Day four of our break!
We've had a busy day! It's been hotter again at 28C/83F - I know many of you think that we are moaning unnecessarily about the weather here in the UK, but last week I was dressed in sweaters and socks! The weather changes so fast sometimes that we can't get used to it. Fortunately the AirBnB is cool (despite no air con).
Today we set off for a tour around the National Trust property of Ickworth House. It has a long history - starting as a Tudor Manor House, it was bought by the Harvey family in 1701 who demolished the derelict Tudor property and they had big plans for a new house but they didn't start building until 1795, and by 1803 it still wasn't finished. Subsequent sons who inherited the property continued with the building and filling the place with art collections and created lovely gardens and it wasn't until the late 1800s that it was completely decorated and finished. This is an aerial photo (not one I took!) to give you an idea of scale...
Some photos under the cut...
Lovely blue skies today... This is the central rotunda ...
The frieze around the top was designed by John Flaxman who was one of the chief designers for Wedgewood Pottery. It shows scenes from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and the ancient Olympic Games.
In the main entrance hall has a wonderful marble statue by Flaxman depicting The Fury of Athamas (a Greek legend where in a fit of madness Athamas murders his son Learchus). Not the most cheerful of subjects...
The Dining Room - I loved the chandelier!
Another lovely chandelier in the Library. They were all designed for candles, but electricity was installed in Ickworth very early at the beginning of the 1900s.
Matching wall sconces
Here is Velázquez's portrait of Prince Balthasar Carlos, son of Philip IV of Spain, brought back from the 1st Marquess's Grand Tour of Europe. There is evidence it's been cut down so it matches another painting in the room *eyeroll*. The current thought is that this is a study or incomplete painting by Velázquez.
I loved this painting - it's an early 'photoshop' as the gent on the right is William Pitt the Elder (1st Earl of Chatham - British Prime Minister in 1766). William Hoare the artist copied this image from another painting. The gent on the far left (Frederick A. Hervery, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry) wanted to show himself 'presenting' his son John to Pitt as if they had actually met. The whole thing is complete fiction, but it really impressed people visiting...
The Drawing Room - designed in 1829 - used by the ladies to 'withdraw' and leave the men to their cigars and port...
These a little ecclectic silver and gold fish shaped items - so cute - and include perfume bottles, ornaments, vinaigrettes etc.
Other little bits and pieces that were picked up to be in the collections - little scent bottles and snuff bottles and bottom left is a baby rattle with a coral part for the baby to chew on.
Seals to use with sealing wax on letters
This is Lady Elizabeth Foster (1759-1824) who caused quite a bit of scandal. Her marriage was not happy and she was befriended by the Duchess of Devonshire. This led to her moving in with the Duchess and her husband and becoming one part of a ménage à trois with them both for nearly 25 years. She eventually married the Duke after the Duchess's death. They made a film about the scandal (The Duchess).
The wine cellar!
The kitchen which was moved from it's original position along one of the wings to a more central position under the main part of the house. The family apparently reported that finally they had hot meals as the food only had to travel upstairs on the dumb waiter.
We could look through the cook books - yum!
This was fun - speaking tubes for the servants to communicate with people upstairs (where the ends of the tubes were). You blew down the tube and it made the corresponding one upstairs whistle and the little bit connected to the chain would pop out. So the servant upstairs would know which tube to speak into....
The electricity was originally stored in these rather scary looking batteries, but it was amazing to know that there was electricity in 1909. 54 of these were installed along a corridor under the house to store energy produced by two generator engines. They powered 721 lights, 34 switches and 177 sockets...
In the West wing of the building there is The Pompeian Room - designed in 1879 by John Crace based on wall paintings from Roman villas in Rome. It was stunning. The room was used to entertain shooting parties.
In the centre of the room was a 'sample' table with many, many different types of stone inlaid on the top including lapis lazuli, granites, limestones (some with fossiles in). In the centre is a micro-mosaic - Mr Cee is using a maginifying glass to look more closely. You just couldn't see the tiny, tiny stones used to form the picture without magnification...
Close up!
In the Smoking Room there were some lovely paintings - fortunately restored and cleaned of the cigar nicotine deposits... This is a self portrait by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (one of my favourite artists) commissioned in 1791. It's thought she's painting her daughter Julie.
And here she's painted the 4th Earl of Bristol (Frederick Augustus Harvey) in 1790. She's painted him with Vesuvius in the background as he was very interested and was often climbing it!
This was pretty - called the Coromandel Chest 1760. The panels were probably taken from a screen and resized to make the chest which was used by the Harvey children as a toy chest!
The view of the Rotunda from the formal gardens.
We stayed around three hours, and after a quick snack for lunch we drove to Lavenham to visit somewhere we'd not been before - The Little Hall. A pretty little building, parts of which have been around since 1390.
Originally a traditional 'hall' - or large open room - as high as the existing roof made from timber. In the late 1500s/early 1600s extensions were added. From the 1800s to the early 1900s the hall was divided into six separate dwellings (by dividing it into a lower and upper floors and adding partition walls) and various trades and craftsmen used the building (including a cobbler who used the little room on the right of the building as his shop). Eventually in 1924 two twin brothers called Gayer-Anderson bought the house next door and the six cottages and restored the cottages back to a single home called Little Hall. They discovered the timber front under layers of pebble dash render!
It's gone through a few more transitions of use including as an artists hostel, and by 1974 it became a museum. The inside contains many of the Gayer-Anderson collections.
This is the main Dining Hall used by the Gayer-Anderson's. It would have been part of the Great Hall originally without the ceiling.
The back of the house shows the extension to the right. There's quite a large garden at the back which was lovely.
The Panelled room. Each door has been taken from 'Arab bits and pieces' the brothers had collected. They had eleven pairs of decorated wooden lids from some Persian Bridal boxes. Each lid was painted on both sides, so they split the lids into two thin panels which were mounted on the doors. Behind each set they stored antiques.
Close up of one.
More doors acquired from somewhere in the Middle East...
John Gayer-Anderson was an archeologist and he discovered the Bastet cat on a dig in Egypt. The original was given to the British Museum in 1939, this is a replica.
In his study there were some really creepy life masks of John (the archaeologist - to the left), his mother in the centre and his twin Thomas on the right.
Upstairs you can see the original beams of the Tudor building.
One of the rooms upstairs made a comfy bedroom.
More little curios in cupboards - this is a little Chinese jar showing the different Tai Chi poses.
We spent about an hour looking around, then got a few groceries and had an ice cream to cool down before heading back to the AirBnB. We have a tuna salade niçoise for dinner as it's still warm. Tomorrow it's going to be even hotter, and we have our trip to a Tudor house and more...
Today we set off for a tour around the National Trust property of Ickworth House. It has a long history - starting as a Tudor Manor House, it was bought by the Harvey family in 1701 who demolished the derelict Tudor property and they had big plans for a new house but they didn't start building until 1795, and by 1803 it still wasn't finished. Subsequent sons who inherited the property continued with the building and filling the place with art collections and created lovely gardens and it wasn't until the late 1800s that it was completely decorated and finished. This is an aerial photo (not one I took!) to give you an idea of scale...
Some photos under the cut...
Lovely blue skies today... This is the central rotunda ...
The frieze around the top was designed by John Flaxman who was one of the chief designers for Wedgewood Pottery. It shows scenes from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and the ancient Olympic Games.
In the main entrance hall has a wonderful marble statue by Flaxman depicting The Fury of Athamas (a Greek legend where in a fit of madness Athamas murders his son Learchus). Not the most cheerful of subjects...
The Dining Room - I loved the chandelier!
Another lovely chandelier in the Library. They were all designed for candles, but electricity was installed in Ickworth very early at the beginning of the 1900s.
Matching wall sconces
Here is Velázquez's portrait of Prince Balthasar Carlos, son of Philip IV of Spain, brought back from the 1st Marquess's Grand Tour of Europe. There is evidence it's been cut down so it matches another painting in the room *eyeroll*. The current thought is that this is a study or incomplete painting by Velázquez.
I loved this painting - it's an early 'photoshop' as the gent on the right is William Pitt the Elder (1st Earl of Chatham - British Prime Minister in 1766). William Hoare the artist copied this image from another painting. The gent on the far left (Frederick A. Hervery, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry) wanted to show himself 'presenting' his son John to Pitt as if they had actually met. The whole thing is complete fiction, but it really impressed people visiting...
The Drawing Room - designed in 1829 - used by the ladies to 'withdraw' and leave the men to their cigars and port...
These a little ecclectic silver and gold fish shaped items - so cute - and include perfume bottles, ornaments, vinaigrettes etc.
Other little bits and pieces that were picked up to be in the collections - little scent bottles and snuff bottles and bottom left is a baby rattle with a coral part for the baby to chew on.
Seals to use with sealing wax on letters
This is Lady Elizabeth Foster (1759-1824) who caused quite a bit of scandal. Her marriage was not happy and she was befriended by the Duchess of Devonshire. This led to her moving in with the Duchess and her husband and becoming one part of a ménage à trois with them both for nearly 25 years. She eventually married the Duke after the Duchess's death. They made a film about the scandal (The Duchess).
The wine cellar!
The kitchen which was moved from it's original position along one of the wings to a more central position under the main part of the house. The family apparently reported that finally they had hot meals as the food only had to travel upstairs on the dumb waiter.
We could look through the cook books - yum!
This was fun - speaking tubes for the servants to communicate with people upstairs (where the ends of the tubes were). You blew down the tube and it made the corresponding one upstairs whistle and the little bit connected to the chain would pop out. So the servant upstairs would know which tube to speak into....
The electricity was originally stored in these rather scary looking batteries, but it was amazing to know that there was electricity in 1909. 54 of these were installed along a corridor under the house to store energy produced by two generator engines. They powered 721 lights, 34 switches and 177 sockets...
In the West wing of the building there is The Pompeian Room - designed in 1879 by John Crace based on wall paintings from Roman villas in Rome. It was stunning. The room was used to entertain shooting parties.
In the centre of the room was a 'sample' table with many, many different types of stone inlaid on the top including lapis lazuli, granites, limestones (some with fossiles in). In the centre is a micro-mosaic - Mr Cee is using a maginifying glass to look more closely. You just couldn't see the tiny, tiny stones used to form the picture without magnification...
Close up!
In the Smoking Room there were some lovely paintings - fortunately restored and cleaned of the cigar nicotine deposits... This is a self portrait by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (one of my favourite artists) commissioned in 1791. It's thought she's painting her daughter Julie.
And here she's painted the 4th Earl of Bristol (Frederick Augustus Harvey) in 1790. She's painted him with Vesuvius in the background as he was very interested and was often climbing it!
This was pretty - called the Coromandel Chest 1760. The panels were probably taken from a screen and resized to make the chest which was used by the Harvey children as a toy chest!
The view of the Rotunda from the formal gardens.
We stayed around three hours, and after a quick snack for lunch we drove to Lavenham to visit somewhere we'd not been before - The Little Hall. A pretty little building, parts of which have been around since 1390.
Originally a traditional 'hall' - or large open room - as high as the existing roof made from timber. In the late 1500s/early 1600s extensions were added. From the 1800s to the early 1900s the hall was divided into six separate dwellings (by dividing it into a lower and upper floors and adding partition walls) and various trades and craftsmen used the building (including a cobbler who used the little room on the right of the building as his shop). Eventually in 1924 two twin brothers called Gayer-Anderson bought the house next door and the six cottages and restored the cottages back to a single home called Little Hall. They discovered the timber front under layers of pebble dash render!
It's gone through a few more transitions of use including as an artists hostel, and by 1974 it became a museum. The inside contains many of the Gayer-Anderson collections.
This is the main Dining Hall used by the Gayer-Anderson's. It would have been part of the Great Hall originally without the ceiling.
The back of the house shows the extension to the right. There's quite a large garden at the back which was lovely.
The Panelled room. Each door has been taken from 'Arab bits and pieces' the brothers had collected. They had eleven pairs of decorated wooden lids from some Persian Bridal boxes. Each lid was painted on both sides, so they split the lids into two thin panels which were mounted on the doors. Behind each set they stored antiques.
Close up of one.
More doors acquired from somewhere in the Middle East...
John Gayer-Anderson was an archeologist and he discovered the Bastet cat on a dig in Egypt. The original was given to the British Museum in 1939, this is a replica.
In his study there were some really creepy life masks of John (the archaeologist - to the left), his mother in the centre and his twin Thomas on the right.
Upstairs you can see the original beams of the Tudor building.
One of the rooms upstairs made a comfy bedroom.
More little curios in cupboards - this is a little Chinese jar showing the different Tai Chi poses.
We spent about an hour looking around, then got a few groceries and had an ice cream to cool down before heading back to the AirBnB. We have a tuna salade niçoise for dinner as it's still warm. Tomorrow it's going to be even hotter, and we have our trip to a Tudor house and more...