Back home via one last cultural visit...
Another changeable day and not warm at 19/66F with rain showers. We got up and had breakfast and then popped into Salisbury Cathedral's gift shop to buy a couple of things as small gifts for our cat sitters :)
After which we set off on a completely different way home than the more direct route as there's some motorway 'improvements' on the route that meant it took far too long to go that way home. Instead, we decided to head in a different direction and visit another National Trust property - 'Batemans', which was the home of Rudyard Kipling. More under the obligatory cut..
It's a pretty impressive house, built in 1634 of Ardingley sandstone (quarried nearby), and Kipling bought it in 1902 for himself and his wife Caroline and their children.
At the time they moved in Kipling was already world-famous for writing The Jungle Book which had been translated into many languages worldwide wide and his latest book Kim had just been published. The house retained much of it's original Tudor panelling which Kipling added to and he also modernised it with central heating and electric lighting.
This is the parlour with it's comfortable sofa where guests would gather in the evenings for games, talking and playing with the dogs.
We liked the 1912 phonogram in the corner of the room which had cylinders including Kipling's poems set to music.
In parlour also had this rather interesting Chinese hand-coloured painting about how to gather and make tea. The guide in the room very kindly lit it with her torch as it was very dark in there today:
There were drawings, paintings and sculptures of Rudyard Kipling all over the house:
The original of this is at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
There was a crossover with the visit we made to Sambourne House! A cartoon by Linley Sambourne for Punch magazine of Kipling:
He is still the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature!
The spare bedroom - the bed it actually Kipling and his wife's bed as their bedroom is now a display for many of his treasures. It was tiny! The hangings are reproductions as the original fabric was too fragile to display.
Kipling's study as he would have left it every day - stuffed full of things!
The bedroom of his son who sadly died aged 18 in the first world war.
The dining room with an unusual leather embossed wall covering.
Close up - it was rather spectacular and would have been glittery in lamplight over dinner!
It was an interesting house, but we skipped the gardens (which were extensive) because it had started to drizzle and drove home. We got back around 5 pm.
We've had a lovely few days away and packed in lots of things (and walked 17 miles over the four days) which always pleases us! It is nice to be home again though, and the kitties missed us :)
After which we set off on a completely different way home than the more direct route as there's some motorway 'improvements' on the route that meant it took far too long to go that way home. Instead, we decided to head in a different direction and visit another National Trust property - 'Batemans', which was the home of Rudyard Kipling. More under the obligatory cut..
It's a pretty impressive house, built in 1634 of Ardingley sandstone (quarried nearby), and Kipling bought it in 1902 for himself and his wife Caroline and their children.
At the time they moved in Kipling was already world-famous for writing The Jungle Book which had been translated into many languages worldwide wide and his latest book Kim had just been published. The house retained much of it's original Tudor panelling which Kipling added to and he also modernised it with central heating and electric lighting.
This is the parlour with it's comfortable sofa where guests would gather in the evenings for games, talking and playing with the dogs.
We liked the 1912 phonogram in the corner of the room which had cylinders including Kipling's poems set to music.
In parlour also had this rather interesting Chinese hand-coloured painting about how to gather and make tea. The guide in the room very kindly lit it with her torch as it was very dark in there today:
There were drawings, paintings and sculptures of Rudyard Kipling all over the house:
The original of this is at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
There was a crossover with the visit we made to Sambourne House! A cartoon by Linley Sambourne for Punch magazine of Kipling:
He is still the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature!
The spare bedroom - the bed it actually Kipling and his wife's bed as their bedroom is now a display for many of his treasures. It was tiny! The hangings are reproductions as the original fabric was too fragile to display.
Kipling's study as he would have left it every day - stuffed full of things!
The bedroom of his son who sadly died aged 18 in the first world war.
The dining room with an unusual leather embossed wall covering.
Close up - it was rather spectacular and would have been glittery in lamplight over dinner!
It was an interesting house, but we skipped the gardens (which were extensive) because it had started to drizzle and drove home. We got back around 5 pm.
We've had a lovely few days away and packed in lots of things (and walked 17 miles over the four days) which always pleases us! It is nice to be home again though, and the kitties missed us :)