayas is a very delicate eco-system that is effortlessly put out of balance.
Langtang trekking region mixture of three beautiful trek taking us straight into some of the wildest and most pretty areas of Nepal. Starting from the lovely hill town of Syabrubensi our trek winds during gorgeous rhododendron and conifer forests throughout the Langtang National Park on the way to the higher slopes. Leads up to the high alpine yak pastures, glaciers and moraines around Kyanging. Along this route you will have an chance to cross the Ganja La Pass if possible from Langtang Valley. Trail enters the rhododendron (National flower of Nepal) forest and climbs up to alpine yak pastures at Ngegang (4404m). From Ngegang we make a climb of Ganja La Pass (5122m). We start southwest, sliding past Gekye Gompa to reach Tarkeghyang otherwise we take a detour and another unique features of trekking past, the holy lakes of Gosainkund (4300 m.) cross into Helambu via Laurebina to Ghopte (3430 m) and further to Trakegyang. Northern parts of the area mostly fall within the boundaries of Langtang National park.
Peak Climbing in Nepal is great view of Himalayas and most various geological regions in asia. Climbing of peaks in Nepal is restricted under the rules of Nepal Mountaineering Association. Details information and application for climbing permits are available through Acute Trekking. First peak climbing in Nepal by Tenzing Norgey Sherpa and Sir Edmund Hilary on May 29, 1953 to Mt. Everest. Trekking Agency in Nepal necessary member from Nepal Mountaineering Association. Our agency will arrange equipment, guides, high altitude porters, food and all necessary gears for climbing in Nepal. Although for some peaks, you need to contribute additional time, exertion owing to improved elevation and complexity. Climbing peaks is next step beyond simply trekking and basic mountaineering course over snow line with ice axe, crampons, ropes etc under administration and coaching from climbing guide, who have substantial mountaineering knowledge and for your climbing in mountain.
Everest Base Camp Trek well noon its spectacular mountain peaks and the devotion and openness of its inhabitants, the Everest region is one of the most popular destination for tourists in Nepal. While numerous of the routes through the mountains are difficult, there are plenty places to rest and enjoy a meal along the way. Additionally, don't worry about receiving lost. Just ask a local the way to the next village on your route, and they will direct you. Most Sherpas under the age of fifty can at least understand basic English, and many speak it fluently.
Annapurna Base Camp Trek is the major peaks of the western portion of the great Annapurna Himalaya, Annapurna South, Fang, Annapurna, Ganagapurna, Annapurna 3 and Machhapuchhare and including Annapurna first 8091 meters are arranged almost exactly in a circle about 10 miles in diameter with a deep glacier enclosed field at the center. From this glacier basin, known as the Annapurna base camp trek (Annapurna sanctuary trek), the Modi Khola way south in a narrow ravine fully 12 thousand ft. deep. Further south, the ravine opens up into a wide and fruitful valley, the domain of the Gurungs. The center and upper portions of Modi Khola offer some of the best short routes for trekking in Nepal and the valley is situated so that these treks can be easily joint with treks into the Kali Gandaki (Kali Gandaki is name of the river in Nepal) region to the west.
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Divided reverse. Brief letter generously translated by xiphophilos, the author notes this photograph is a memento of the time spent in positions in the Vosges.
Unteroffizier Theodor Ruge from the Garde-Schützen-Bataillon standing in front of the entrance to what appears to be a sturdy blockhaus constructed around a natural rock formation somewhere on the Hartmannswillerkopf.
The Garde-Schützen-Bataillon was one of the first formations deployed to the western front, where it participated in the attacks on Belgium and northern France. After fighting near the Aire on 13th September 1914 the battalion suffered significant losses with only 213 men, out of an original 1,250 remaining fit for action.
My goal this week was to try and improve upon my "winter" photo from last week. I wanted to try doing this by using the suggestions and helpful hints that were so generously shared with me last week. We had three days of nearly continuous snow and a couple cloudy days but I did manage to get out several times to get some photos taken. Onyx was very cooperative and patient so it definitely made it easier for me to make changes, try different settings, and take a multitude of photos. If I had been able to go down into the field to use the angle of the sun to my advantage it would have been much easier but the limitations of my wheelchair made it so this wasn't possible. As it was, the sun was either behind Onyx or beside her so it made limiting the shadows on her face a bit challenging. I guess I'll just need to get a 4-wheel drive wheelchair :)
There was a photo that I took earlier this week that is probably a bit better of Onyx but it was taken on a cloudy day and I really wanted to get one on a sunny day. There was also a head shot of her that I loved and could have easily used as my submission but I made myself stay with my goal. Both are in my photostream if you want to see them. As a last attempt at getting a photo to use, since I wasn't happy with my previous sunny day ones from the past couple days, I went outside with Onyx this afternoon to shoot a few more. This was the best of the ones I got but am sure there are probably still more ways for improvement.
Again, constructive criticism and helpful hints are gratefully accepted. I joined this group in hopes of improving my very beginner photography skills and to challenge myself to try some photos that were outside of my comfort zone. In the past couple weeks I have learned more about my camera and photography than I had in the whole previous year of owning my camera but I still have LOTS more to learn :) I think it will be a work in progress for a very long time but also lots of fun for both me and Onyx :) Thanks for the generous sharing of information - it has been very helpful and greatly appreciated.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are following Lettice’s maid, Edith, who together with her beau, local grocery delivery boy Frank Leadbetter, have wended their way north-east from Cavendish Mews, through neighbouring Soho to the Lyons Corner House* on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. As always, the flagship restaurant on the first floor is a hive of activity with all the white linen covered tables occupied by Londoners indulging in the treat of a Lyon’s luncheon or early afternoon tea. Between the tightly packed tables, the Lyons waitresses, known as Nippies**, live up to their name and nip in and out, showing diners to empty tables, taking orders, placing food on tables and clearing and resetting them after diners have left. The cavernous space with its fashionable Art Deco wallpapers and light fixtures and dark Queen Anne English style furnishing is alive with colour, movement and the burbling noises of hundreds of chattering voices, the sound of cutlery against crockery and the clink of crockery and glassware fills the air brightly.
Amidst all the comings and goings, Edith and Frank wait patiently in a small queue of people waiting to be seated at the next available table, lining up in front of a glass top and fronted case full of delicious cakes. Frank reaches around a woman standing in front of them in a navy blue dress with red piping and a red cloche and snatches a golden yellow menu upon which the name of the restaurant is written in elegant cursive script. He proffers one to Edith, but she shakes her head shallowly at him.
“You’ve brought me here so many times, Frank, I practically know the Lyons menu by heart, Frank.”
Frank’s face falls. “You don’t mind coming here again, do you Edith?” he asks gingerly, almost apologetically.
“Oh Frank!” Edith laughs good naturedly. She tightens her grip comfortingly around his arm as she stands beside him with it looped through his. “Of course I don’t mind? Why should I mind? I love coming here. This is far grander than any other tea shop around here, and the food is delicious.”
“Well so long as you don’t think it’s dull and predicable, Edith.”
“How could anything be dull and predictable with you involved in it, Frank?”
Frank blushes at his sweetheart’s compliment. “Well it’s just that we seem to have fallen into rather a routine, going to the Premier in East Ham*** every few weeks, before coming here for tea.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with that, Frank. You know I love going to the pictures, and a slap-up tea from here is nothing to sneeze at.”
“Well, so long as you don’t mind, Edith.”
“Frank Leadbetter, I don’t mind anything that I do with you.” Edith squeezes his arm again. “Anyway, it isn’t like we haven’t done other things on our days off as well between our visits here. We go walking in Hyde and Regent’s Parks and Kensington Gardens, and we do go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais****, so it’s not always the same.”
“And you’ve been a good sport, coming with me to the National Portrait Gallery.” Frank adds with a happy smile.
“Oh, I loved gong there, Frank!” enthuses Edith. “Like I told you, I never knew that there were galleries of art that were open to then public. If I had, I might have gone sooner.” She smiles with satisfaction. “But then again, if I had known about it, I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of you introducing me to it. I’m looking forward to us going back again one day.”
“But I suspect you enjoy the pictures more than the National Gallery.” Frank chuckles knowingly.
“Well,” Edith feels a flush fill her cheeks with red. “It is true that I perhaps feel a bit more comfortable at the pictures than the gallery, Frank, but,” She clarifies. “That’s only because my parents never took me to the gallery when I was growing up, like your grandparents did with you.”
“Whereas your parents took you to the pictures.”
“Oh yes Frank!” Edith sighs. “It was a cheap bit of escapism from the everyday for the whole family: Mum, Dad, Bert and me.” Her voice grows wistful as she remembers. “I used to look forward to going to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon with Mum and Dad and Bert. We’d walk into the entrance of the Picture Coliseum***** out of the boring light of day and into the magic darkness that existed all day there. I grew to love the sound of the flick and whir of the protector, knowing as I sat in my red leather seat in the balcony that I was about to be transported to anywhere in the world or to any point in time. Dad and Mum still love going there on the odd occasion to see a comedy. The pictures became even more important to me as a teenager after I left home and went into service for nasty old Widow Hounslow. She never gave me anything to be happy about in that cold house of hers as I skivvied for her in my first job, day in and day out, from sunrise to sunset, so the escape to a world of romance filled with glamorous people where there was no hard work and no dirty dishes or floors to scrub became a precious light in my life.”
“Alright, you’ve convinced me.” Frank chuckles.
“You know Frank, because I thought everyone went to the pictures, I’ve never actually asked you whether you enjoy going to them. Perhaps with your grandparents taking you to the gallery, you might not like it. Do you Frank?”
“Oh yes I do, Edith,” Frank assures his sweetheart. “I’m happy if you are happy, but even before I met you, I used to go to the pictures. Whilst I might not be as enamoured with the glamour and romance of moving picture stars like Wanetta Ward like you are, I do like historical dramas and adaptations of some of the books I’ve read.”
“Does that mean you didn’t enjoy ‘A Woman of Paris’******?” Edith asks with concern.
Frank turns away from his sweetheart and rests his arms on the glass topped counter, and gazes through it at the cakes on display below. “Oh, yes I did, Edith.” he mutters in a low voice in reply.
Edith hooks her black umbrella over the raised edge of the cabinet and deposits her green handbag on its surface and sidles up alongside Frank. “It doesn’t sound like you did, Frank.” she refutes him quietly.
“No, I really did, Edith.” he replies a little sadly. “Edna Purviance******* is so beautiful. I can well understand your attraction to the glamour of the moving pictures and their stars.”
“But something tells me that you didn’t like the film.” Edith presses, nudging Frank gently. “What was it?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Edith.” Frank brushes her question off breezily as he turns his head slight away from her so she cannot see it.
“Well, it must be something. I chose the film, so I shall feel awful if you didn’t want to see it.” Edith tries to catch his eye by ducking her head, but fails. “You should have said something, Frank.”
A silence envelops them momentarily, at odds to all the gay noise and chatter of the Corner House around them. At length Frank turns back to Edith, and she can see by the glaze and glint of unshed tears in his kind, but saddened eyes, that this is why he turned away. “I didn’t mind seeing ‘A Woman in Paris’, Edith. Honestly, I didn’t.” He holds up his hands. “Like you are with me, I’m happy to go anywhere or do anything with you.”
“Then what is it, Frank?” Edith says with a concerned look on her face. “Please, you must trust me enough to tell me.”
Frank reaches out his left hand and wraps it loving around her smaller right hand as it sits on the surface of the counter, next to her handbag. “Of course I trust you Edith. I’ve never trusted a girl before, the way I trust you.” He releases her hand and runs his left index finger down her cheek and along her jaw lovingly. “You’re so good and kind. Goodness knows what you see in me, but whatever it is, Edith, I’m so glad you do.”
“What’s gotten into you, Frank?” she replies in consternation. “What was it about the film that has upset you so much and given you such doubts?”
The awkward silence falls between the two of them again as Edith waits for Frank to formulate a reply. His eyes flit between the shiny brass cash register, the potted aspidistra standing in a white jardinière on a tall plant stand, the Art Deco wallpaper and Lyons posters on the walls and the cakes atop the counter. He looks anywhere except into his sweetheart’s anxious face.
“It was the relationship between Jean’s mother and Marie in the film, Edith.” he says at length.
“What of it, Frank?”
“It reminded me of the relationship between your mum and me, Edith.”
“What?” Edith queries, not understanding.
“Well,” Frank elucidates. “Jean’s mum didn’t like Marie and refused to accept her.”
“I keep telling you, Frank,” Edith reassures her beau, looking him earnestly in the face. “Mum doesn’t dislike you. She just struggles with some of your more,” She nudges him again, giving him a consoling, and cheeky smile. “Progressive ideas. Anyway, Jean’s mum and Marie made up at the end of the film and went off to set up an orphanage in the countryside.”
“Are you suggesting that your mum and I might do the same?” Frank laughs a little sadly, trying to make light of the moment.
“That’s better, Frank.” Edith encourages, seeing him smile.
Frank looks back down again at all the cakes on display in the glass fronted cabinet. Cakes covered in thick white layers of royal icing like tablecloths jostle for space with gaily decorated special occasion cakes covered in gooey glazed fruit and biscuit crumbs. Ornate garlands of icing sugar flowers and beautifully arranged slices of strawberries indicate neatly where the cakes should be sliced, so that everyone gets the same portion when served to the table. Frank even notices a pink blancmange rabbit sitting on a plate with a blue and white edge.
“I love coming here because there are so many decadent cakes here.” Frank admits, changing the subject delicately, but definitely. “It reminds me of when my Gran was younger. She used to bake the most wonderful cakes and pies.”
“Oh, Mum loves baking cakes, pies and puddings too.” Edith pipes up happily. “She’s especially proud of her cherry cobbler which she serves hot in winter with hot custard, and cold in summer with clotted cream.”
“Being Scottish, Gran always loved making Dundee Cake********. She used to spend ages arranging scorched almonds in pretty patterns across the top.”
“That sounds very decadent, Frank.” Edith observes.
“Oh it was, Edith!” Frank agrees. “Mind you, I don’t think it would have taken half as long if she hadn’t been continually keeping my fingers out of the bowl of the decorating almonds and telling me that the cake ‘would be baked when it is done, and no sooner’.”
Edith chuckles as Frank impersonates his grandmother’s thick Scottish accent as he quotes her.
“Mum always made the prettiest cupcakes for Bert’s and my birthdays.” Edith points to the small glass display plate of cupcakes daintily sprinkled with colourful sugar balls and topped with marzipan flowers and rabbits sitting on the counter.
“I bet you they were just as lovely as those are, Edith.”
“Oh, better Frank,” she assures him. “Because they were made with love, and Mum is a very proud cook.”
“I did notice that when I came for Sunday roast lunch.”
Edith continues to look at the cakes on display on stands on the counter’s surface, some beneath glass cloches and others left in the open air, an idea forming in her mind, formulating as she gazes at the dollops of cream and glacé cherries atop a chocolate cake, oozing cream decadently from between its slices.
“That’s it Frank!” she gasps.
“What is, Edith?”
“That’s the solution to your woes about Mum, Frank.” She snatches up her bag and umbrella from the counter.
Frank doesn’t understand so he asks yet again, “What is, Edith?”
Edith rests her elbow on the glass topped counter as she looks Frank squarely in the face. “Who is your greatest advocate, Frank? Who always speaks well of you in front of others.”
“Well, you do, Edith.” He gesticulates towards her.
“Yes, I know that,” she admits. “But besides me, who else always says the nicest things about you?”
“Well Gran does.” Frank says without a moment’s hesitation.
“Exactly Frank!” Edith smiles. “You need someone other than me in your corner, telling Mum what a wonderful catch you are. And that someone is your Gran, Frank!” Her blue eyes glitter with hope and excitement. “See, now that you’ve met Mum and Dad, and I’ve met your Gran, it’s time that they met. I bet Mum and your Gran would bond over cake baking and cooking, and of course Mum would believe anything a wise Scottish woman who can bake a Dundee Cake would say.”
“And everything she would say would be about me!” Frank exclaims. “Edith! You’re a genius!”
Frank cannot help himself as he reaches out and grasps Edith around the waist, lifting her up and spinning her around in unbridled joy, causing her to squeal, and for the people waiting in line around them to chuckle and smile indulgently at the pair of young lovers before them.
“Oh, put me down Frank!” squeaks Edith. “Let’s not make a scene.”
Reluctantly he lowers his sweetheart to the ground and releases her from his clutches.
“Now, all we need to do is talk with Mum and Dad, and your Gran, and settle on a date.” Edith says with ethusiasm.
“We’ll talk about it over tea and cake, shall we, Edith?” Frank asks with an excited lilt in his voice.
“Ahem.” A female voice clearing her throat politely interrupts Edith and Frank’s conversation. Turning, they find that whilst they have been talking, they have reached the front of the queue of people waiting for a table, and before them stands a bright faced Nippie with a starched cap with a red ‘L’ embroidered in the centre atop a mop of carefully coiffed and pinned curls, dressed in a black alpaca dress with a double row of pearl buttons and lace apron. “A table for two, is it?”
*J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.
**The name 'Nippies' was adopted for the Lyons waitresses after a competition to rename them from the old fashioned 'Gladys' moniker - rejected suggestions included ‘Sybil-at-your-service’, ‘Miss Nimble’, Miss Natty’ and 'Speedwell'. The waitresses each wore a starched cap with a red ‘L’ embroidered in the centre and a black alpaca dress with a double row of pearl buttons.
***The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.
****The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.
*****Located in the west London inner city district of Harlesden. The Coliseum opened in 1912 as the Picture Theatre. In 1915 it was renamed the Picture Coliseum. It was operated throughout its cinema life as an independent picture theatre. Seating was provided in stalls and balcony levels. The Coliseum closed in December 1975 for regular films and went over to screening adult porn films. It then screened kung-fu movies and even hosted a concert by punk rock group The Clash in March 1977. It finally closed for good as a picture theatre in the mid-1980’s and was boarded up and neglected for the next decade. It was renovated and converted into a pub operated by the J.D. Weatherspoon chain, opening in March 1993. Known as ‘The Coliseum’ it retains many features of its cinematic past. There is even cinema memorabilia on display. There is a huge painted mural of Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon in “The Cowboy and the Lady” where the screen used to be. Recently J.D. Weatherspoon relinquished the building and it is now operated as an independent bar renamed ‘The Misty Moon’. By 2017 it had been taken over by the Antic pub chain and renamed the ‘Harlesden Picture Palace’.
******’A Woman of Paris’ is a feature-length American silent film that debuted in 1923. The film, an atypical drama film for its creator, was written, directed, produced and later scored by Charlie Chaplin. The plot revolves around Marie St. Clair (Edna Purviance) and her beau, aspiring artist Jean Millet (Carl Miller) who plan to flee life in provincial France to get married. However when plans go awry, Marie goes to Paris alone where she becomes the mistress of a wealthy businessman, Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou). Reacquainting herself with Jean after a chance encounter in Paris a year later, Marie and Jean recommence their love affair. When Jean proposes to Marie, his mother tries to intervene and Marie returns to Pierre. Jean takes a gun to the restaurant where Marie and Pierre are dining, but ends up fatally shooting himself in the foyer after being evicted from the restaurant. Marie and Jean’s mother reconcile and return to the French countryside, where they open a home for orphans in a country cottage. At the end of the film, Marie rides down a road in a horse drawn cart and is passed by a chauffer driven automobile in which Pierre rides with friends. Pierre's companion asks him what had happened to Marie after the night at the restaurant. Pierre replies that he does not know. The automobile and the horse-drawn wagon pass each other, heading in opposite directions.
*******Edna Purviance (1895 – 1958) was an American actress of the silent film era. She was the leading lady in many of Charlie Chaplin's early films and in a span of eight years, she appeared in over thirty films with him and remained on his payroll even after she retired from acting, receiving a small monthly salary from Chaplin's film company until she got married, and the payments resumed after her husband's death. Her last credited appearance in a Chaplin film, ‘A Woman of Paris’, was also her first leading role. The film was not a success and effectively ended Purviance's career. She died of throat cancer in 1958.
********Dundee Cake is a traditional Scottish fruit cake that has gained worldwide fame since its first appearance over three hundred and fifty years ago. The Dundee Cake is one of Scotland's most famous cakes and, it is said, was liked by the Queen at tea-time. The story goes that Mary Queen of Scots didn’t like cherries, so a fruit cake was made and decorated with the distinctive almond decoration that has now become very familiar to those of us in the know. A more likely story is that the Dundee Cake recipe was created in the 1700s, later to be mass-produced by the Marmalade company Keiller’s Marmalade.
An afternoon tea made up with sweet cakes like this would be enough to please anyone, but I suspect that even if you ate everything you can see here in and on this display case, you would still come away hungry. This is because they, like everything in this scene are 1:12 size miniatures from my miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau:
The sweet cupcakes on the glass cake stand have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The pink blancmange rabbit on the bottom shelf of the display cabinet in the front of the right-hand side of the case was made by Polly’s Pantry Miniatures in America. All the other cakes came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The glass and metal cake stands and the glass cloche came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The glass cake stands are hand blown artisan pieces. The shiny brass cash register also comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.
The J. Lyons & Co. Ltd. tariff is a copy of a 1920s example that I made myself by reducing it in size and printing it.
Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
The black umbrella came from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
The wood and glass display cabinet I obtained from a seller of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
The storage shelves in the background behind the counter come from Babette’s Miniatures, who have been making miniature dolls’ furnishings since the late Eighteenth Century. The plates, milk jug, silver teapots, coffee pots and trays on it all come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Miniatures.
The aspidistra in the white planter and the wooden plant stand itself also come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House shop, as does the 1920s Lyons’ Tea sign you can see on the wall.
The Art Deco pattern on the wall behind the counter I created myself after looking at many photos of different Lyons Corner House interiors photos. Whilst not an exact match for what was there in real life, it is within the spirit of the detailing found in the different restaurants.
Lochend House, the original home of Charles James Fox Campbell, after whom Campbelltown is named. Charles was a Justice of the Peace and Worshipful Master of his Lodge. In 1851 he stood unsuccessfully for the Legislative Council. He was a generous supporter of people in need.
In 1868 the citizens along the Paradise bridge road and adjoining areas petitioned the Governor to name the new council Campbelltown in his honour.
Charles Campbell was born 1807 in Kingsburgh House on the Isle of Skye into a prominent family, the Campbells of Melford, Argyllshire.
The Campbell family was related to Elizabeth Campbell, wife of Governor Macquarie of New South Wales, thought to be a factor influencing the family’s move to Australia.
Charles came to New South Wales with his parents and siblings in 1821 in the ship ‘Lusitania’, chartered by his father and brother-in-law. His father was given a large grant of land near Parramatta.
Aged 16 Charles was orphaned and from then devoted himself to pastoral pursuits.
Campbell came to South Australia in 1838, droving the first herd of cattle overland from New South Wales, with an expedition led by Joseph Hawdon. The expedition also included Evelyn Sturt, brother of Captain Charles Sturt the explorer and founder of South Australia. In 1842 he bought land on the banks of the River Torrens and shortly after built this house. He sought advice from friend George Strickland Kingston, the State’s first architect, in the design of the house. Kingston also designed Ayers House, parts of Government House, the Adelaide Gaol, and the first monument to Colonel Light in Light Square, Adelaide.
In those days, sheep and cattle grazed on the River Torrens flat. With permanent water, and rich soil, the area was soon settled by market gardens and fruit growers.
Lochend was built of river stone and included a stucco porch, hall and living room with a finely moulded ceiling. The roof was of wooden shingles and Campbell later added three bedrooms and a cellar.
About 1844, just eight years after South Australia was settled by Europeans, Campbell built a two roomed house, the start of Lochend. Around the house he planted four acres of vegetables and fruit gardens and used the remaining 156 acres for grazing or growing crops. In 1846 he sold most of this land, leaving only 60 acres around Lochend. This was the beginning of Campbell Town.
In 1850 Campbell married Martha Levi, the daughter of a pastoral family. Between May 1851 and June 1857 they had four sons. At the time, living at Lochend was like living in the bush. He kept a pack of staghounds at Lochend for hunting wild dogs and kangaroos in the nearby hills.
In 1852, the Campbells leased the house to James Scott, a stockholder from the Darling River in New South Wales. By this time, the house had six rooms.
In 1858 Campbell moved to a new homestead on Nor West Bend Station, near Morgan on the River Murray. It was here, while opening a bottle of wine, that Campbell suffered a small cut to his hand, leading to his untimely death on 5 March 1859 from blood poisoning. He was aged 52 years. He was buried at Nor West Bend, and later reinterred in an above ground vault at West Terrace Cemetery.
Charles had sold Lochend to Scott in January 1858 for £2,600 and it stayed in his family until 1875. The Scott family enlarged the house. It had 11 rooms, a stable, coachhouse and cottage, all surrounded by vegetable and fruit gardens and 58 acres of crop land by 1875.
Lochend subsequently passed to the widowed Mrs Jessie (Scott) MacDonald.
Mrs MacDonald shifted to Glenelg in 1875 and the property passed to David Mundy, a retired sheep farmer who built the two storey ‘Lochiel Park’ just south east of Lochend. In 1898 Mundy sold Lochiel Park to his neighbour Jonah Hobbs who named his home Hobbs' House.
From 1898 to 1957 Lochend and Lochiel Park were owned or lived in by members of the Hobbs family, an extensive family of market gardeners, horticulturalists and fruit growers long connected to Campbelltown.
The Hobbs sold both houses to the Government in 1947 and Lochiel Park became a Reformatory for Boys. Lochend was used as the house for the grounds manager and his family.
In the early 1980’s ownership of Lochend was transferred to Campbelltown Council.
After negotiations concerning the building’s seriously deteriorating state, and advice from Heritage Architect Simon Weidenhofer, the restoration was underway.
Assistance was given by the Campbelltown Council, Campbelltown Historical Society, and Rostrevor/Campbelltown and Athelstone Kiwanis Clubs.
Lochend is included on South Australia’s Heritage list.
Ref: Campbelltown Historical Society, Lochend Story Boards and publications.
A generous crop of cone flowers and many others serves to attract birds, bees ,butterflies etc to our garden. It also harbours a healthy population of mosquitos this fairly wet summer.
Picture for the MacroMondays theme on Mar. 21st 2011: Generosity.
No matter how we treat her, the mother earth always treats us with generosity. Like the wild Taiwan raspberry grow along the roads no matter how much air pollution we cause. Recently I was so disturbed by the tragedy happened in Japan. When I saw this little fruit stands along an asphalt road, my heart is filled with admiration for earth's generosity.
~萬芳社區, 文山區, 台北
Wanfang Community, Taipei, Taiwan
- ISO 100, F5.6, 1/10 secs
- Canon 550D with EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens + 20mm extension tube
When we first arrived at the property belonging to the Cartwright family, west of Waiporous, Alberta, I noticed this fungus growing along the front doorstep of their cabin. What a great way to be welcomed : ) I won't attempt to give an ID. There are 6000 known species in Alberta, with probably another 6000 species unidentified.
Friends and I had such a great day the day before yesterday, 30 June 2018, travelling westward towards the mountains for a bio-blitz on the 40-acre land (south of Ghost River) belonging to such a delightful family. I hardly know where to begin - and I won't do so until I have had (late) breakfast and a mug of coffee.
Each of the adult brothers and sisters live elsewhere, but share this precious land and return whenever they want some good old nature therapy and family time. After spending a few hours strolling through their forest and exploring their wetland, I can completely understand why they love returning to this precious spot. Not only are all these siblings such friendly, welcoming people, the family has also generously placed this huge area into a trust, to make sure that it is forever left the way it is. "Property acquired by parents 50 years ago (1968?). An easement was placed on the land preventing any family member from disposing of their 'share', thus disallowing the fragmentation of this biologically rich area." Information from Gus Yaki.
Coffee and baked goodies were waiting for us on arrival - what a treat! Later in the walk, more coffee and goodies were waiting at a spot just before a long, wooden boardwalk. When I say boardwalk, I mean it was just one plank wide, with water and bog on either side. I do not have good balance and I immediately regretted attempting this, ha. Every single, tiny, slow step was taken with great care, I can assure you, and I was amazed that I didn't fall in.
Two of the younger members of the family have made a documentary about conservation in Southern Alberta. Clear-cutting of the forest is a big concern - we saw evidence of this on our drive to the Cartwright's property. This is one of two short films to be shown by CPAWS on 4 July at Cardell Theatre in Calgary. They will be followed by a panel discussion with local experts and conservationists. Tickets have to be reserved.
www.eventbrite.ca/e/documentary-double-feature-with-cpaws...
"In Alberta, public lands in the foothills are being clearcut at a rate faster than they can recover with little opportunity for public input or understanding. Forests, Fins & Footprints is a community-funded documentation of clearcutting in the Ghost Valley — a watershed located just upstream of Calgary, on the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
Wondering how to make a difference, we asked for answers from environmentalists, biologists, geologists, and people who live and work on the land. How does clearcutting affect an area's water, landscape, and wildlife, as well as the people living in that watershed? How will clearcut forestry impact the future? And how can we as a society move forward more thoughtfully?” Taken from the link below.
www.forestsfinsfootprints.com/
It is always puzzling to me how our Naturalist leader meets so many people who live on ranches or acreages. It was a very different story two days ago, when we learned that he had offered a free bio-blitz (mind you, our bio-blitzes are always free!) at a Silent Auction : ) This family had won this "prize", and we couldn't have asked for a more appreciative group of family members to offer our help to. As always, the landowners 'win' by being given a very detailed list of every plant, etc. that is growing on their land. We also 'win' because we get to meet so many great people and see so many places that we would otherwise never get the chance to see.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however, we have travelled twenty-five miles west of London into Berkshire to the picturesque town of Ascot, where the Ascot Racecourse is. The town, built up along meandering roads, is made up mostly of large red brick mansions nestled discreetly amidst well established manicured gardens behind trimmed hedges and closed gates. It is here that Lettice is visiting Mrs. Evelyn Hawarden, wife of fabric manufacturer Joseph Hawarden, who hopes to engage Lettice to redecorate ‘The Briars’, a red brick Georgian mansion in Ascot recently acquired by Mr. Hawarden, allowing he and his wife to relocate from Manchester to what they both consider to be a more suitable residence for their newly acquired social standing. Hawarden Fabrics have been embraced by the British public since first appearing on the market in 1919, for their quality and affordability, and have proved especially popular amidst the working classes who want colour and something better than what they have had in the post-war boom of optimism, including Lettice’s maid, Edith, who made her friend Hilda a new dance frock using some Hawarden Fabrics russet art silk*. This has raised the Hawarden’s social expectations.
Against her usual practices, Lettice forewent the initial meeting she would usually have had at Cavendish Mews with Mrs. Hawarden after the woman explained that she was simply too busy with her new house to come down to Mayfair, and implored Lettice to consider coming up to Ascot for the day, entreating her with a roast luncheon at the house. Upon arriving at ‘The Briars’, Lettice quickly had her attention drawn to Mrs. Hawarden’s overbearing nature and rather vulgar taste. ‘The Briars’ interiors are made up of the perfect blend of many generations of conscious consumption, culminating in an elegant country house style that others have paid Lettice and other interior designers to create. Yet Mrs. Hawarden seems determined to destroy all that: replacing hand painted Georgian wallpapers with bland oatmeal coloured hangings, disposing if beautiful old paintings in order to hang an expensive, yet uninspiring, modern art collection, and exchanging the soft lines of comfortable country house furnishings with the angular modernity that better suits a compact London flat like Cavendish Mews rather than a Georgian mansion like ‘The Briars’. Whenever Lettice suggested something to the contrary of Mrs. Hawarden, her voice was quickly drowned out by the Mancunian woman’s strident tones, or the loud yapping of her savage pet Pekinese, Yat-See. As she rode the train home to London through the rolling green countryside of Berkshire, Lettice sensed a growing unease as what felt like a boulder began to form in the very pit of her stomach. For the first time in her career as a society interior designer, she had a potential client with whom she was completely at odds with aesthetically. Now, as she takes the train again from Victoria Station to Ascot, that feeling of unease returns and Lettice isn’t quite sure how she is going to explain her difference in opinions and decline the commission of the insistent Mrs. Hawarden.
As like the first time she visited, Mrs. Hawarden’s chauffer, dressed in a smart grey uniform and cap, stood ready on the platform to escort her to ‘The Briars’. As the Worsley drove up the long and rutted driveway boarded by clipped yew hedges, Lettice’s feelings of unease only intensified. Her heart sank as the car pulled up before the lovely two-storey red brick Georgian mansion, for there beneath the portico over the front door stood Mrs. Hawarden in her ill-suited tweeds, clutching Yat-See who growled menacingly as Lettice was assisted to alight from the car by the chauffer.
Now we find ourselves in the dining room of ‘The Briars’, another lovely room with original Georgian wallpaper and fine furnishings that Mrs. Hawarden has plans for Lettice to redecorate in a more contemporary style. The Hawarden’s maid, Barbara, has set down a splendid roast luncheon before both ladies as they sit either side of the dining table which is set with the dinner service of the previous owner of ‘The Briars’, a widowed lady of gentility and refinement, and a large vase of roses, freshly cut from the garden outside by Mrs. Hawarden herself.
“I thought that since you enjoyed Cook’s roast so much last time, I’d have her serve it again.” enthuses Mrs. Hawarden. “And you like Cook’s roast too, don’t you Yat-See.” She addresses her red dioxide coloured Pekingese sitting in her lap lovingly, who in turn ignores his owner and stares fiercely at Lettice through his black button eyes and growls. “Yat-See! Don’t be such a naughty boy towards our guest, or you shan’t get any scraps from Mummy’s plate.”
Although Lettice has always loved and grown up with dogs, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, would never have countenanced having any family pet present in the dining room, much less sitting on her lap when she dines, as seems to be Mrs. Hawarden’s habit, considering she did the same when Lettice last visited. Lettice cringes silently as her hostess tears at a stray rag of roast beef on her plate with her red painted fingernails and proceeds to feed it to Yat-See who gulps it down greedily after a mere moment’s deliberation and sniffing.
“Ugh,” the Mancunian woman continues as she wipes her greasy fingers on her damask napkin, also belonging to the former occupier of ‘The Briars’. “I cannot wait until this room is no longer bilious yellow.”
“You do realise, Mrs. Hawarden, that the papers in here are likely to be near original Georgian hand painted hangings, like those in the drawing room.” Lettice ventures gingerly as she picks up her own cutlery and cuts into a beautifully golden Yorkshire pudding on her plate. “They really are quite inspiring.”
“Oh you are too, too droll, Miss Chetwynd!” Mrs. Hawarden replies as she laughs loudly. “The only thing that this ghastly paper inspires me to do is throw up.” She laughs loudly again.
Lettice shudders at the subject of being sick being raised at the dinner table just as they are about to commence eating.
“You know,” continues Mrs. Hawarden as she lifts a large slice of roast beef to her lips. “I was almost beginning to think that you were avoiding me, Miss Chetwynd.”
As her hostess envelops the meat between her red painted lips Lettice remembers how upset her maid, Edith, was at having to answer the telephone whenever it rang in case it was Mrs. Hawarden, who had taken to telephoning Cavendish Mews nearly every day, and sometimes several times a day. It became such a problem that Lettice even asked Edith to lie and tell the overbearing woman that she wasn’t at home, even when she was, and on Edith’s day off, she simply didn’t answer the telephone at all, even if it meant that the calls of people she did want to hear from went unanswered.
“Then I heard from your maid,” Mrs. Hawarden continues, masticating quite loudly between her rounded northern syllables. “Ada is it?”
“Edith.”
“That’s it! Edith! Yes, Edith told me your uncle passed on, which of course explained your long absence. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Lettice silently notes the use of the words ‘passed on’, giving away Mr. Hawarden’s aspiring middle-class origins** that she is so desperate to shake off. Politely ignoring it she replies, “Thank you Mrs. Hawarden.”
“Was it expected, Miss Chetwynd?” Mrs. Hawarden continues, cutting enthusiastically through a potato she has speared with the tines of her fork.
“Actually no. It was quite the opposite, Mrs. Hawarden. It is my Aunt Isobel who has always suffered ill health, so my Uncle’s death was quite unexpected.”
“It must have come as quite a shock then.”
“Yes, quite.” Lettice replies in a tight-lipped fashion, feeling uncomfortable talking about her private family affairs with a relative stranger.
“Well, that’s over now, thankfully, and you’ve probably had plenty of time to think about what I propose to do to ‘The Briars’. I simply cannot wait to hear what your thoughts on redecorating these fusty old fashioned rooms are.”
“Well I…” Lettice looks sadly around her at the well appointed and comfortable room, which like the drawing room she was asked to comment on last time, seems perfectly fine as it is in her mind. The room’s décor has grown with the house, mellowed and softened from a formal Georgian interior into a comfortable semi-formal Edwardian country house interior over the decades since its original construction. The queasiness roiling in the pit of her stomach makes the light piece of Yorkshire pudding she has just swallowed feel like a stone rolling about. Yat-See seems to pick up on her hesitancy and quietly growls at Lettice again from across the table.
“Yat-See!” scolds Mrs, Hawarden as she taps his head lightly. “Now, now Miss Chetwynd, there is no need to be shy.” She chortles. “I know you’re a modern designer.”
“A Modern Classical Revival interior designer, actually,” Lettice corrects her hostess. “As you may recall, Mrs. Hawarden.”
“Well it’s the modern I’m more interested in rather than the classical, Miss Chetwynd. The more modern the better.”
Stalling for time, Lettice looks again around the room and it is then that she notices a new painting hanging over the sideboard on which stand the roast, some lidded tureens of vegetables, bottles of champagne and a vase of red roses. Enclosed in an ornate gilded frame, the painting hangs in place of a rather dark, but charming Victorian English oil of a local landscape, and could not be any more at odds with the rest of the room’s décor. Looking out from the frame, an angular shepherdess dressed in pale pink toying with her equally pink crook lolls against a young man in red pantaloons and white stockings reading from a book which only covers part of his bulging chest which is revealed through an open shirt executed in a mustard colour. The pair sit on a stylised bank of grass dotted with flowers, whilst behind them an equally stylised sky of blue littered with fluffy clouds drifts by. Whilst not an unpleasant painting within itself, and obviously well executed by the artist, it nonetheless looks so awkward and incredibly out of place hanging between an Edwardian watercolour of London and another country scene painted in oils, and against the yellow and white foliate wallpaper of the Eighteenth Century.
Noticing her eyes focussing on the painting, Mrs. Hawarden follows Lettice’s gaze. “Oh, were you just admiring my new acquisition, Miss Chetwynd?” she asks with swelling pride. “Isn’t it divine? Bucolic charm meets modernity! I just had it shipped from the Forsythe Gallery, a most darling little place in Soho, this week. I don’t think the owner wanted to part with it, but a nice fat cheque from Mr. Hawarden soon put short shrift to that attitude.”
Lettice suddenly smiles in a bemused fashion as the sick feeling in her stomach begins to lessen as an idea forms in her mind.
Having not observed the change in Lettice’s attitude, the Mancunian woman goes on unabated, “I think it’s so much nicer than that awful daub that was hanging there before. Do you remember it, Miss Chetwynd? It was a rather dark painting of a mill and an Oxford hay wagon***.”
“Yes, I remember it Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies, the smile creeping a little further across her lips. “It was quite charming as I recall it.”
“Charming? You thought it was charming, Miss Chetwynd?” the older woman asks with a hesitancy in her voice, self-consciously reaching up to the strings of pearls about her neck and worrying them with her fingers as she looks to Lettice.
“Why yes, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies, her voice becoming a little more bold. “Where did you hang it instead?”
“Hang it?” Mrs. Hawarden stutters in shocked reply. “Why no-where, Miss Chetwynd. I gave it to Barbara to put in the dustbin, but I suspect she has taken a fancy to it and probably took it home to her family.”
“Oh, that is a pity, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice says. “I much prefer it to your new painting. Your new painting can’t possibly stay in here. It really won’t suit.”
“It… it won’t, Miss Chetwynd?” stammers Mrs. Hawarden in surprise.
“Oh no!” Lettice exclaims, shaking her head. “I’ll find something more classically suitable, Mrs. Hawarden. Leave it to me.”
“Well, Miss Chetwynd, if you will recall, it’s modern that I’m really looking to capitalise on in our new designs for the drawing room, dining room and entrance hall, not classical. Now, whilst we are thinking of paintings,” she adds in a quavering voice quickly in an effort to stop Lettice saying anything further to disquiet her. “I was actually hoping you might be able to get me some paintings from the Portland Gallery in Bond Street, Miss Chetwynd. ”
Mrs. Hawarden’s protestations drift away in Lettice’s mind as she thinks back to the conversation she had with her sister, Lalage (known to everyone in the family by the diminutive Lally) at her Buckinghamshire home the week beforehand during a stay to keep her sister company for a few days after their ‘Uncle’, Lord Sherbourne Tyrwhitt’s funeral, whilst Lally’s husband and children were away. The subject of declining to accept Mrs. Hawarden’s commission to decorate ‘The Briars’ came up on conversation over a luncheon of pork pie and potato au gratin. Lettice had expressed her concerns over how she is going to explain her difference in opinions to the insistent Mrs. Hawarden and thereby decline her patronage. Lally suggested a ploy successfully used by her husband and father-in-law. “Show her that she is too modern for you, and convince her that you are too classical and old fashioned for her. Once the doubt is planted in her mind, it will quickly take root.” was her sage advice. Lettice felt the idea had merit, but it wasn’t until she saw Mrs. Hawarden’s latest artistic acquisition that she worked out a way to plant that seed of doubt in her woman’s mind. Now with every answer she gives, Lettice can hear the doubt growing in Mrs. Hawarden’s voice.
“Oh the Portland gallery isn’t my preference for art, Mrs. Hawarden,” Lettice replies sweetly, slicing through the beef on her plate.
“It.. it isn’t, Miss Chetwynd?” Mrs. Hawarden queries. “But I read in the Country Life**** that you used statues from the Portland Gallery.”
“Oh those?” Lettice says with a sheepish laugh. “Yes, well, they were Mr. Channon’s already you see. He was the one who specifically wanted to use the gallery for those art pieces, so it really was his doing, not mine. The Portland Gallery is a bit too modern for my tastes, Mrs. Hawarden. I can however see how Mr. Tipping’s***** article may have inadvertently misled you in thinking that it was my choice.”
“Yes, well…” gulps the older woman awkwardly as the colour starts to drain from her face. “I… I was rather hoping that you might be able to give me a foray into the Portland Gallery, Miss Chetwynd.”
“Well,” Lettice says as she raises a small morsel of meat to her lips. “That would really be up to Mr. Chilvers, the owner, Mrs. Hawarden, not me. Perhaps if you spoke to Mr. Chilvers.” she adds helpfully with a gentle smile before taking the mouthful from her fork.
“I did try that, Miss Chetwynd, but he did seem awfully pressed for time.” the older woman replies, making up excuses, blushing as she speaks.
“Well, never mind. I have some lovely Regency bronzes I’m sure you will like, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies after swallowing her mouthful. She picks up her glass of champagne. “Of course, you will have to come down to London and visit my warehouse. Then I can show you some of the pieces I had in mind to install here as part of the redecoration.”
Yat-See starts growling again, barring his sharp little white teeth, and staring at her with hostility with his sparking currant eyes, but for the first time Lettice doesn’t feel intimidated by him. Unusually, Mrs. Hawarden doesn’t tell him off for growling.
“I say, are you feeling alright, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice asks, placing her knife and fork against the gilt edge of her plate. “You do look a little pale all of a sudden.”
“Oh, do I, Miss Chetwynd?” the older woman replies, putting her hands to her cheeks.
The pair fall into an awkward silence, broken only by the muffled ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway outside the open dining room door and the occasional twitter of birds in the garden beyond the sash window. Neither eat any more of their roast beef luncheon, which slowly grows cold and congeals on their plates.
“I say,” Mrs. Hawarden says at length, breaking the silence. “I must confess that I am feeling a little unwell all of a sudden, Miss Chetwynd. Would you mind terribly if I went upstairs and laid down.” She snatches Yat-See from her lap as she abruptly stands up, her Georgian dining chair’s feet juddering across the well-worn carpet beneath her.
“Oh yes!” Lettice rises to her feet also. “Yes of course, Mrs. Hawarden.”
“Barbara can show you out after you’ve had your luncheon and arrange for Johnston to return you to the railway station. I feel like a terrible hostess, but I really feel that I must go and lie down. I have a history of awful, debilitating headaches that can come on quite suddenly.” she lies as she thinks of an excuse to leave and reconsider her choice of interior designer.
“Shall I call Barbara to see you to your room, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice moves towards the servants bell next to the fireplace.
“No, please don’t bother, Miss Chetwynd.” She hoists the somewhat startled Yat-See up underneath her right arm like a clutch purse. “I’ll be fine.”
“Well then, I will bid you a good afternoon, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice says pleasantly.
“Yes, goodbye Miss Chetwynd.” Mrs. Hawarden replies very definitely.
Lettice watches as her hostess retreats through the dining room door with her dog and disappears. As her footsteps dissipate along the corridor and then up some stairs at the end of it, Lettice lets out a pent-up breath in relief as she takes to her seat again. She feels the house settle back comfortably around her, as like her hostess, the awkward tension leaves the room. It appears that thanks to Lally’s sage advice, Lettice has narrowly avoided the calamity of having to decorate the beautiful rooms of ‘The Briars’ against her own tasteful wishes. She glances about her once more at the elegantly appointed room. “Well, I’ve given you a stay of execution, my beauty.” she says to the empty room quietly. “I don’t quite know how long for, but at least your death knell will not come under my watch.”
Lettice rises again and depositing her serviette onto the polished tabletop next to her half-eaten luncheon, she walks across the room and rings the servants bell.
As Barbara helps Lettice on with her russet coloured travelling coat in the house’s vestibule she quietly asks, “Will we be seeing you again soon, Miss Chetwynd?”
“No,” Lettice replies as her lips, artfully reapplied with some lipstick matching the hue of her coat, grow into an exaggerated oval as she takes one final look lovingly around the cluttered hallway of ‘The Briers’. “I don’t think you will ever see me again, Barbara.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Chetwynd.” Barbara replies, handing Lettice her hook ended russet satin parasol. “But at the same time, I’ll be glad to see the house left alone. I quite like it as it is.”
“So do I, Barbara,” Lettice says with a consoling smile. “So do I.”
“Well, goodbye then, Miss Chetwynd, and a safe journey back to London.”
“Goodbye Barbara.” Lettice replies.
Then she steps across the threshold of the house and with the confident footsteps of the daughter of a Viscount, Lettice strides across the crunching white gravel driveway and allows herself to be helped into the purring Worsley waiting outside by Johnston its chauffer. As he closes the door behind her, Lettice settles into the leather upholstery and takes one last look through the door’s glass pane at lovely two-storey red brick Georgian mansion with two white painted sash windows either side of a porticoed front door and five matching windows spread evenly across the façade of the upper floor. “May you rest in unaltered tranquillity, Briars.” she says quietly.
With a rev of its engines, Johnston turns the steering wheel of the Worsley as it slowly begins its journey back down the rutted driveway and out into the township of Ascot, bound for the railway station.
*The first successful artificial silks were developed in the 1890s of cellulose fibre and marketed as art silk or viscose, a trade name for a specific manufacturer. In 1924, the name of the fibre was officially changed in the U.S. to rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.
**Before, and even after the Second World War, a great deal could be attained about a person’s social origins by what language and terminology they used in class-conscious Britain by the use of ‘”U and non-U English” as popularised by upper class English author, Nancy Mitford when she published a glossary of terms in an article “The English Aristocracy” published by Stephen Spender in his magazine “encounter” in 1954. There are many examples in her glossary, amongst which are the word “died” which is a U (upper class) word, versus “passed on” which is a non-U (aspiring middle-class) words. Whilst quite outdated today, it gives an insight into how easily someone could betray their humbler origins by something as simple as a single word.
***An ‘Oxford’ hay wagon was a type of cart with an elegant arch over the rear wheels and were often painted canary yellow like many gypsy caravans. They began appearing in Buckinghamshire, over an area from the Thames to beyond Banbury. As well as being known as an ‘Oxford’ hay wagon, it collected a variety of names, including: Cotswold, Woodstock and South Midland hay wagon.
****Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
*****Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.
Contrary to what your eyes might tell you, this upper-class country house dining room scene is actually made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The Chippendale dining room table, matching dining and carver chairs are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.
The dining table is correctly set for a two course Edwardian inter-war luncheon, using cutlery and crockery, from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering in the United Kingdom. The delicious looking roast dinner on the dinner plates and on the console in the background have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The two glasses of sparkling champagne are made of real glass and were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. All the wine and water glasses I have had since I was a teenager. I bought them from a high street stockist that specialised in dolls’ houses and doll house miniatures. Each glass is hand blown using real glass. The Georgian style candlesticks are artisan pieces made of sterling silver. Although unsigned, the pieces was made in England by an unknown artist.
The sideboard featuring fine marquetry banding and collapsible extensions at either end was made by an unknown miniature artisan. This piece I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The Georgian style silver lidded tureens, wine cooler and three prong candelabra on the sideboard’s surface I also acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The bottles of Deutz and Geldermann and De Rochegré champagne in the cooler are artisan miniatures and made of glass and some have real foil wrapped around their necks. They are made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
The very realistic floral arrangements around the room are made by hand by the Doll House Emporium in America who specialise in high end miniatures.
The three paintings on the wall came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s. The Georgian style silk carpet comes from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
Maurice ...
A generous man
A role model
Wedding engagement photo
Antique repost
After he had passed away a good friend of my father's told me that dad was recruited to go to Hollywood when he was still single
He was an artist that never let his art flow
Too busy working
Too busy helping many
g
Montreal
My musical tribute to someone important to me
Passed away Dec 31 1997
Song For My Father - Stanley Jordan
It's been a funny day.
Today my old friend John met Cathy for the first time.
I vanished into the bedroom for over an hour. He waited apprehensively for me to reappear - apart from the bit where he went to sleep.
I'm sure women find this easier. After all, we're asking to come over to their side. A man must wonder what the hell is going on. And John is definitely an alpha male. He denies this, but it's only a ploy to make you drop your defences. Then he pinches your banana.
He was bloody marvellous.
The past has been generous with Teruel and leaves a Mudejar legacy that today is recognized as a world heritage site. Four towers, that of El Salvador and San Martín, that of San Pedro and that of the Cathedral of Santa María de Mediavilla, apart from its roof and dome, form this unique Mudejar ensemble.
The Torre de San Martín (English: St. Martin's Tower) is a medieval structure in Teruel, Aragon, northern Spain. Built in Aragonese Mudéjar style in 1316 and renovated in the 16th century, it was added to the UNESCO Heritage List in 1986 together with other Mudéjar structures in Teruel.
The tower was built between in 1315 and 1316. In 1550 its lower section was restored due to the erosion caused by humidity. Like other structures in Teruel, it is a gate-tower decorated with ceramic glaze. The road passes through an ogival arch. The tower takes its names from the annexed church of St. Martin, dating to the Baroque period.
The tower follows the scheme of the Almohad minarets, with two concentric square towers between which are the stairs. The inner tower has three floors covered with cross vaults.
Theme "Tunisia, Naturally Generous"
bio mediterraneo
The Concept
Tunisia is located in the heart of the Mediterranean. Here, in this land rich in history spanning more than 3,000 years, warm, generous people live in naturally abundant landscapes of olive groves, beaches, sand dunes, wheat fields, forests and palm trees. Located in the Bio-mediterraneum Cluster Tunisia’s Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 is the "Enchanted Oasis", a space that pays tribute to the Oasis of Gabes, on the littoral of the Mediterranean, and one of the last of its kind in the world.
This natural ecosystem fits perfectly within the theme Feeding the Planet, Energy For Life. Being close to the sea and with its multiple layers of cultivation - palm trees, date palms, fruit trees and vegetables – it offers a favourable microclimate for the development of highly diverse flora. There is a symbiosis between humans and the natural environment: an exchange of energy which ensures the balance and harmony of this unique ecosystem.
The life force of this enchanted oasis will be a key concept of the project, bringing to the exhibition a source of Nature’s inspiration. As an interactive and contemplative space it invites visitors in, physically - through the senses - and psychologically, to create their own itineraries alone or in groups. The soil turns into golden sand. Pomegranate, fig and almond trees grow in the shade of date palms. On exploring the space, visitors hear the sound of running water or traditional folk music. Visitors participate in scenes of traditional bread-making, date-picking, or the irrigation of vegetable crops, as if in a dream, between the real and the virtual. At the end of their tour, they can then enjoy typical dishes, exemplars of Tunisia’s ancestral cuisine and its diverse cultural heritage.
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Tema della partecipazione "Tunisia, naturalmente generosa"
bio mediterraneo
Il concept
La Tunisia si trova nel cuore del Mediterraneo. Qui, in questa terra ricca di una storia lunga più di 3.000 anni, un popolo caldo e generoso vive circondato da paesaggi rigogliosi, ricchi di uliveti, spiagge, dune di sabbia, campi di grano, foreste e palmeti. Situato nel Cluster Bio-mediterraneo, il Padiglione della Tunisia a Expo Milano 2015 è “L’Oasi Incantata”, uno spazio che rende omaggio all’Oasi di Gabes, una delle ultime rimaste al mondo, che si trova sul litorale Mediterraneo.
Questo ecosistema naturale si sposa perfettamente al Tema Nutrire il Pianeta, Energia per la Vita. Situato vicino al mare, con una molteplicità di coltivazioni - palmeti, palme da dattero, alberi da frutto e ortaggi - offre un microclima favorevole allo sviluppo di una vegetazione estremamente varia. Si crea così una simbiosi tra l'uomo e l'ambiente naturale: uno scambio di energia che garantisce l'equilibrio e l'armonia di questo ecosistema unico.
La forza vitale di quest’oasi incantata sarà il concetto chiave del progetto. Il Padiglione è stato pensato come uno spazio interattivo e contemplativo che invita i visitatori, fisicamente (attraverso i sensi) e mentalmente, a creare il proprio personale itinerario, da soli o in gruppo. Il suolo si trasforma in sabbia dorata. Piante di melograno, fichi e mandorli crescono all'ombra delle palme da dattero. Nell’esplorare lo spazio i visitatori possono sentire il suono dell’acqua che scorre oppure una musica tradizionale. Come in un sogno tra reale e virtuale, i visitatori partecipano e a scene di panificazione tradizionale, raccolta o irrigazione dei campi. Alla fine del viaggio possono gustare i piatti tipici locali, esempio dell’antica cucina tunisina e testimonianza del suo variegato patrimonio culturale.
In the centre of the medieval stone London Bridge stood the chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, facing downstream. The bridge was built between A.D. 1176 and 1209 under the supervision of Peter of Colechurch, Cheapside. Houses on the bridge are first shown in the records of 1201, and in 1205 they record the death, and burial, in the chapel of its builder. The building was two-storeys high and access to it was from both the bridge level and the river. The crypt (cellar) was vaulted and the upper chapel had a groined roof springing from 'clustered columns of great beauty'. Technically it was under the control of the Parish of St. Magnus, London Bridge but the chaplain and other members of the 'Brothers of the Bridge' enjoyed a certain amount of freedom from the parish priest. In 1483 the chaplain, after a disagreement with the parish priest, was granted the right to keep the alms collected during services for himself and his community with the proviso that he make a generous contribution to the finances of the parish. Fishermen from the South coast on their way to sell their fish at Billingsgate passing over the bridge were controlled by the times of the services in the chapel. To prevent forestalling, salt fish could not be sold until the Office of Prime, and freshwater fish had to wait for the end of the mass.
After the Reformation, the chapel was desecrated and turned into a house, and later a warehouse. In the second half of the 18th century both the chapel and the houses on the bridge were demolished, at which time the bones of Peter of Colechurch were unceremoniously dumped into the river.
www.stmagnusmartyr.org.uk/history/chapel-st-thomas-%C3%A0...
St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge is a Church of England church and parish within the City of London. The church, which is located in Lower Thames Street near The Monument to the Great Fire of London,[1] is part of the Diocese of London and under the pastoral care of the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Fulham.[2] It is a Grade I listed building.[3] The rector uses the title "Cardinal Rector". [4]
St Magnus lies on the original alignment of London Bridge between the City and Southwark. The ancient parish was united with that of St Margaret, New Fish Street, in 1670 and with that of St Michael, Crooked Lane, in 1831.[5] The three united parishes retained separate vestries and churchwardens.[6] Parish clerks continue to be appointed for each of the three parishes.[7]
St Magnus is the guild church of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, and the ward church of the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without. It is also twinned with the Church of the Resurrection in New York City.[8]
Its prominent location and beauty has prompted many mentions in literature.[9] In Oliver Twist Charles Dickens notes how, as Nancy heads for her secret meeting with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie on London Bridge, "the tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom". The church's spiritual and architectural importance is celebrated in the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who adds in a footnote that "the interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren's interiors".[10] One biographer of Eliot notes that at first he enjoyed St Magnus aesthetically for its "splendour"; later he appreciated its "utility" when he came there as a sinner.
The church is dedicated to St Magnus the Martyr, earl of Orkney, who died on 16 April in or around 1116 (the precise year is unknown).[12] He was executed on the island of Egilsay having been captured during a power struggle with his cousin, a political rival.[13] Magnus had a reputation for piety and gentleness and was canonised in 1135. St. Ronald, the son of Magnus's sister Gunhild Erlendsdotter, became Earl of Orkney in 1136 and in 1137 initiated the construction of St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall.[14] The story of St. Magnus has been retold in the 20th century in the chamber opera The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976)[15] by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, based on George Mackay Brown's novel Magnus (1973).
he identity of the St Magnus referred to in the church's dedication was only confirmed by the Bishop of London in 1926.[16] Following this decision a patronal festival service was held on 16 April 1926.[17] In the 13th century the patronage was attributed to one of the several saints by the name of Magnus who share a feast day on 19 August, probably St Magnus of Anagni (bishop and martyr, who was slain in the persecution of the Emperor Decius in the middle of the 3rd century).[18] However, by the early 18th century it was suggested that the church was either "dedicated to the memory of St Magnus or Magnes, who suffer'd under the Emperor Aurelian in 276 [see St Mammes of Caesarea, feast day 17 August], or else to a person of that name, who was the famous Apostle or Bishop of the Orcades."[19] For the next century historians followed the suggestion that the church was dedicated to the Roman saint of Cæsarea.[20] The famous Danish archaeologist Professor Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821–85) promoted the attribution to St Magnus of Orkney during his visit to the British Isles in 1846-7, when he was formulating the concept of the 'Viking Age',[21] and a history of London written in 1901 concluded that "the Danes, on their second invasion ... added at least two churches with Danish names, Olaf and Magnus".[22] A guide to the City Churches published in 1917 reverted to the view that St Magnus was dedicated to a martyr of the third century,[23] but the discovery of St Magnus of Orkney's relics in 1919 renewed interest in a Scandinavian patron and this connection was encouraged by the Rector who arrived in 1921
A metropolitan bishop of London attended the Council of Arles in 314, which indicates that there must have been a Christian community in Londinium by this date, and it has been suggested that a large aisled building excavated in 1993 near Tower Hill can be compared with the 4th-century Cathedral of St Tecla in Milan.[25] However, there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that any of the mediaeval churches in the City of London had a Roman foundation.[26] A grant from William I in 1067 to Westminster Abbey, which refers to the stone church of St Magnus near the bridge ("lapidee eccle sci magni prope pontem"), is generally accepted to be 12th century forgery,[27] and it is possible that a charter of confirmation in 1108-16 might also be a later fabrication.[28] Nonetheless, these manuscripts may preserve valid evidence of a date of foundation in the 11th century.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the area of the bridgehead was not occupied from the early 5th century until the early 10th century. Environmental evidence indicates that the area was waste ground during this period, colonised by elder and nettles. Following Alfred's decision to reoccupy the walled area of London in 886, new harbours were established at Queenhithe and Billingsgate. A bridge was in place by the early 11th century, a factor which would have encouraged the occupation of the bridgehead by craftsmen and traders.[30] A lane connecting Botolph's Wharf and Billingsgate to the rebuilt bridge may have developed by the mid-11th century. The waterfront at this time was a hive of activity, with the construction of embankments sloping down from the riverside wall to the river. Thames Street appeared in the second half of the 11th century immediately behind (north of) the old Roman riverside wall and in 1931 a piling from this was discovered during the excavation of the foundations of a nearby building. It now stands at the base of the church tower.[31] St Magnus was built to the south of Thames Street to serve the growing population of the bridgehead area[32] and was certainly in existence by 1128-33.[33]
The small ancient parish[34] extended about 110 yards along the waterfront either side of the old bridge, from 'Stepheneslane' (later Churchehawlane or Church Yard Alley) and 'Oystergate' (later called Water Lane or Gully Hole) on the West side to 'Retheresgate' (a southern extension of Pudding Lane) on the East side, and was centred on the crossroads formed by Fish Street Hill (originally Bridge Street, then New Fish Street) and Thames Street.[35] The mediaeval parish also included Drinkwater's Wharf (named after the owner, Thomas Drinkwater), which was located immediately West of the bridge, and Fish Wharf, which was to the South of the church. The latter was of considerable importance as the fishmongers had their shops on the wharf. The tenement was devised by Andrew Hunte to the Rector and Churchwardens in 1446.[36] The ancient parish was situated in the South East part of Bridge Ward, which had evolved in the 11th century between the embankments to either side of the bridge.[37]
In 1182 the Abbot of Westminster and the Prior of Bermondsey agreed that the advowson of St Magnus should be divided equally between them. Later in the 1180s, on their presentation, the Archdeacon of London inducted his nephew as parson.
Between the late Saxon period and 1209 there was a series of wooden bridges across the Thames, but in that year a stone bridge was completed.[39] The work was overseen by Peter de Colechurch, a priest and head of the Fraternity of the Brethren of London Bridge. The Church had from early times encouraged the building of bridges and this activity was so important it was perceived to be an act of piety - a commitment to God which should be supported by the giving of alms. London’s citizens made gifts of land and money "to God and the Bridge".[40] The Bridge House Estates became part of the City's jurisdiction in 1282.
Until 1831 the bridge was aligned with Fish Street Hill, so the main entrance into the City from the south passed the West door of St Magnus on the north bank of the river.[41] The bridge included a chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket[42] for the use of pilgrims journeying to Canterbury Cathedral to visit his tomb.[43] The chapel and about two thirds of the bridge were in the parish of St Magnus. After some years of rivalry a dispute arose between the church and the chapel over the offerings given to the chapel by the pilgrims. The matter was resolved by the brethren of the chapel making an annual contribution to St Magnus.[44] At the Reformation the chapel was turned into a house and later a warehouse, the latter being demolished in 1757-58.
The church grew in importance. On 21 November 1234 a grant of land was made to the parson of St Magnus for the enlargement of the church.[45] The London eyre of 1244 recorded that in 1238 "A thief named William of Ewelme of the county of Buckingham fled to the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, London, and there acknowledged the theft and abjured the realm. He had no chattels."[46] Another entry recorded that "The City answers saying that the church of ... St. Magnus the Martyr ... which [is] situated on the king's highway ... ought to belong to the king and be in his gift".[47] The church presumably jutted into the road running to the bridge, as it did in later times.[48] In 1276 it was recorded that "the church of St. Magnus the Martyr is worth £15 yearly and Master Geoffrey de la Wade now holds it by the grant of the prior of Bermundeseie and the abbot of Westminster to whom King Henry conferred the advowson by his charter.
In 1274 "came King Edward and his wife [Eleanor] from the Holy Land and were crowned at Westminster on the Sunday next after the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady [15 August], being the Feast of Saint Magnus [19 August]; and the Conduit in Chepe ran all the day with red wine and white wine to drink, for all such as wished."[50] Stow records that "in the year 1293, for victory obtained by Edward I against the Scots, every citizen, according to their several trade, made their several show, but especially the fishmongers" whose solemn procession including a knight "representing St Magnus, because it was upon St Magnus' day".
An important religious guild, the Confraternity de Salve Regina, was in existence by 1343, having been founded by the "better sort of the Parish of St Magnus" to sing the anthem 'Salve Regina' every evening.[51] The Guild certificates of 1389 record that the Confraternity of Salve Regina and the guild of St Thomas the Martyr in the chapel on the bridge, whose members belonged to St Magnus parish, had determined to become one, to have the anthem of St Thomas after the Salve Regina and to devote their united resources to restoring and enlarging the church of St Magnus.[52] An Act of Parliament of 1437[53] provided that all incorporated fraternities and companies should register their charters and have their ordinances approved by the civic authorities.[54] Fear of enquiry into their privileges may have led established fraternities to seek a firm foundation for their rights. The letters patent of the fraternity of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr of Salve Regina in St Magnus dated 26 May 1448 mention that the fraternity had petitioned for a charter on the grounds that the society was not duly founded.
In the mid-14th century the Pope was the Patron of the living and appointed five rectors to the benefice.[56]
Henry Yevele, the master mason whose work included the rebuilding of Westminster Hall and the naves of Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral, was a parishioner and rebuilt the chapel on London Bridge between 1384 and 1397. He served as a warden of London Bridge and was buried at St Magnus on his death in 1400. His monument was extant in John Stow's time, but was probably destroyed by the fire of 1666.[57]
Yevele, as the King’s Mason, was overseen by Geoffrey Chaucer in his capacity as the Clerk of the King's Works. In The General Prologue of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales the five guildsmen "were clothed alle in o lyveree Of a solempne and a greet fraternitee"[58] and may be thought of as belonging to the guild in the parish of St Magnus, or one like it.[59] Chaucer's family home was near to the bridge in Thames Street.
n 1417 a dispute arose concerning who should take the place of honour amongst the rectors in the City churches at the Whit Monday procession, a place that had been claimed from time to time by the rectors of St Peter Cornhill, St Magnus the Martyr and St Nicholas Cole Abbey. The Mayor and Aldermen decided that the Rector of St Peter Cornhill should take precedence.[61]
St Magnus Corner at the north end of London Bridge was an important meeting place in mediaeval London, where notices were exhibited, proclamations read out and wrongdoers punished.[62] As it was conveniently close to the River Thames, the church was chosen by the Bishop between the 15th and 17th centuries as a convenient venue for general meetings of the clergy in his diocese.[63] Dr John Young, Bishop of Callipolis (rector of St Magnus 1514-15) pronounced judgement on 16 December 1514 (with the Bishop of London and in the presence of Thomas More, then under-sheriff of London) in the heresy case concerning Richard Hunne.[64]
In pictures from the mid-16th century the old church looks very similar to the present-day St Giles without Cripplegate in the Barbican.[65] According to the martyrologist John Foxe, a woman was imprisoned in the 'cage' on London Bridge in April 1555 and told to "cool herself there" for refusing to pray at St Magnus for the recently deceased Pope Julius III.[66]
Simon Lowe, a Member of Parliament and Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company during the reign of Queen Mary and one of the jurors who acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in 1554, was a parishioner.[67] He was a mourner at the funeral of Maurice Griffith, Bishop of Rochester from 1554 to 1558 and Rector of St Magnus from 1537 to 1558, who was interred in the church on 30 November 1558 with much solemnity. In accordance with the Catholic church's desire to restore ecclesiastical pageantry in England, the funeral was a splendid affair, ending in a magnificent dinner.
Lowe was included in a return of recusants in the Diocese of Rochester in 1577,[69] but was buried at St Magnus on 6 February 1578.[70] Stow refers to his monument in the church. His eldest son, Timothy (died 1617), was knighted in 1603. His second son, Alderman Sir Thomas Lowe (1550–1623), was Master of the Haberdashers' Company on several occasions, Sheriff of London in 1595/96, Lord Mayor in 1604/05 and a Member of Parliament for London.[71] His youngest son, Blessed John Lowe (1553–1586), having originally been a Protestant minister, converted to Roman Catholicism, studied for the priesthood at Douay and Rome and returned to London as a missionary priest.[72] His absence had already been noted; a list of 1581 of "such persons of the Diocese of London as have any children ... beyond the seas" records "John Low son to Margaret Low of the Bridge, absent without licence four years". Having gained 500 converts to Catholicism between 1583 and 1586, he was arrested whilst walking with his mother near London Bridge, committed to The Clink and executed at Tyburn on 8 October 1586.[73] He was beatified in 1987 as one of the eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales.
Sir William Garrard, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman, Sheriff of London in 1553/53, Lord Mayor in 1555/56 and a Member of Parliament was born in the parish and buried at St Magnus in 1571.[74] Sir William Romney, merchant, philanthropist, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman for Bridge Within and Sheriff of London in 1603/04[75] was married at St Magnus in 1582. Ben Jonson is believed to have been married at St Magnus in 1594.[76]
The patronage of St Magnus, having previously been in the Abbots and Convents of Westminster and Bermondsey (who presented alternatively), fell to the Crown on the suppression of the monasteries. In 1553, Queen Mary, by letters patent, granted it to the Bishop of London and his successors.[77]
The church had a series of distinguished rectors in the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th century, including Myles Coverdale (Rector 1564-66), John Young (Rector 1566-92), Theophilus Aylmer (Rector 1592-1625), (Archdeacon of London and son of John Aylmer), and Cornelius Burges (Rector 1626-41). Coverdale was buried in the chancel of St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange, but when that church was pulled down in 1840 his remains were removed to St Magnus.[78]
On 5 November 1562 the churchwardens were ordered to break, or cause to be broken, in two parts all the altar stones in the church.[79] Coverdale, an anti-vestiarian, was Rector at the peak of the vestments controversy. In March 1566 Archbishop Parker caused great consternation among many clergy by his edicts prescribing what was to be worn and by his summoning the London clergy to Lambeth to require their compliance. Coverdale excused himself from attending.[80] Stow records that a non-conforming Scot who normally preached at St Magnus twice a day precipitated a fight on Palm Sunday 1566 at Little All Hallows in Thames Street with his preaching against vestments.[81] Coverdale's resignation from St Magnus in summer 1566 may have been associated with these events. Separatist congregations started to emerge after 1566 and the first such, who called themselves 'Puritans' or 'Unspottyd Lambs of the Lord', was discovered close to St Magnus at Plumbers' Hall in Thames Street on 19 June 1567.
St Magnus narrowly escaped destruction in 1633. A later edition of Stow's Survey records that "On the 13th day of February, between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a Needle-maker near St Magnus Church, at the North end of the Bridge, by the carelessness of a Maid-Servant setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the North end of the Bridge to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water then being very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over."[83] Susannah Chambers "by her last will & testament bearing date 28th December 1640 gave the sum of Twenty-two shillings and Sixpence Yearly for a Sermon to be preached on the 12th day of February in every Year within the Church of Saint Magnus in commemoration of God's merciful preservation of the said Church of Saint Magnus from Ruin, by the late and terrible Fire on London Bridge. Likewise Annually to the Poor the sum of 17/6."[84] The tradition of a "Fire Sermon" was revived on 12 February 2004, when the first preacher was the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.
Parliamentarian rule and the more Protestant ethos of the 1640s led to the removal or destruction of "superstitious" and "idolatrous" images and fittings. Glass painters such as Baptista Sutton, who had previously installed "Laudian innovations", found new employment by repairing and replacing these to meet increasingly strict Protestant standards. In January 1642 Sutton replaced 93 feet of glass at St Magnus and in June 1644 he was called back to take down the "painted imagery glass" and replace it.[86] In June 1641 "rail riots" broke out at a number of churches. This was a time of high tension following the trial and execution of the Earl of Strafford and rumours of army and popish plots were rife. The Protestation Oath, with its pledge to defend the true religion "against all Popery and popish innovation", triggered demands from parishioners for the removal of the rails as popish innovations which the Protestation had bound them to reform. The minister arranged a meeting between those for and against the pulling down of the rails, but was unsuccessful in reaching a compromise and it was feared that they would be demolished by force.[87] However, in 1663 the parish resumed Laudian practice and re-erected rails around its communion table.[88]
Joseph Caryl was incumbent from 1645 until his ejection in 1662. In 1663 he was reportedly living near London Bridge and preaching to an Independent congregation that met at various places in the City.[89]
During the Great Plague of 1665, the City authorities ordered fires to be kept burning night and day, in the hope that the air would be cleansed. Daniel Defoe's semi-fictictional, but highly realistic, work A Journal of the Plague Year records that one of these was "just by St Magnus Church"
Despite its escape in 1633, the church was one of the first buildings to be destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.[91] St Magnus stood less than 300 yards from the bakehouse of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane where the fire started. Farriner, a former churchwarden of St Magnus, was buried in the middle aisle of the church on 11 December 1670, perhaps within a temporary structure erected for holding services.[92]
The parish engaged the master mason George Dowdeswell to start the work of rebuilding in 1668. The work was carried forward between 1671 and 1687 under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, the body of the church being substantially complete by 1676.[93] At a cost of £9,579 19s 10d St Magnus was one of Wren's most expensive churches.[94] The church of St Margaret New Fish Street was not rebuilt after the fire and its parish was united to that of St Magnus.
The chancels of many of Wren’s city churches had chequered marble floors and the chancel of St Magnus is an example,[95] the parish agreeing after some debate to place the communion table on a marble ascent with steps[96] and to commission altar rails of Sussex wrought iron. The nave and aisles are paved with freestone flags. A steeple, closely modelled on one built between 1614 and 1624 by François d'Aguilon and Pieter Huyssens for the church of St Carolus Borromeus in Antwerp, was added between 1703 and 1706.[97] London's skyline was transformed by Wren's tall steeples and that of St Magnus is considered to be one his finest.[98]
The large clock projecting from the tower was a well-known landmark in the city as it hung over the roadway of Old London Bridge.[99] It was presented to the church in 1709 by Sir Charles Duncombe[100] (Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within and, in 1708/09, Lord Mayor of London). Tradition says "that it was erected in consequence of a vow made by the donor, who, in the earlier part of his life, had once to wait a considerable time in a cart upon London Bridge, without being able to learn the hour, when he made a promise, that if he ever became successful in the world, he would give to that Church a public clock ... that all passengers might see the time of day."[101] The maker was Langley Bradley, a clockmaker in Fenchurch Street, who had worked for Wren on many other projects, including the clock for the new St Paul's Cathedral. The sword rest in the church, designed to hold the Lord Mayor's sword and mace when he attended divine service "in state", dates from 1708.
Duncombe and his benefactions to St Magnus feature prominently in Daniel Defoe's The True-Born Englishman, a biting satire on critics of William III that went through several editions from 1700 (the year in which Duncombe was elected Sheriff).
Shortly before his death in 1711, Duncombe commissioned an organ for the church, the first to have a swell-box, by Abraham Jordan (father and son).[103] The Spectator announced that "Whereas Mr Abraham Jordan, senior and junior, have, with their own hands, joinery excepted, made and erected a very large organ in St Magnus' Church, at the foot of London Bridge, consisting of four sets of keys, one of which is adapted to the art of emitting sounds by swelling notes, which never was in any organ before; this instrument will be publicly opened on Sunday next [14 February 1712], the performance by Mr John Robinson. The above-said Abraham Jordan gives notice to all masters and performers, that he will attend every day next week at the said Church, to accommodate all those gentlemen who shall have a curiosity to hear it".[104]
The organ case, which remains in its original state, is looked upon as one of the finest existing examples of the Grinling Gibbons's school of wood carving.[105] The first organist of St Magnus was John Robinson (1682–1762), who served in that role for fifty years and in addition as organist of Westminster Abbey from 1727. Other organists have included the blind organist George Warne (1792–1868, organist 1820-26 until his appointment to the Temple Church), James Coward (1824–80, organist 1868-80 who was also organist to the Crystal Palace and renowned for his powers of improvisation) and George Frederick Smith FRCO (1856–1918, organist 1880-1918 and Professor of Music at the Guildhall School of Music).[106] The organ has been restored several times - in 1760, 1782, 1804, 1855, 1861, 1879, 1891, 1924, 1949 after wartime damage and 1997 - since it was first built.[107] Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was one of several patrons of the organ appeal in the mid-1990s[108] and John Scott gave an inaugural recital on 20 May 1998 following the completion of that restoration.[109] The instrument has an Historic Organ Certificate and full details are recorded in the National Pipe Organ Register.[110]
The hymn tune "St Magnus", usually sung at Ascensiontide to the text "The head that once was crowned with thorns", was written by Jeremiah Clarke in 1701 and named for the church.
Canaletto drew St Magnus and old London Bridge as they appeared in the late 1740s.[112] Between 1756 and 1762, under the London Bridge Improvement Act of 1756 (c. 40), the Corporation of London demolished the buildings on London Bridge to widen the roadway, ease traffic congestion and improve safety for pedestrians.[113] The churchwardens’ accounts of St Magnus list many payments to those injured on the Bridge and record that in 1752 a man was crushed to death between two carts.[114] After the House of Commons had resolved upon the alteration of London Bridge, the Rev Robert Gibson, Rector of St Magnus, applied to the House for relief; stating that 48l. 6s. 2d. per annum, part of his salary of 170l. per annum, was assessed upon houses on London Bridge; which he should utterly lose by their removal unless a clause in the bill about to be passed should provide a remedy.[115] Accordingly, Sections 18 and 19 of 1756 Act provided that the relevant amounts of tithe and poor rate should be a charge on the Bridge House Estates.[116]
A serious fire broke out on 18 April 1760 in an oil shop at the south east corner of the church, which consumed most of the church roof and did considerable damage to the fabric. The fire burnt warehouses to the south of the church and a number of houses on the northern end of London Bridge.
As part of the bridge improvements, overseen by the architect Sir Robert Taylor, a new pedestrian walkway was built along the eastern side of the bridge. With the other buildings gone St Magnus blocked the new walkway.[117] As a consequence it was necessary in 1762 to 1763 to remove the vestry rooms at the West end of the church and open up the side arches of the tower so that people could pass underneath the tower.[118] The tower’s lower storey thus became an external porch. Internally a lobby was created at the West end under the organ gallery and a screen with fine octagonal glazing inserted. A new Vestry was built to the South of the church.[119] The Act also provided that the land taken from the church for the widening was "to be considered ... as part of the cemetery of the said church ... but if the pavement thereof be broken up on account of the burying of any persons, the same shall be ... made good ... by the churchwardens"
Soldiers were stationed in the Vestry House of St Magnus during the Gordon Riots in June 1780.[121]
By 1782 the noise level from the activities of Billingsgate Fish Market had become unbearable and the large windows on the north side of the church were blocked up leaving only circular windows high up in the wall.[122] At some point between the 1760s and 1814 the present clerestory was constructed with its oval windows and fluted and coffered plasterwork.[123] J. M. W. Turner painted the church in the mid-1790s.[124]
The rector of St Magnus between 1792 and 1808, following the death of Robert Gibson on 28 July 1791,[125] was Thomas Rennell FRS. Rennell was President of Sion College in 1806/07. There is a monument to Thomas Leigh (Rector 1808-48 and President of Sion College 1829/30,[126] at St Peter's Church, Goldhanger in Essex.[127] Richard Hazard (1761–1837) was connected with the church as sexton, parish clerk and ward beadle for nearly 50 years[128] and served as Master of the Parish Clerks' Company in 1831/32.[129]
In 1825 the church was "repaired and beautified at a very considerable expense. During the reparation the east window, which had been closed, was restored, and the interior of the fabric conformed to the state in which it was left by its great architect, Sir Christopher Wren. The magnificent organ ... was taken down and rebuilt by Mr Parsons, and re-opened, with the church, on the 12th February, 1826".[130] Unfortunately, as a contemporary writer records, "On the night of the 31st of July, 1827, [the church's] safety was threatened by the great fire which consumed the adjacent warehouses, and it is perhaps owing to the strenuous and praiseworthy exertions of the firemen, that the structure exists at present. ... divine service was suspended and not resumed until the 20th January 1828. In the interval the church received such tasteful and elegant decorations, that it may now compete with any church in the metropolis.
In 1823 royal assent was given to ‘An Act for the Rebuilding of London Bridge’ and in 1825 John Garratt, Lord Mayor and Alderman of the Ward of Bridge Within, laid the first stone of the new London Bridge.[132] In 1831 Sir John Rennie’s new bridge was opened further upstream and the old bridge demolished. St Magnus ceased to be the gateway to London as it had been for over 600 years. Peter de Colechurch[133] had been buried in the crypt of the chapel on the bridge and his bones were unceremoniously dumped in the River Thames.[134] In 1921 two stones from Old London Bridge were discovered across the road from the church. They now stand in the churchyard.
Wren's church of St Michael Crooked Lane was demolished, the final service on Sunday 20 March 1831 having to be abandoned due to the effects of the building work. The Rector of St Michael preached a sermon the following Sunday at St Magnus lamenting the demolition of his church with its monuments and "the disturbance of the worship of his parishioners on the preceeding Sabbath".[135] The parish of St Michael Crooked Lane was united to that of St Magnus, which itself lost a burial ground in Church Yard Alley to the approach road for the new bridge.[136] However, in substitution it had restored to it the land taken for the widening of the old bridge in 1762 and was also given part of the approach lands to the east of the old bridge.[137] In 1838 the Committee for the London Bridge Approaches reported to Common Council that new burial grounds had been provided for the parishes of St Michael, Crooked Lane and St Magnus, London Bridge.
Depictions of St Magnus after the building of the new bridge, seen behind Fresh Wharf and the new London Bridge Wharf, include paintings by W. Fenoulhet in 1841 and by Charles Ginner in 1913.[139] This prospect was affected in 1924 by the building of Adelaide House to a design by John James Burnet,[140] The Times commenting that "the new ‘architectural Matterhorn’ ... conceals all but the tip of the church spire".[141] There was, however, an excellent view of the church for a few years between the demolition of Adelaide Buildings and the erection of its replacement.[142] Adelaide House is now listed.[143] Regis House, on the site of the abandoned King William Street terminus of the City & South London Railway (subsequently the Northern Line),[144] and the Steam Packet Inn, on the corner of Lower Thames Street and Fish Street Hill,[145] were developed in 1931.
By the early 1960s traffic congestion had become a problem[147] and Lower Thames Street was widened over the next decade[148] to form part of a significant new east-west transport artery (the A3211).[149] The setting of the church was further affected by the construction of a new London Bridge between 1967 and 1973.[150] The New Fresh Wharf warehouse to the east of the church, built in 1939, was demolished in 1973-4 following the collapse of commercial traffic in the Pool of London[151] and, after an archaeological excavation,[152] St Magnus House was constructed on the site in 1978 to a design by R. Seifert & Partners.[153] This development now allows a clear view of the church from the east side.[154] The site to the south east of The Monument (between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane), formerly predominantly occupied by fish merchants,[155] was redeveloped as Centurion House and Gartmore (now Providian) House at the time of the closure of old Billingsgate Market in January 1982.[156] A comprehensive redevelopment of Centurion House began in October 2011 with completion planned in 2013.[157] Regis House, to the south west of The Monument, was redeveloped by Land Securities PLC in 1998.[158]
The vista from The Monument south to the River Thames, over the roof of St Magnus, is protected under the City of London Unitary Development Plan,[159] although the South bank of the river is now dominated by The Shard. Since 2004 the City of London Corporation has been exploring ways of enhancing the Riverside Walk to the south of St Magnus.[160] Work on a new staircase to connect London Bridge to the Riverside Walk is due to commence in March 2013.[161] The story of St Magnus's relationship with London Bridge and an interview with the rector featured in the television programme The Bridges That Built London with Dan Cruickshank, first broadcast on BBC Four on 14 June 2012.[162] The City Corporation's 'Fenchurch and Monument Area Enhancement Strategy' of August 2012 recommended ways of reconnecting St Magnus and the riverside to the area north of Lower Thames Street.
A lectureship at St Michael Crooked Lane, which was transferred to St Magnus in 1831, was endowed by the wills of Thomas and Susannah Townsend in 1789 and 1812 respectively.[164] The Revd Henry Robert Huckin, Headmaster of Repton School from 1874 to 1882, was appointed Townsend Lecturer at St Magnus in 1871.[165]
St Magnus narrowly escaped damage from a major fire in Lower Thames Street in October 1849.
During the second half of the 19th century the rectors were Alexander McCaul, DD (1799–1863, Rector 1850-63), who coined the term 'Judaeo Christian' in a letter dated 17 October 1821,[167] and his son Alexander Israel McCaul (1835–1899, curate 1859-63, rector 1863-99). The Revd Alexander McCaul Sr[168] was a Christian missionary to the Polish Jews, who (having declined an offer to become the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem)[169] was appointed professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at King's College, London in 1841. His daughter, Elizabeth Finn (1825–1921), a noted linguist, founded the Distressed Gentlefolk Aid Association (now known as Elizabeth Finn Care).[170]
In 1890 it was reported that the Bishop of London was to hold an inquiry as to the desirability of uniting the benefices of St George Botolph Lane and St Magnus. The expectation was a fusion of the two livings, the demolition of St George’s and the pensioning of "William Gladstone’s favourite Canon", Malcolm MacColl. Although services ceased there, St George’s was not demolished until 1904. The parish was then merged with St Mary at Hill rather than St Magnus.[171]
The patronage of the living was acquired in the late 19th century by Sir Henry Peek Bt. DL MP, Senior Partner of Peek Brothers & Co of 20 Eastcheap, the country's largest firm of wholesale tea brokers and dealers, and Chairman of the Commercial Union Assurance Co. Peek was a generous philanthropist who was instrumental in saving both Wimbledon Common and Burnham Beeches from development. His grandson, Sir Wilfred Peek Bt. DSO JP, presented a cousin, Richard Peek, as rector in 1904. Peek, an ardent Freemason, held the office of Grand Chaplain of England. The Times recorded that his memorial service in July 1920 "was of a semi-Masonic character, Mr Peek having been a prominent Freemason".[172] In June 1895 Peek had saved the life of a young French girl who jumped overboard from a ferry midway between Dinard and St Malo in Brittany and was awarded the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society and the Gold Medal 1st Class of the Sociâetâe Nationale de Sauvetage de France.[173]
In November 1898 a memorial service was held at St Magnus for Sir Stuart Knill Bt. (1824–1898), head of the firm of John Knill and Co, wharfingers, and formerly Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.[174] This was the first such service for a Roman Catholic taken in an Anglican church.[175] Sir Stuart's son, Sir John Knill Bt. (1856-1934), also served as Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within, Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.
Until 1922 the annual Fish Harvest Festival was celebrated at St Magnus.[176] The service moved in 1923 to St Dunstan in the East[177] and then to St Mary at Hill, but St Magnus retained close links with the local fish merchants until the closure of old Billingsgate Market. St Magnus, in the 1950s, was "buried in the stink of Billingsgate fish-market, against which incense was a welcome antidote".
A report in 1920 proposed the demolition of nineteen City churches, including St Magnus.[179] A general outcry from members of the public and parishioners alike prevented the execution of this plan.[180] The members of the City Livery Club passed a resolution that they regarded "with horror and indignation the proposed demolition of 19 City churches" and pledged the Club to do everything in its power to prevent such a catastrophe.[181] T. S. Eliot wrote that the threatened churches gave "to the business quarter of London a beauty which its hideous banks and commercial houses have not quite defaced. ... the least precious redeems some vulgar street ... The loss of these towers, to meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten."[182] The London County Council published a report concluding that St Magnus was "one of the most beautiful of all Wren's works" and "certainly one of the churches which should not be demolished without specially good reasons and after very full consideration."[183] Due to the uncertainty about the church's future, the patron decided to defer action to fill the vacancy in the benefice and a curate-in-charge temporarily took responsibility for the parish.[184] However, on 23 April 1921 it was announced that the Revd Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton would be the new Rector. The Times concluded that the appointment, with the Bishop’s approval, meant that the proposed demolition would not be carried out.[185] Fr Fynes-Clinton was inducted on 31 May 1921.[186]
The rectory, built by Robert Smirke in 1833-5, was at 39 King William Street.[187] A decision was taken in 1909 to sell the property, the intention being to purchase a new rectory in the suburbs, but the sale fell through and at the time of the 1910 Land Tax Valuations the building was being let out to a number of tenants. The rectory was sold by the diocese on 30 May 1921 for £8,000 to Ridgways Limited, which owned the adjoining premises.[188] The Vestry House adjoining the south west of the church, replacing the one built in the 1760s, may also have been by Smirke. Part of the burial ground of St Michael Crooked Lane, located between Fish Street Hill and King William Street, survived as an open space until 1987 when it was compulsorily purchased to facilitate the extension of the Docklands Light Railway into the City.[189] The bodies were reburied at Brookwood Cemetery.
The interior of the church was restored by Martin Travers in 1924, in a neo-baroque style,[191] reflecting the Anglo-Catholic character of the congregation[192] following the appointment of Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton as Rector.[193] Fr Fynes, as he was often known, served as Rector of St Magnus from 31 May 1921 until his death on 4 December 1959 and substantially beautified the interior of the church.[194]
Fynes-Clinton held very strong Anglo-Catholic views, and proceeded to make St Magnus as much like a baroque Roman Catholic church as possible. However, "he was such a loveable character with an old-world courtesy which was irresistible, that it was difficult for anyone to be unpleasant to him, however much they might disapprove of his views".[195] He generally said the Roman Mass in Latin; and in personality was "grave, grand, well-connected and holy, with a laconic sense of humour".[196] To a Protestant who had come to see Coverdale's monument he is reported to have said "We have just had a service in the language out of which he translated the Bible".[197] The use of Latin in services was not, however, without grammatical danger. A response from his parishioners of "Ora pro nobis" after "Omnes sancti Angeli et Archangeli" in the Litany of the Saints would elicit a pause and the correction "No, Orate pro nobis."
In 1922 Fynes-Clinton refounded the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.[198] The Fraternity's badge[199] is shown in the stained glass window at the east end of the north wall of the church above the reredos of the Lady Chapel altar. He also erected a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham and arranged pilgrimages to the Norfolk shrine, where he was one of the founding Guardians.[200] In 1928 the journal of the Catholic League reported that St Magnus had presented a votive candle to the Shrine at Walsingham "in token of our common Devotion and the mutual sympathy and prayers that are we hope a growing bond between the peaceful country shrine and the church in the heart of the hurrying City, from the Altar of which the Pilgrimages regularly start".[201]
Fynes-Clinton was General Secretary of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union and its successor, the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, from 1906 to 1920 and served as Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Eastern Churches Committee from 1920 to around 1924. A Solemn Requiem was celebrated at St Magnus in September 1921 for the late King Peter of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
At the midday service on 1 March 1922, J.A. Kensit, leader of the Protestant Truth Society, got up and protested against the form of worship.[202] The proposed changes to the church in 1924 led to a hearing in the Consistory Court of the Chancellor of the Diocese of London and an appeal to the Court of Arches.[203] Judgement was given by the latter Court in October 1924. The advowson was purchased in 1931, without the knowledge of the Rector and Parochial Church Council, by the evangelical Sir Charles King-Harman.[204] A number of such cases, including the purchase of the advowsons of Clapham and Hampstead Parish Churches by Sir Charles, led to the passage of the Benefices (Purchase of Rights of Patronage) Measure 1933.[205] This allowed the parishioners of St Magnus to purchase the advowson from Sir Charles King-Harman for £1,300 in 1934 and transfer it to the Patronage Board.
St Magnus was one of the churches that held special services before the opening of the second Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923.[207] Fynes-Clinton[208] was the first incumbent to hold lunchtime services for City workers.[209] Pathé News filmed the Palm Sunday procession at St Magnus in 1935.[210] In The Towers of Trebizond, the novel by Rose Macauley published in 1956, Fr Chantry-Pigg's church is described as being several feet higher than St Mary’s Bourne Street and some inches above even St Magnus the Martyr.[211]
In July 1937 Fr Fynes-Clinton, with two members of his congregation, travelled to Kirkwall to be present at the 800th anniversary celebrations of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall. During their stay they visited Egilsay and were shown the spot where St Magnus had been slain. Later Fr Fynes-Clinton was present at a service held at the roofless church of St Magnus on Egilsay, where he suggested to his host Mr Fryer, the minister of the Cathedral, that the congregations of Kirkwall and London should unite to erect a permanent stone memorial on the traditional site where Earl Magnus had been murdered. In 1938 a cairn was built of local stone on Egilsay. It stands 12 feet high and is 6 feet broad at its base. The memorial was dedicated on 7 September 1938 and a bronze inscription on the monument reads "erected by the Rector and Congregation of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge and the Minister and Congregation of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall to commemorate the traditional spot where Earl Magnus was slain, AD circa 1116 and to commemorate the Octocentenary of St Magnus Cathedral 1937"
A bomb which fell on London Bridge in 1940 during the Blitz of World War II blew out all the windows and damaged the plasterwork and the roof of the north aisle.[213] However, the church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950[214] and repaired in 1951, being re-opened for worship in June of that year by the Bishop of London, William Wand.[215] The architect was Laurence King.[216] Restoration and redecoration work has subsequently been carried out several times, including after a fire in the early hours of 4 November 1995.[217] Cleaning of the exterior stonework was completed in 2010.
Some minor changes were made to the parish boundary in 1954, including the transfer to St Magnus of an area between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane. The site of St Leonard Eastcheap, a church that was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, is therefore now in the parish of St Magnus despite being united to St Edmund the King.
Fr Fynes-Clinton marked the 50th anniversary of his priesthood in May 1952 with High Mass at St Magnus and lunch at Fishmongers' Hall.[218] On 20 September 1956 a solemn Mass was sung in St Magnus to commence the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the restoration of the Holy House at Walsingham in 1931. In the evening of that day a reception was held in the large chamber of Caxton Hall, when between three and four hundred guests assembled.[219]
Fr Fynes-Clinton was succeeded as rector in 1960 by Fr Colin Gill,[220] who remained as incumbent until his death in 1983.[221] Fr Gill was also closely connected with Walsingham and served as a Guardian between 1953 and 1983, including nine years as Master of the College of Guardians.[222] He celebrated the Mass at the first National Pilgrimage in 1959[223] and presided over the Jubilee celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Shrine in 1981, having been present at the Holy House's opening.[224] A number of the congregation of St Stephen's Lewisham moved to St Magnus around 1960, following temporary changes in the form of worship there.
In 1994 the Templeman Commission proposed a radical restructuring of the churches in the City Deanery. St Magnus was identified as one of the 12 churches that would remain as either a parish or an 'active' church.[226] However, the proposals were dropped following a public outcry and the consecration of a new Bishop of London.
The parish priest since 2003 has been Fr Philip Warner, who was previously priest-in-charge of St Mary's Church, Belgrade (Diocese in Europe) and Apokrisiarios for the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Since January 2004 there has been an annual Blessing of the Thames, with the congregations of St Magnus and Southwark Cathedral meeting in the middle of London Bridge.[227] On Sunday 3 July 2011, in anticipation of the feast of the translation of St Thomas Becket (7 July), a procession from St Magnus brought a relic of the saint to the middle of the bridge.[228]
David Pearson specially composed two new pieces, a communion anthem A Mhànais mo rùin (O Magnus of my love) and a hymn to St Magnus Nobilis, humilis, for performance at the church on the feast of St Magnus the Martyr, 16 April 2012.[229] St Magnus's organist, John Eady, has won composition competitions for new choral works at St Paul's Cathedral (a setting of Veni Sancte Spiritus first performed on 27 May 2012) and at Lincoln Cathedral (a setting of the Matin responsory for Advent first performed on 30 November 2013).[230]
In addition to liturgical music of a high standard, St Magnus is the venue for a wide range of musical events. The Clemens non Papa Consort, founded in 2005, performs in collaboration with the production team Concert Bites as the church's resident ensemble.[231] The church is used by The Esterhazy Singers for rehearsals and some concerts.[232] The band Mishaped Pearls performed at the church on 17 December 2011.[233] St Magnus featured in the television programme Jools Holland: London Calling, first broadcast on BBC2 on 9 June 2012.[234] The Platinum Consort made a promotional film at St Magnus for the release of their debut album In the Dark on 2 July 2012.[235]
The Friends of the City Churches had their office in the Vestry House of St Magnus until 2013.
Martin Travers modified the high altar reredos, adding paintings of Moses and Aaron and the Ten Commandments between the existing Corinthian columns and reconstructing the upper storey. Above the reredos Travers added a painted and gilded rood.[237] In the centre of the reredos there is a carved gilded pelican (an early Christian symbol of self-sacrifice) and a roundel with Baroque-style angels. The glazed east window, which can be seen in an early photograph of the church, appears to have been filled in at this time. A new altar with console tables was installed and the communion rails moved outwards to extend the size of the sanctuary. Two old door frames were used to construct side chapels and placed at an angle across the north-east and south-east corners of the church. One, the Lady Chapel, was dedicated to the Rector's parents in 1925 and the other was dedicated to Christ the King. Originally, a baroque aumbry was used for Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, but later a tabernacle was installed on the Lady Chapel altar and the aumbry was used to house a relic of the True Cross.
The interior was made to look more European by the removal of the old box pews and the installation of new pews with cut-down ends. Two new columns were inserted in the nave to make the lines regular. The Wren-period pulpit by the joiner William Grey[238] was opened up and provided with a soundboard and crucifix. Travers also designed the statue of St Magnus of Orkney, which stands in the south aisle, and the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham.[239]
On the north wall there is a Russian Orthodox icon, painted in 1908. The modern stations of the cross in honey-coloured Japanese oak are the work of Robert Randall and Ashley Sands.[240] One of the windows in the north wall dates from 1671 and came from Plumbers' Hall in Chequer Yard, Bush Lane, which was demolished in 1863 to make way for Cannon Street Railway Station.[241] A fireplace from the Hall was re-erected in the Vestry House. The other windows on the north side are by Alfred Wilkinson and date from 1952 to 1960. These show the arms of the Plumbers’, Fishmongers’ and Coopers’ Companies together with those of William Wand when Bishop of London and Geoffrey Fisher when Archbishop of Canterbury and (as noted above) the badge of the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.
The stained glass windows in the south wall, which are by Lawrence Lee and date from 1949 to 1955, represent lost churches associated with the parish: St Magnus and his ruined church of Egilsay, St Margaret of Antioch with her lost church in New Fish Street (where the Monument to the Great Fire now stands), St Michael with his lost church of Crooked Lane (demolished to make way for the present King William Street) and St Thomas Becket with his chapel on Old London Bridge.[242]
The church possesses a fine model of Old London Bridge. One of the tiny figures on the bridge appears out of place in the mediaeval setting, wearing a policeman's uniform. This is a representation of the model-maker, David T. Aggett, who is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers and was formerly in the police service.[243]
The Mischiefs by Fire Act 1708 and the Fires Prevention (Metropolis) Act 1774 placed a requirement on every parish to keep equipment to fight fires. The church owns two historic fire engines that belonged to the parish of St Michael, Crooked Lane.[244] One of these is in storage at the Museum of London. The whereabouts of the other, which was misappropriated and sold at auction in 2003, is currently unknown.
In 1896 many bodies were disinterred from the crypt and reburied at the St Magnus's plot at Brookwood Cemetery, which remains the church's burial ground.
Prior to the Great Fire of 1666 the old tower had a ring of five bells, a small saints bell and a clock bell.[246] 47 cwt of bell metal was recovered[247] which suggests that the tenor was 13 or 14 cwt. The metal was used to cast three new bells, by William Eldridge of Chertsey in 1672,[248] with a further saints bell cast that year by Hodson.[249] In the absence of a tower, the tenor and saints bell were hung in a free standing timber structure, whilst the others remained unhung.[250]
A new tower was completed in 1704 and it is likely that these bells were transferred to it. However, the tenor became cracked in 1713 and it was decided to replace the bells with a new ring of eight.[251] The new bells, with a tenor of 21 cwt, were cast by Richard Phelps of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Between 1714 and 1718 (the exact date of which is unknown), the ring was increased to ten with the addition of two trebles given by two former ringing Societies, the Eastern Youths and the British Scholars.[252] The first peal was rung on 15 February 1724 of Grandsire Caters by the Society of College Youths. The second bell had to be recast in 1748 by Robert Catlin, and the tenor was recast in 1831 by Thomas Mears of Whitechapel,[253] just in time to ring for the opening of the new London Bridge. In 1843, the treble was said to be "worn out" and so was scrapped, together with the saints bell, while a new treble was cast by Thomas Mears.[254] A new clock bell was erected in the spire in 1846, provided by B R & J Moore, who had earlier purchased it from Thomas Mears.[255] This bell can still be seen in the tower from the street.
The 10 bells were removed for safe keeping in 1940 and stored in the churchyard. They were taken to Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1951 whereupon it was discovered that four of them were cracked. After a long period of indecision, fuelled by lack of funds and interest, the bells were finally sold for scrap in 1976. The metal was used to cast many of the Bells of Congress that were then hung in the Old Post Office Tower in Washington, D.C.
A fund was set up on 19 September 2005, led by Dickon Love, a member of the Ancient Society of College Youths, with a view to installing a new ring of 12 bells in the tower in a new frame. This was the first of three new rings of bells he has installed in the City of London (the others being at St Dunstan-in-the-West and St James Garlickhythe). The money was raised and the bells were cast during 2008/9 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The tenor weighed 26cwt 3qtr 9 lbs (1360 kg) and the new bells were designed to be in the same key as the former ring of ten. They were consecrated by the Bishop of London on 3 March 2009 in the presence of the Lord Mayor[256] and the ringing dedicated on 26 October 2009 by the Archdeacon of London.[257] The bells are named (in order smallest to largest) Michael, Margaret, Thomas of Canterbury, Mary, Cedd, Edward the Confessor, Dunstan, John the Baptist, Erkenwald, Paul, Mellitus and Magnus.[258] The bells project is recorded by an inscription in the vestibule of the church.
The first peal on the twelve was rung on 29 November 2009 of Cambridge Surprise Maximus.[260] Notable other recent peals include a peal of Stedman Cinques on 16 April 2011 to mark the 400th anniversary of the granting of a Royal Charter to the Plumbers' Company,[261] a peal of Cambridge Surprise Royal on 28 June 2011 when the Fishmongers' Company gave a dinner for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at their hall on the occasion of his 90th birthday[262] and a peal of Avon Delight Maximus on 24 July 2011 in solidarity with the people of Norway following the tragic massacre on Utoeya Island and in Oslo.[263] On the latter occasion the flag of the Orkney Islands was flown at half mast. In 2012 peals were rung during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June and during each of the three Olympic/Paralympic marathons, on 5 and 12 August and 9 September.
The BBC television programme, Still Ringing After All These Years: A Short History of Bells, broadcast on 14 December 2011, included an interview at St Magnus with the Tower Keeper, Dickon Love,[264] who was captain of the band that rang the "Royal Jubilee Bells" during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June 2012 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.[265] Prior to this, he taught John Barrowman to handle a bell at St Magnus for the BBC coverage.
The bells are currently rung every Sunday around 12:15 (following the service) by the Guild of St Magnus.
Every other June, newly elected wardens of the Fishmongers' Company, accompanied by the Court, proceed on foot from Fishmongers' Hall[267] to St Magnus for an election service.[268] St Magnus is also the Guild Church of The Plumbers' Company. Two former rectors have served as master of the company,[269] which holds all its services at the church.[270] On 12 April 2011 a service was held to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the granting of the company's Royal Charter at which the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres KCVO, gave the sermon and blessed the original Royal Charter. For many years the Cloker Service was held at St Magnus, attended by the Coopers' Company and Grocers' Company, at which the clerk of the Coopers' Company read the will of Henry Cloker dated 10 March 1573.[271]
St Magnus is also the ward church for the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without, which elects one of the city's aldermen. Between 1550 and 1978 there were separate aldermen for Bridge Within and Bridge Without, the former ward being north of the river and the latter representing the City's area of control in Southwark. The Bridge Ward Club was founded in 1930 to "promote social activities and discussion of topics of local and general interest and also to exchange Ward and parochial information" and holds its annual carol service at St Magnus.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are to the west of London, in nearby Buckinghamshire, at Dorrington House, a smart Jacobean manor house of the late 1600s built for a wealthy merchant, situated in High Wycombe, where Lettice’s elder sister, Lalage (known to everyone in the family by the diminutive Lally), resides with her husband Charles Lanchenbury and their three children, Harrold, Annabelle and baby Piers. Situated within walking distance of the market town’s main square, the elegant red brick house with its high-pitched roof and white painted sash windows still feels private considering its close proximity to the centre of the town thanks to an elegant and restrained garden surrounding it, which is enclosed by a high red brick wall.
Following the death of Lord Sherbourne Tyrwhitt, patriarch of the family living on the estate adjunct to that of Lettice’s parents, Lettice and her sister Lally returned to their grand Georgian family home of Glynes in Wiltshire to attend the funeral of the man they have both grown up calling Uncle Sherbourne even though he was no blood relation. Indeed, the Chetwynds and the Tyrwhitts were only formally joined in November last year by the marriage of Lord Sherbourne’s only daughter, Arabella, to Viscount Wrexham’s eldest son and heir Leslie. With the funeral over, Lettice has agreed to keep Lally company in her empty home for a few days whilst her husband and children are away. And so, we find the siblings sitting at the round Georgian table of the bright and airy breakfast room of Dorrington House with its Dutch yellow painted walls, Chinese silk carpet, elegant Eighteenth Century furnishings and artwork as luncheon is being served.
“Will there be anything else, Mrs. Lanchenbury?” Edgars, Lally’s butler, asks politely as he deposits a partially filled decanter of red wine on the table.
“I don’t think so, Edgars, but I’ll ring if I do.” Lally replies with a reassuring smile from her seat at the round table. “Thank you.”
Lettice and her sister sit quietly at the table, backs straight in their Georgian chairs, not commencing either to serve themselves luncheon or to speak until the butler has retreated discreetly through the door and closed it behind him. As his footsteps echo down the hallway outside, the siblings release the pent-up breath they both have held within their chests whilst Edgars was serving their luncheon. They look at one another and both laugh, a glint in their eyes.
“Mater would be pleased with us, wouldn’t she Tice?” chuckles Lally.
“Don’t talk in front of the servants, dear.” Lettice imitates their mother’s overly plummy intonations, making them both laugh again.
“What astonishing bad luck we have,” Lally remarks a little despondently. “Arriving back here on cook’s day off. With only cold pork pie,” She gingerly lifts the scalloped edge of the covered serving dish at her right and peeps at what lies beneath it. “And some warmed potato au gratin to serve you. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t mind.” Lettice bushes her sister’s apologies aside. “One of Mrs. Sawyer’s pork pies is a feast in itself, Lally. Edith is a good plain cook, but nothing beats pastry made by a woman born and bred in the country.”
“And you don’t mind us dining in the breakfast room, rather than the dining room?” Lally asks with a lilt of concern in her voice.
“Goodness no, Lally!” Lettice replies in an effort to assuage her sister’s worries. “What’s the point when it is only, we two here. No, this is a nice cosy room with a cheerful fire going, which is perfect. We can take all our meals in here whilst I’m stopping if you like. Shall I pour?” She indicates to the crystal decanter containing a rich red wine in its bulbous base.
“If you would, Tice.” Lally acquiesces.
“So where has Charles gone? I know you told me before Uncle Sherbourne’s funeral, but I’m afraid with everything that went along with that, for the moment I can’t remember.”
“Oh, I don’t expect you to. Plate, Tice.” She indicates with a gesticulating hand for Lettice to pass her dinner plate - Lally’s everyday dinner service - to her, accepting it and depositing a scoop of steaming golden yellow potato au gratin onto her plate. “He and Lord Lanchenbury have set sail for Bombay on the P&O*.”
“And why have they gone to India?”
“To look at a new tea plantation.”
“Why?”
“Well, ever since Maison Lyonses** at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue have accepted Lord Lanchenbury’s Georgian Afternoon Tea blend to serve as their own on the beverages menu, he can’t seem to supply enough of the stuff for the tea drinking populace of London. He and Charles are looking to expand the tea export business there.”
“Isn’t it funny, Lally?” Lettice remarks, accepting back her plate and pushing her sister’s full glass of wine across the table.
“What is, Tice?”
“That you still call your father-in-law Lord Lanchenbury, just as I do.”
“Well, with those glowering looks of his, his Victorian mutton chops*** and his equally severe and old fashioned manners hardly endear him to me or make me want to call him anything less.” She glances at her sister with serious eyes. “And, I don’t think he would appreciate me calling him ‘my dear George’ either.” Both girls chuckle at the thought. “Even Charles calls him Sir, in preference to Father or Pappa.”
“Too many years an old bachelor for Lord Lanchenbury, with no female company to soften the hard edges since his wife’s death.” Lettice pours herself a glass of wine.
“Oh I don’t think he’s short of female companionship.” Lally remarks as she stands up, reaches over and lifts the plate on which the pork pie sits and brings it closer to her. “If you understand my meaning, Tice.”
“Lally!” Lettice gasps, almost dropping the carafe in her hands, as her sister resumes her seat.
“What?” replies her sibling with a peal of laughter. “Don’t tell me that I’ve shocked you, Tice?”
“You have!”
“I’d hardly expect you to be shocked by the idea of a gentleman, even if it is crusty old Victorian Lord Lanchenbury, accepting a little paid female company, Tice. After all, you are the adventurous and worldly one, living amongst all the Bright Young Things**** up in London, whilst I have a much more sedate and conventional life here in Buckinghamshire.”
“Oh it isn’t the act itself, that shocks me, but rather hearing it spoken of from my sedate and conventional sister’s mouth, that does.”
“I’m not that unworldly, Tice.” Lally giggles.
Lally slices the pie generously, the silver knife cutting into the crisp golden crust with a satisfying crunch, revealing the richly coloured spiced meat interior and releasing the delicious smell of the cooked pork. Lettice lifts her plate and Lally plonks a slice of the pie on her plate before depositing one onto her own.
“I really can’t thank you enough, Tice, for agreeing to come and stay with me for a few days, directly from Glynes.”
“Oh I was only too happy to get out from under Mater’s own glowering stares, Lally.” She lifts her glass to her sister. “Cheers to happy sisterly relations.”
“Cheers indeed, Tice.” She raises her own full glass.
Their glasses clink cheerfully.
“Although admittedly, I probably wouldn’t have come if you’d asked me a few years ago.” Lettice admits with a tinge of guilt. “But only because of that poison Mater injected on purpose to strain our relationship.”
“Yes, I’m glad all that bad blood between us, created by Mother’s games of one-upmanship between us, is over and done with. I like having my little sister back again, Tice.” She smiles gratefully at Lettice.
“And I’m glad to have my elder sister’s confidence again too, Lally.” She reaches out and wraps her hand around Lally’s and gives it an encouraging squeeze.
“I just don’t think I could have faced coming home to an empty house after Uncle Sherbourne’s funeral.”
“Yes, it is a rather disparaging thought, isn’t it? Coming back to a silent house after all the dourness of the last few days. Where are my beloved nephew and niece, by the way?”
“After hearing about Uncle Sherbourne’s turn and knowing I had to get to Glynes quickly, I hurriedly packed a valise and gave Nanny money enough to take the children to Lyme Regis for a few days.”
“They’ll have the sun in their cheeks and the sea air in their hair when they get back.”
“They should be back the day after tomorrow according to the note Nanny left, so you will get to see them.”
“That will be nice, Lally, and it still gives us a whole day to ourselves before they do.” Lettice remarks.
“Yes,” muses her sister. “It will.”
The two sit in companionable silence for a little while, the sound of their cutlery scraping against their plates, their quiet chewing, and the crackle of the fire in the grate all that breaks the quiet peace of the breakfast room. Occasionally birds twitter from the shrubbery outside the window, and somewhere in the village beyond the high stone front wall, a horse clops by on the street, the scratch of cart or carriage wheels reminding Lettice of just how much of a world away High Wycombe is from the hustle and bustle of London, even if it is only twenty-nine miles away.
“You know, I always thought it would be Aunt Isobel who would go first.” Lally says, breaking the silence.
“I think we all thought that, Lally. After all, Aunt Isobel is the one who has always been sick.”
“Yes, and Uncle Sherbourne was always so hale and hearty.”
“Oh must you use that term, Lally? Hale and hearty, is all I’ve heard to describe poor Uncle Sherbourne for the last few days from every villager, mourner and well-wisher I’ve shaken hands with or spoken to throughout the whole ghastly ordeal.”
“Oh, I’m sorry Tice.” Lally apologises. “I guess the term must be catching, as now I think about it, it isn’t one that I usually use myself. Like you, I think I’ve just heard it so much over the last few days.”
“Well, do desist, my dear sister, of I shall be forced to reconsider my stopping here with you.” Lettice jokes as she cuts another thin sliver of pork pie and puts it to her mouth.
“Garstanton Park won’t be the same without him, will it?”
“Indeed no, especially the musical evenings Uncle Sherbourne was known for.”
“Will Nigel carry on do you suppose?”
Lettice looks anxiously at her sister, before quickly glancing back down at her plate, focusing upon the creamy white potato au gratin. She silently wonders how Lally knows about the financial difficulties the new Lord Tyrwhitt, Sherbourne’s only surviving son Nigel, has uncovered. From everything Nigel confided in her when they were in Gartsanton Park’s library cum music room after the funeral, Lettice thought she was one of the very few to be in his confidence and know the truth about the financial straits the Tyrwhitts now find themselves in.
“Having musical soirees, I mean.” Lally clarifies, sensing a lack of comprehension from her sister.
Lettice quietly releases a long breath before replying, “Well, Nigel does love that Bechstein***** as much as his father did. And even though I don’t really wish to say this with Uncle Sherbourne only freshly laid to rest, but Nigel plays it far better and more naturally than either Uncle Sherbourne or Aunt Isobel ever did.”
“Oh, Aunt Isobel always preferred the violin anyway. That was her instrument when she was younger before her hands became riddled with arthritis.” adds Lally. “But going back to my point, Garstanton Park will be awfully empty, with just Nigel and Aunt Isobel rattling around inside of it, with no Bella now she’s married to Leslie and living in the Glynes Dower House, and no sign of Nigel settling down and having a family yet. If I can feel lonely here at Dorrington with Charles and the children gone, I can only imagine what it will be like in such a big and drafty old place like Garstanton Park.”
“I imagine they’ll make the best of it. Nigel is often in their London house anyway, so no doubt he’ll just bring Aunt Isobel up with him when he comes, now.”
“Aahh yes,” Lally murmurs. “I tend to forget that you see Nigel quite often because he spends more time up in London than in Wiltshire. That will have to change.”
“Why should it change, Lally?”
“Well,” Lally scoffs. “Nigel can’t very well carry on a bachelor life in London and manage Garstanton Park at the same time, now can he?” She pauses and thinks for a moment. “They will stay on, won’t they?”
Lettice wonders whether she should disclose what Nigel told her about his doubts around keeping his great Victorian family home in his possession, but decides that discretion is better, even with her elder sister, considering the fact that he told her in confidence. “How can you give life to such a thought, Lally?”
“Oh I know, Tice.” Lally dabs the edges of her mouth with her damask napkin. “I feel like such a traitor by even uttering it, but ever since the war, with death duties being so high******.” Her voice trails off.
“Oh, I’m sure Nigel will make a good fist of it*******.” Lettice defends her friend with a false joviality that does not reflect the feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. “For as long as we and Pater can remember, there have always been Tyrwhitts at Garstanton Park. Why should the status quo change?”
“I know a number of people who have sold off their country houses since the end of the war and reside in reduced circumstances in London,” Lally remarks dourly, picking up her glass. ‘Not badly off of course, but certainly not in the style of the old family estates that they used to have before the war. Father is very lucky that Leslie made suggestions to modernise the Glynes estate.”
“Leslie was lucky that Pater could be persuaded.” Lettice replies.
“Well, that’s also true. I know Mother thinks it a poky little place, but I’m only grateful that Dorrington House,” She waves her hand around expansively about the tastefully decorated room with Dutch yellow walls and Georgian furnishings and artworks. “Is a more modest residence. I don’t need a whole retinue of staff to run it, nor a vast fortune to maintain it, so Charles and I can live very comfortably here, even with post-war economic inflation.”
“Oh let’s talk about something else, Lally.” Lettice remarks, trying to change the subject as she feels Mrs. Sawyer’s delicious pork pie start to turn to stone in her stomach.
“Yes, let’s talk about something jolly instead. We’ve been so consumed by Uncle Sherbourne’s death these last few days. Gerald was telling me at the wake that you have a Mrs. Hawarden who wants you to decorate her house in Ascot, but you don’t want to accept her commission?”
Lettice rolls her eyes. “I thought you said we were going to talk about something jolly, Lally.”
“Well, I’m intrigued.” her sister replies, placing her cutlery on the painted edges of her plate as she sits back in her chair and looks to Lettice with undivided attention. “It seems your article in Country Life******** has done your reputation the world of good if you are now being selective as to whom you decorate for.”
Lettice settles back in her own seat and cradles her glass of wine in her hand thoughtfully as she contemplates how to reply without sounding conceited. “It is true that Henry Tipping’s********* article about the interior designs I created for Dickie and Margot has certainly been a boon for business, but I would turn down Mrs. Hawarden even if the article had never been.”
“Why Tice? What’s wrong with her? Gerald tells me that she’s the wife of a fabric manufacturer from Manchester.”
“Yes, Mrs. Evelyn Hawarden is the wife of Joseph Hawarden of Hawarden Fabrics, and she is positively ghastly, Lally. Absolutely ghastly!”
“How so, Tice?” Lally asks, her interest piqued.
“Well, she wants me to redecorate rooms that I feel should really be left as they are, but she is a tinkerer. She keeps talking to me, no, at me,” Lettice corrects herself. “Demanding that I ruin them with inferior fabrics and, quite frankly, ghastly ideas about what she thinks makes for tasteful redecoration and modernisation.”
“Which evidently aren’t tasteful, looking at your expression, Tice.”
“Far from it, and I want to turn her down.”
“And what is it that’s stopping you.”
Lettice sighs and shakes her head. “She is horribly domineering, I’ve discovered. She is quite convinced that I am the only interior designer who has her vision.”
“Which you don’t.”
“Which I don’t.” Lettice sips her wine. “I have made a few suggestions that counter her own opinions as to what is tasteful and what is not, but she just talks over the top of me. She telephones almost every day in an effort to wear me down. I make Edith answer the telephone all the time now, which she hates, and lie to Mrs. Hawarden and tell her I’m not at home, which she hates even more, just so I don’t have to speak with the ghastly harridan.”
Lally picks up her own glass and contemplates for a few moments before answering. “Well, maybe you’re going about refuting her the wrong way, Tice.”
“What do you mean, Lally?”
“You say that she has some ghastly ideas that you have tried to counter. Why don’t you agree instead?”
“Agree? I don’t want to agree with her. Then she’ll have a pot of wallpaper glue and a brush in my hands quicker than you can say knife!”
“What I mean is, why not agree that her taste is very modern and forward thinking, far too modern and forward thinking for you. Remind her that you are a,” Lally pauses again as she tries to recall the description from the Country Life article. “A Classical Revivalist, was it?”
“A Modern Classical Revivalist.” Lettice corrects her sister.
“There you go! Show her that she is too modern for you, and convince her that you are too classical and old fashioned for her. If this Mrs. Hawarden is looking to use your skills to help her advance herself socially by modernising her home, you just need to plant the seed that you aren’t as forward thinking as she is, or that she thinks you are. Once the doubt is planted in her mind, it will quickly take root.”
“Do you think so, Lally?”
“Trust me, Tice. I’ve seen my father-in-law and my husband do it when they have had business propositions and advances from men they don’t wish to deal with.”
Lettice considers what her sister has said, and a small smile teases the edges of her mouth upward ever so slightly as an idea begins to formulate in her mind. “I do declare, Lally, you may be right in your way of thinking.”
“Of course I am, Tice,” Lally purrs as she takes another sip of her wine. “I’m your elder sister.”
*In 1837, the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company first secured a Government contract for the regular carriage of mail between Falmouth and the Peninsular ports as far as Gibraltar. The company, established in 1835 by the London shipbroking partnership of Brodie McGhie Willcox (1786-1861) and Arthur Anderson (1792-1868) and the Dublin Ship owner, Captain Richard Bourne (1880-1851) had begun a regular steamer service for passengers and cargo between London, Spain and Portugal using the 206 ton paddle steamer William Fawcett. The growing inclination of early Twentieth Century shipping enterprises to merge their interests, and group themselves together, did not go unnoticed at P&O, which made its first major foray in this direction in 1910 with the acquisition of Wilhelm Lund’s Blue Anchor Line. By 1913, with a paid-up capital of some five and half million pounds and over sixty ships in service, several more under construction and numerous harbour craft and tugs to administer to the needs of this great fleet all counted, the P&O Company owned over 500,000 tons of shipping. In addition to the principal mail routes, through Suez to Bombay and Ceylon, where they divided then for Calcutta, Yokohama and Sydney, there was now the ‘P&O Branch Line’ service via the Cape to Australia and various feeder routes. The whole complex organisation was serviced by over 200 agencies stationed at ports throughout the world. At the end of 1918, the Group was further strengthened by its acquisition of a controlling shareholding in the Orient Line and in 1920, the General Steam Navigation Company, the oldest established sea-going steamship undertaking, was taken over. In 1923 the Strick Line was acquired too and P&O became, for a time, the largest shipping company in the world. With the 1920s being the golden age of steamship travel, P&O was the line to cruise with. P&O had grown into a group of separate operating companies whose shipping interests touched almost every part of the globe. By March 2006, P&O had grown to become one of the largest port operators in the world and together with P&O Ferries, P&O Ferrymasters, P&O Maritime Services, P&O Cold Logistics and its British property interests, the company was, itself, acquired by DP World for three point three billion pounds.
**J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.
***Nineteenth Century sideburns were often far more extravagant than those seen today, similar to what are now called mutton chops, but considerably more extreme. In period literature, "side whiskers" usually refers to this style, in which the whiskers hang well below the jaw line. The classic mutton chop is a type of beard in which the sideburns are grown out to the cheeks, leaving the moustache, soul patch, and chin clean-shaven. As with beards, sideburns went quickly out of fashion in the early Twentieth Century. In World War I, in order to secure a seal on a gas mask, men had to be clean-shaven; this did not affect moustaches.
****The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.
*****C. Bechstein Pianoforte AG (also known as Bechstein), is a German manufacturer of pianos, established in 1853 by Carl Bechstein (1826 – 1900).
******Modern inheritance tax dates back to 1894 when the government introduced estate duty, a tax on the capital value of land, in a bid to raise money to pay off a £4m government deficit. It replaced several different inheritance taxes, including the 1796 tax on estates introduced to help fund the war against Napoleon. The earliest death duty can be traced back to 1694 when probate duty, a tax on personal property in wills proved in court, was brought in. When the tax was first introduced it was intended to affect only the very wealthy, but the rise in the value of homes, particularly in the south-east of England, it began to creep into the realms of the upper middle-classes. From 1896, it was possible to avoid estate duty by handing on gifts during the life of the donor. To counter avoidance through last minute transfers, gifts handed over a limited time before death were still subject to the tax. Initially the period was one year but that rose to seven years over time. Freshly recovering from the Great War, the hefty death taxes imposed on wealthy families such as the Tyrwhitts in the post-war years of the 1920s, combined with increases to income taxes on the wealthy, caused some to start to sell off their country houses and estates, settling in more reduced circumstances (still very luxurious by today’s standards) in their smaller London homes.
*******It is seldom heard in the land of its origin — the United States. When you make a good fist of something, you succeed in doing it. You do a good job and achieve a certain degree of success. According to some scholars, the word 'fist' in the expression is used in the sense of 'hand' — someone who does physical work.
********Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
*********Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.
This neat Georgian interior may appear like something out of a historical stately country house, but it is in fact part of my 1:12 miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The round breakfast table in the centre of the room, which tilts like a real loo table, is an artisan miniature from an unknown maker with a marquetry inlaid top, which came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. On its surface the crockery, silver cutlery, two glasses and decanter of red wine, which are made from real spun glass, came from online stockists of miniatures on E-Bay. The serviettes with their napkin rings also came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop, as does the silver tray on which the decanter of wine sits. The Georgian style silver lidded serving dish and the Georgian style gravy boat come from Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The pie at the forefront of the image has been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.
The Chippendale style chairs surrounding the round breakfast table, and the carver chair in the background, are very special pieces. They came from the Petite Elite Miniature Museum, later rededicated as the Carol and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, which ran between 1992 and 2012 on Los Angeles’ bustling Wiltshire Boulevard. One of the chairs still has a sticker under its cushion identifying which room of which dollhouse it came. The Petite Elite Miniature Museum specialised in exquisite and high end 1:12 miniatures. The furnishings are taken from a real Chippendale design.
The sideboard featuring fine marquetry banding and collapsible extensions at either end appears to have been made by the same unknown artisan who made the round table. This piece I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop at the same time as the table. The Georgian style silver lidded tureens on the sideboard’s surface I also acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop. The vase on the sideboard is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany, who specialise in making high quality porcelain miniatures. Made of polymer clay the irises and foxgloves in the vase are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. They came from a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.
The Regency corner cabinet with its elegant gilt detailing and glass door is made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. The beautiful collection of china on display inside the cabinet, like the vase on the sideboard, is made by M.W. Reutter Porzellanfabrik in Germany.
The Georgian style paintings of silhouettes hanging around the room came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House shop, and the Chinese silk carpet came from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
After a generous 2013 monsoon, the Spring of 2014 was a good bloom season for the Centuries. Image was taken a week prior to the start of the 2014 monsoon at 6,800' (2,073 m.) on a southeast aspect overlooking our neighborhood. [This is out of sequence (note date) and has no connection to preceding / following flickr photostream.]
First off, this girl wouldn't have been possible if not for the extreme generosity of a friend I made online- mainly on Live Journal. She's been such a good friend and she surprised me this past birthday by giving me some money as a birthday gift towards a new doll. SO, I saved and ordered my new girl but kept mum because I wanted it to be a surprise.
I have always wanted an elf girl doll but never saw one I had to have, until I saw a ResinSoul Mei. After I decided on her, then came the hard decision to make for skin color! LOL. After a couple of weeks I narrowed it down and then decided on the blue and I am SO happy with her! She has a lovely and soft pale blue coloring that looks darker in some of the pics I took because it started to get dark but I was not about to let that stop me from taking pics! LOL. She took about 3 months to get to me and I was so happy she finally arrived- of course on the day I worked the longest, and that was torture knowing she was home and I wasn't! lol
So, in honor of my girl's dollmother/godmother- sankuri- I have borrowed a name idea from another friend. LJ member, cheshiretiffy, has a doll named Bellamy, which means 'good friend'. SO, since I had a good friend help bring my girl home, I named my girl Bellamy too.....Bellamy Rain, but she is mainly just going to go by the name Rain. She is a little water spirit that joined my family because she figured she was needed in these dry as a bone parts of Texas! LOL. She isn't used to wearing clothing so getting her dressed was interesting but she is enjoying raiding the closet to see what she can wear. She is so much smaller than my other girls, it's been hard finding stuff to fit and she likes the tuff boots I have but they are super huge looking on her. We'll see what we find and also what her idea of style is. She is my first elf eared doll so I had no idea her ears would make it harder to keep a wig on her! LOL Either way we had fun and she's a lovely girl. Thank you so much, sankuri, for your wonderful gift!
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Annapurna trekking region of Nepal enjoy with magnificent view close to highest and impressive mountain range in the world. Day exploration in Pokhara and morning morning flight to Jomsom or drive to Besishisahar from Kathmandu begin of trek. High destination, Muktinath 3800m and in generally highest point of whole Annapurna is 5416m. Thorangla la is situated in Buddhist Monastery, an eternal flame, and Hindus Vishnu Tempe of Juwala Mai making it a pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Buddhists and Muktinath is on the way down from popular trekking it call Thorang la pass which is incredible view in Annapurna region. Whenever possible we will arrive at lodging mid-afternoon, which should leave plenty time for explore the local villages, enjoy the hot springs at Tatopani, continue to Ghorepani where there is forever the possibility of sunrise hike to Poon Hill for spectacular views of Dhaulagiri, Fishtail, Nilgiri and the Annapurna Himalaya range. Continue on to Birethanti finally between with the Baglung road where we will catch cab to Pokhara, next day drive or fly to Kathmandu.
Everest trekking region, although fairly effortless compare to some of other trek, takes you high along trails to Tengboche monastery Everest Solu Khumbu is the district south and west of Mount Everest. It is inhabited by sherpa, cultural group that has achieve fame because of the develop of its men on climbing expeditions. Khumbu is the name of the northern half of this region above Namche, includes highest mountain (Mt. Everest 8848m.) in the world. Khumbu is in part of Sagarmatha National Park. This is a short trek but very scenic trek offers really superb view of the world's highest peaks, including Mt. Everest, Mt. Lhotse, Mt. Thamserku, Mt. Amadablam and other many snowy peaks. Fly from Kathmandu to Lukla it is in the Khumbu region and trek up to Namche Bazzar, Tyangboche and into the Khumjung village, a very nice settlement of Sherpas people. This trek introduction to Everest and Sherpa culture with great mountain views, a very popular destination for first time trekkers in Nepal. Justifiably well-known world uppermost mountain (8848m.) and also for its Sherpa villages and monasteries. Few days trek from Lukla on the highland, takes you to the entry to Sagarmatha National Park and town of Namche Bazaar is entrance of Everest Trek. Environment of the towering Himalayas is a very delicate eco-system that is effortlessly put out of balance.
Langtang trekking region mixture of three beautiful trek taking us straight into some of the wildest and most pretty areas of Nepal. Starting from the lovely hill town of Syabrubensi our trek winds during gorgeous rhododendron and conifer forests throughout the Langtang National Park on the way to the higher slopes. Leads up to the high alpine yak pastures, glaciers and moraines around Kyanging. Along this route you will have an chance to cross the Ganja La Pass if possible from Langtang Valley. Trail enters the rhododendron (National flower of Nepal) forest and climbs up to alpine yak pastures at Ngegang (4404m). From Ngegang we make a climb of Ganja La Pass (5122m). We start southwest, sliding past Gekye Gompa to reach Tarkeghyang otherwise we take a detour and another unique features of trekking past, the holy lakes of Gosainkund (4300 m.) cross into Helambu via Laurebina to Ghopte (3430 m) and further to Trakegyang. Northern parts of the area mostly fall within the boundaries of Langtang National park.
Peak Climbing in Nepal is great view of Himalayas and most various geological regions in asia. Climbing of peaks in Nepal is restricted under the rules of Nepal Mountaineering Association. Details information and application for climbing permits are available through Acute Trekking. First peak climbing in Nepal by Tenzing Norgey Sherpa and Sir Edmund Hilary on May 29, 1953 to Mt. Everest. Trekking Agency in Nepal necessary member from Nepal Mountaineering Association. Our agency will arrange equipment, guides, high altitude porters, food and all necessary gears for climbing in Nepal. Although for some peaks, you need to contribute additional time, exertion owing to improved elevation and complexity. Climbing peaks is next step beyond simply trekking and basic mountaineering course over snow line with ice axe, crampons, ropes etc under administration and coaching from climbing guide, who have substantial mountaineering knowledge and for your climbing in mountain.
Everest Base Camp Trek well noon its spectacular mountain peaks and the devotion and openness of its inhabitants, the Everest region is one of the most popular destination for tourists in Nepal. While numerous of the routes through the mountains are difficult, there are plenty places to rest and enjoy a meal along the way. Additionally, don't worry about receiving lost. Just ask a local the way to the next village on your route, and they will direct you. Most Sherpas under the age of fifty can at least understand basic English, and many speak it fluently.
Annapurna Base Camp Trek is the major peaks of the western portion of the great Annapurna Himalaya, Annapurna South, Fang, Annapurna, Ganagapurna, Annapurna 3 and Machhapuchhare and including Annapurna first 8091 meters are arranged almost exactly in a circle about 10 miles in diameter with a deep glacier enclosed field at the center. From this glacier basin, known as the Annapurna base camp trek (Annapurna sanctuary trek), the Modi Khola way south in a narrow ravine fully 12 thousand ft. deep. Further south, the ravine opens up into a wide and fruitful valley, the domain of the Gurungs. The center and upper portions of Modi Khola offer some of the best short routes for trekking in Nepal and the valley is situated so that these treks can be easily joint with treks into the Kali Gandaki (Kali Gandaki is name of the river in Nepal) region to the west.
Upper Mustang Trekking name Make an escapade beginning from world deepest gorge Kaligandaki valley into world's highest area of Lo-Mangthang valley that passes through an almost tree-less barren landscape, a steep stony trail up and down hill and panorama views of high Annapurna Himalaya including Nilgiri, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri and numerous other peaks. The trek passes through high peaks, passes, glaciers, and alpine valleys. The thousands years of seclusion has kept the society, lifestyle and heritage remain unaffected for centuries and to this date.
Helicopter Tour in Nepal having high mountains and wonderful landscape of countryside but is effortlessly reachable by land transport, is known as helicopter tours country. Helicopter services industry in Nepal is now well well-known with many types and categories of helicopters for the fly to different of Nepal. The pilots are very knowledgeable expert with 1000 of flying hours knowledge in Nepal. We have service for helicopter is outstanding reputations and established records for reliable emergency and rescue flight too. Here we would like to offer some of amazing helicopter tour in Himalaya country of Nepal. Further more details information about Nepal tour itinerary for helicopter tour in different part of Nepal contact us without hesitation.
Kathmandu Pokhra Tour is an exclusive tour package specially designed for all level travelers. Kathmandu Pokhara tour package is effortless tour alternative for Nepal visitors. This tour package vacation the historically significant and ethnically rich capital (Kathmandu ) of Nepal and the most stunning city of world by the nature, Pokhara. Mountain museum and world peace stupa are another charming of Pokhara tour. Pokhara is the center of escapade tourism in Nepal. Package tour to Kathmandu Pokhara is design to discover highlighted areas of Kathmandu and Pokhara valley. Nepal is the country which is socially and geographically different that’s why we powerfully recommend you discover Nepal to visit once in life time. It is hard to explore all Nepal in one Nepal tours trip in this way we design this trip to show you the highlights of Nepal especially in Kathmandu and Pokhara.
Hiking in Nepal in the southern part of the asia continent there lays a tiny rectangular kingdom squeezed between two hugely populated countries, China to the north and India to the south, this country is Nepal a world of its own. Adventure trekking is a type of tourism, involving exploration or travel to remote, exotic and possibly hostile areas. Adventure trekking in Nepal is rapidly growing in popularity, as tourists seek different kinds of vacations. The land of contrast is presumably the exact way to define the scenery of Nepal for you will find maximum world highest peaks high high up above the clouds determined for the gods above. Straight, active and attractive learning experience adventure trekking in Nepal that engross the whole person and have real adventure. Mt. Everest, Kanchenjunga, Daulagiri, and Annapurna and many more are there for the offering for mountain-lovers, adventurers and travelers.
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Divided reverse. Letter generously translated by xiphophilos, authored in München on the 26 March 1915 and addressed to the sender's godmother, Frau Fischbacher in Günzelham. Postage cancelled in Sauerlach on 29.3.1915.
Infanterist Joseph Lechner, Ersatz-Bataillon bayer. Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 2. Unfortunately there were a number of Josef / Joseph Lechners serving with Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 2 at this time so it is difficult to determine which one we're looking at.
_______________________________________________
Notes:
b. Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 2 (+MG.-Kp.)
Aufgestellt in München (R.Stb., I.), Landshut (II.) und Passau (III.)
Unterstellung:1. b. Res.Div.
Kommandeur:Oberstleutnant Helbling (2. b. I.R.)
I.:Major Fischer (1. b. I.R.)
II.:Major Wölfl (16. b. I.R.)
III.:Major Staudacher (16. b. I.R.) gef.: 5.9.14
Verluste:61 Offz., 3211 Uffz. und Mannschaften.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are following Lettice’s maid, Edith, who together with her beau, local grocery delivery boy Frank Leadbetter, have wended their way pleasurably a short distance south-east of Cavendish Mews, through the Burlington Estate, along Piccadilly past the six storey red brick façade of Fortnum and Mason with its six fanlight display windows, across busy Piccadilly Circus with its high hoardings advertising Bovril and Schweppes tonic water and its central fountain surmounted by Eros, and down to Trafalgar Square in the centre of London.
The pair are dressed in their summer best as they enjoy the sunshine: Frank in his Sunday best blue suit and a smart straw boater with a colourful grosgrain ribbon around the crown, and Edith in her blue floral sprigged frock and her wide brimmed straw hat decorated with a gay blue green and red ribbon and artificial flowers in matching colours, yet still holding her old battered black umbrella just in case of inclement weather. Circumnavigating tall Nelson’s Column guarded by his four giant lion statues, the pair blend in with the other citizens of London taking a stroll in the good weather. They laugh and chatter away amicably together as they perambulate across the wide tiled square, all awkwardness of their early courtship long left behind and replaced with a comfort and ease that comes with knowing one another better. They walk between the two ornamental fountains where children play and head towards the sweep of stairs that lead up to the National Gallery of London.
As they walk into the shadow of the tall Neoclassical columned façade of the gallery, Edith shivers and pulls herself more closely against Frank, not because she is cold, but because she is intimidated by the enormity and grandeur of the ediface. She has never been to the National Gallery before, and even as she walks past the liveried guards, she silently worries that she will be dragged away from Frank and thrown out for her impertinence. Yet when they approach one near the entrance to the gallery, he smiles and says good morning to them both.
“You see, Edith,” Frank reassures her, squeezing her forearm just above where her green leather handbag handle sits in the crook of her arm. “I told you there was nothing to worry about. The National gallery is for everyone, not just the wealthy.”
The pair walk through long galleries where the gently diffused light from large skylights above falls onto the artworks hanging in gilt frames along the painted walls around them. The galleries are populated with people of all kinds chatting quietly together in pairs like Frank and Edith or in small groups, all admiring the works hanging serenely about them in the long galleries. Edith’s heels click against the parquetry floors, but she is too amazed by all the beautiful paintings to feel self-conscious about it or feel inferiority because her clothes are not as fine as some of the gallery’s visitors around them. With her right arm linked firmly with Frank’s, she allows him to lead her through gallery after gallery, pointing out portraits of famous people from history, landscapes by the Impressionist painters of France, Italian Renaissance paintings and Dutch masters.
Eventually the pair wend their way to a gallery featuring artwork and furnishings from, or inspired by the Tudor period.
“The Royal Nursery 1538 by Marcus Stone,” Edith reads quietly aloud from the plaque stuck to the red painted wall beneath the large gold framed portrait. “Painted in 1871.” She looks closely at the fine details of the faces of the people in the oil painting and their beautiful Tudor costumes. “Well that’s obviously Henry VIII,” she remarks, indicating to the central figure pulling a toy galleon on wheels, who is unmistakably the Tudor sovereign. “But who are the others?”
“Well,” Frank says peering at the oil painting which has yellowed with age and exposure to the elements. “I’d say that is his son, Prince Edward,” He points to the cherubic child in what looks more like a Tudor torture machine than a wooden walker. “I would imagine that that is Princess Elizabeth who became Queen Elizabeth.” He indicates to a sad looking child standing on her own to the left of the painting with a wistful look on her face.
“How do you know that Frank?” Edith asks with eyes glittering with excitement.
“Well, see,” he points to her hands. “She appears to have been reading before the arrival of King Henry, and Queen Elizabeth was purportedly an avid reader.”
“Oh!” Edith nods and gazes seriously at the child.
“And that may be Princess Mary, who became Queen Mary who caused so many problems between the Catholics and the Protestants here in England.” Frank indicates to the young woman in very grand garb kneeling beside the young prince in the walker. “She was Elizabeth’s older half-sister. I’m not sure who the rest are. Servants maybe, or the king’s advisors.”
“Yes, she looks like a nursemaid.” Edith points to a woman in the shadows to the right of the painting standing by a cradle.
“Of course,” Frank remarks. “It’s all very fanciful, really.”
Edith turns away from the painting after the pair look at it in companionable silence for a few moments longer and spots several high backed chairs with red velvet seats sitting in a cluster in the middle of the gallery’s parquetry floor.
“Do you mind if we sit down for a few minutes Frank? My shoes are beginning to pinch from all the standing we’ve been doing.”
“Oh of course, Edith!” Frank replies with concern. “Lets sit over there.” He nods to the same cluster of chairs that had caught Edith’s eyes.
The pair walk over to the chairs where Edith sinks down with a grateful sigh, whilst Frank sits down beside her, placing his smart summer straw boater on the seat next to him. Edith reaches down to her foot and discreetly slips off her left Sunday best black pump and rubs her heel beneath her slightly rumpled stocking.
Sitting up again, Edith looks back across at the painting. “What do you mean by the painting is fanciful, Frank?”
“Well, I doubt that even King Henry’s children’s nursery would have looked quite so picturesque as that in Tudor times. Life dirty back in those days, even for kings and queens. Marcus Stone* was a Victorian Romantic painter, Edith, so his image is a romanticised version of what we might have seen.”
“But none of us can truly know what the King’s nursery looked like back then, Frank.”
“Very true, Edith. Mr. Stone was painting a historical scene that appealed to the romantic ideals of the time. Queen Victoria and her family were very interested in history, but a romanticised and sanitised version of it, and she influenced the tastes of all her subjects. She was also a very family-oriented monarch, probably the first since King George III, so domestic scenes were very popular at the time Mr. Stone painted it.”
Edith’s pretty cornflower blue eyes grow wide as she stares in admiration at her beau sitting beside her. “You are so knowledgeable, Frank.”
“Thank you Edith.” he replies proudly sitting up a little more boldly.
“How do you know so much?”
“Well, I do read quite a lot, Edith. You should see my bedroom at my lodgings. There are books everywhere. Mrs. Chapman keeps threatening to fling them all out. She says the weight will make the floors bow.” He chuckles.
“They won’t will they, Frank?” Edith gasps.
“Oh no!” he assures her. “It’s just Mrs. Chapman and one of her ways. I don’t think she has ever been a great reader, and she treats books, and book readers, with suspicion. I don’t think she would have agreed to take me as a paying lodger if she knew I read as much as I do.”
“I don’t know where you find the space in your head to store all the information you gather from what you read. I’m sure I couldn’t. I’m sure I’ll never be as smart as you, Frank.” Edith blushes with embarrassment.
“Rubbish Edith!” Frank retorts quickly. “I’ve told you before, we are all smart in different ways. There are things you know and know how to do that I don’t.”
“Sometimes I think what I know in comparison to you is of no significance at all.”
“That’s foolish talk too, Edith, and I said as much in Hilda’s kitchen that Sunday when we all went to the Hammersmith Palais**.” Frank chides his sweetheart, not unkindly. “You know how to cook, and all my knowledge of painting couldn’t feed an empty belly.” He looks at Edith lovingly. “You know you really mustn’t feel inferior, Edith. I only know what I do because my grandparents used to bring me here when I was, as Gran would say, ‘a wee bairn’.”
“Well, you are very lucky, Frank.”
“I know, Edith.” He looks around the red painted gallery populated with couples, small clusters of people and a few men and women on their own, quietly admiring the Tudor paintings covering the walls. “So, how do you like your first visit to the National Gallery, then?”
“Oh, I love it, Frank!” Edith enthuses. “You know, when we spent New Year’s Eve at The Angel*** and you suggested that we visit here, I had my doubts.”
“I know Edith. I could see them, as plain as day in your pretty face.” Frank chuckles.
“I always thought of galleries as places, well where people like Miss Lettice and her fine friends go, and not for people like me. The way she tries to talk to me about modern art and fashionable trends when she gets a new delivery from the Portland Gallery in Bond Street just leaves me feeling bewildered. Next to her, I feel I don’t even know what art is.”
“Well, those kind of galleries are a bit more avant-garde.” Frank agrees.
“What does that mean, Frank?”
Frank thinks for a moment, looking up to the white painted plaster ceiling above before replying. “Experimental and innovatively modern.”
“Well, I don’t think I am so keen on that kind of art. Paintings that look like blotches and squares of bright colour that I’m told are portraits or landscapes where I can’t see either, leave me feeling unsettled. But here,” She waves her hands expansively around her with a relieved smile. “I can see paintings and sculptures that I understand. That painting says it’s a nursery, and whether it is historically accurate or not, Frank, it looks like a nursery to me. These are like the pictures Mrs. Boothby has hanging above her sink in Poplar, only far more colourful and beautiful.”
“That’s because these are originals, not facsimiles, Edith.”
“Facsimile.” Edith laughs quietly and shakes her head as she rolls the foreign word around on her tongue like an exotic sweet. “And what does that mean, Frank Leadbetter?”
“A copy.” he replies with a slightly embarrassed chuckle of his own.
“Facsimile, facsimile,” Edith quietly recites, trying to gain familiarity with the word. “I like that word, Frank. It sounds very grand and important, and much nicer than copy, which sounds so boring and everyday in comparison.”
The pair laugh together and sigh happily.
“So, you’d be happy to come here again then, Edith?” Frank asks hopefully.
“Oh yes Frank! I’d love that!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that Edith, because there are so many more galleries to see, and the curators of the galleries do change paintings over from time to time, and have exhibitions of paintings brought in especially from other galleries in other countries.”
“Are you wanting to make me as knowledgeable about art as you, Frank?”
“Well,” Frank blushes. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing to expand your horizons, Edith, and I love showing you that there is a whole world of art that you’ve never experienced before.”
“Oh, you are so lovely, Frank.” Edith sighs. “How fortunate I am to have met you.”
“And how lucky I am to have met you too, Edith.”
The couple discreetly hold hands as they sit side by side on the seats and stare lovingly into one another’s eyes, the people milling about them, the sound of footsteps and the quiet burble of conversation drifting away as they focus only on each other.
At length Frank breaks their blissful moment of enjoyment. “What do you think your mum would say to me bringing you here, Edith?” His happy eyes suddenly cloud a little with concern.
“Oh, I don’t think she’d mind, Frank.”
“Don’t you think she would think I was trying to fill your head with ideas that don’t belong there?” he asks glumly, hanging his head as he speaks.
“No, of course she wouldn’t! Mum loves beautiful things too, Frank. I think she thinks the same of galleries as I did until you brought me here, and if she knew that the gallery was open to the likes of you and me, and that it was free, she’d spend a few hard earned pennies catching the tube to come here too.”
“Do you really think so, Edith?”
“Of course I do, Frank. Maybe we could even bring her here one Sunday on our day off.” Edith assures her beau.
“That would be a turn up for the books, Edith.” Frank smiles.
“Look, I know that you and Mum got off to a rocky start together when you first met, but she’s warming to you, Frank. Honestly she is.”
“I’m sure Edith.” Frank squeezes Edith’s hands. “I’m just anxious that we get along, is all. When you and I get married, I want her to be proud of her daughter’s choice in a husband.”
“Frank,” Edith looks earnestly into the young man’s anxious face. “Mum knows that I’m old enough to make my own decisions. I’m not a little girl anymore. She will be proud when I marry the man who suits me down to a tee, and that man is you, Frank.”
Frank blushes red and smiles shyly at his sweetheart who returns it with her own shy smile.
“I do love you, Edith Watsford.”
“And I love you, Frank Leadbetter.”
“Well, if you do, Edith,” Frank looks back at the picture of the Royal Nursery and points. “How many children shall we have?”
“Oh, you are awful Frank Leadbetter!” gasps Edith, her cheeks colouring at the mention of having babies. “None until after the day we get wed!” She releases his hands and playfully smacks him across the knuckles.
“Yes, but then now many?” Frank persists.
“We’ll see then, won’t we, Frank?” Edith laughs. She slips her shoe back on and picks up her handbag. “Come on,” she says, standing up. “We’ve sat here for long enough.” She holds out her hand to him. “It’s time for you to show me some more of the National Gallery.”
“Yes Miss!” Frank says, snatching up his hat and their guidebooks.
Arm in arm the pair begin to move further along the gallery towards the door leading into the next room, their heads bowed towards one another as they chatter happily between them.
*Marcus Stone RA was an English painter. He was born in London in 1840, and was educated by his father, artist Frank Stone, before exhibiting at the Royal Academy before he was eighteen. He is known for his illustrations of books by Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. His earlier works were mostly historical incidents, but his later works were more sentimental. He is best known for his painting “In Love” which he painted in 1888. He died in 1921 in Kensington.
**The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.
***The Angel, one of the oldest Rotherhithe pubs, is now in splendid isolation in front of the remains of Edward III's mansion on the Thames Path at the western edge of Rotherhithe. The site was first used when the Bermondsey Abbey monks used to brew beer which they sold to pilgrims. It is located at 24 Rotherhithe St, opposite Execution Dock in Wapping. It has two storeys, plus an attic. It is built of multi-coloured stock brick with a stucco cornice and blocking course. The ground floor frontage is made of wood. There is an area of segmental arches on the first floor with sash windows, and it is topped by a low pitched slate roof. Its Thames frontage has an unusual weatherboarded gallery on wooden posts. The interior is divided by wooden panels into five small rooms. In the early 20th Century its reputation and location attracted local artists including Augustus John and James Abbott McNeil Whistler. In the 1940s and 50s it became a popular destination for celebrities including Laurel and Hardy. Today its customers are local residents, tourists and people walking the Thames Path.
Although carefully arranged to look like the National Gallery as it was in the 1920s, this scene is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection, including pieces from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The paintings on the walls in their gilt frames all come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The main painting featured is a copy of “The Royal Nursery 1538”, an oil on canvas by Victorian Romanticist painter, history painter, illustrator and genre painter, Marcus Stone.
The Queen Anne chairs in the foreground are part of a dining room set that I was given as birthday present when I was a child.
1:12 size miniature hats made to exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that one would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, makes them an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. Although not as expensive, Frank’s straw boater is made with wonderful detail and comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders miniature shop in the United Kingdom.
Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
The black umbrella came from an online stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay.
The Tudor table beneath “The Royal Nursery 1538” and the Tudor chair you can just see to its right, I bought as part of a lot of miniature pieces from an antique auction when I was a late teenager. The chest to the left of the photo came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.
Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
Generosity is not giving me what I need more than you, but it is giving me what you need more than I do. Khalil Gibran
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic245PvOqgY
The star (Tarot serie XVII)
Letter on reverse (below) generously translated by josefnovak33: authored in September 1916 and sent to Fräulein Lina Lenz of Algringen in Lothringen Arsweilerweg. Admin stamp from 1. Comp. Inf. Regt. 135 (3. Lothringisches Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 135) and postage cancelled on 15.9.1916.
Soldiers inspect a perfectly intact Caudron G.4 purported by the author to have made a forced landing near his position. This is a commercial postcard, which turns up routinely with different accounts on how the aircraft came to be in German hands at varying locations.
The Caudron G.4 was a twin-engined French biplane widely used during World War I as a bomber aircraft. It was designed by René and Gaston Caudron as an improvement over their Caudron G.3. The aircraft was no delight for the eye with its massive, open construction. The aircraft employed wing warping for banking. The first G.4 was manufactured in 1915, both in France, England and in Italy.
The Caudron G.4 was used as a reconnaissance bomber into the heart of Germany. Later, when Germany developed a fighter force, the aircraft had to be used for night bombings.
Choose
BY CARL SANDBURG
THE single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
asking for our way the little boy was so sweet to offer us his bread.
outside Manaus - Amazonas, Brazil
Letter generously translated by xiphophilos; the author writes to his family from Belgium.
"We are now stationed in Belgian police barracks and are doing the same shit as in our barracks: straight drill and roll call every day. They might as well have left us in Dresden."
Saxons from a telephone detachment with some tools of their trade. The badge for wartime formations is just visible on their left sleeves.