Tag: evelyn waugh

Buscot Park + Gardens Faringdon Oxfordshire

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 2, 2026

Setting the World on Fire

It has the strongest axes since President XI ordered Daxing Airport Beijing to be precisely 40 kilometres north of the centre of the Forbidden City. Buscot Park is all about geometry from the central arch of the former stable block framing the fountain in the middle of the Walled Garden to the matching pavilions flanking the main house. All is calm, all is symmetrical, all is balanced. Most excitingly, the Pleasure Grounds fanning out to the east of the house are filled with vistas and eyecatchers. The visit comes about following the purchase of a 1931 tome on the work of Robert and James Adam from Michael Moon’s Bookshop in Copeland, Cumbria. It’s stamped Buscot Park, Faringdon, rousing curiosity. Does Buscot Park still exist? If so, is it worth visiting?

One of the eyecatchers is the tallest sundial in England. Over to craftsperson and stonemason Fergus Wessel, “I was asked by Lord Faringdon to make the Obelisk Sundial to go at the end of a sweeping walk in the grounds of Buscot Park. The obelisk was designed by Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. The obelisk has six faces of green slate with noduses made from bronze with gold plate. On each face I carved Egyptian hieroglyphs which represent six different things, namely the Queen, Morning, Noon, Afternoon, Evening and Eternity. I was given advice on these carvings by an Egyptologist from the British Museum.” Sir Mark is married to the landscape architect Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd whose work includes the courtyard garden at Hôtel Le Bristol Paris.

The British Sundial Society’s Register of Fixed and Mass Dials describes the Obelisk Sundial: “Mounted on a hexagonal pyramidal base, it is five metres tall and made of Portland stone. The dial faces are of Broughton Moor green slate. The dials were delineated by Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd and carved by Fergus Wessel. Six dials are provided, allowing for both halves of the year – days getting longer, days getting shorter.” The Obelisk Sundial terminates the Egyptian Avenue which was completed in 2013. It’s actually at the centre of no fewer than five vistas announced by twin obelisks. Two rows of Chinese warriors make an unlikely appearance outside the Walled Garden.

Bordering these contemporary gardens is the early 1900s Peto Water Garden. This highly structured theatrical design cascades from below the east elevation of the house before entering the eight hectare Big Lake. The contrast between the two waterscapes is breathtaking. The current owner’s great grandfather, financier Alexander Henderson, bought the house and estate in 1889. He was created 1st Baron Faringdon in 1916. Alexander enlarged the 1780s house built by Edward Loveden (likely to the design of James Darley), adding a substantial visitors’ accommodation west wing and porch and dormers designed by Ernest George. He commissioned Ernest’s colleague Harold Peto to remodel the Pleasure Grounds including designing an Italianate garden based around pools and fountains. Harold also remodelled the forecourt.

The circular Swinging Garden is a contemporary insertion between the Peto Water Garden and the Pleasure Grounds. Its name comes from four timber swings surrounding Sycamore Seeds, a kinetic bronze sculpture designed by David Watkinson. The 2nd Baron Faringdon disliked flowers except for water lilies. This preference has largely been followed in recent years, except in the Walled Garden.

Lord and Lady Faringdon now live in a dower house tucked into a valley below the main house. Completed in 2004 at a cost of £2.7 million, Cowper Griffith Architects designed the new house in a Palladian form of central block with short links to flanking wings. Clapboard cladding lends it an American East Coast look. A view of the dower house is included in the painting by Ellen-Ann Hopkins hanging in the tearoom in the converted 18th century stable block.

Charles, 3rd Lord Faringdon, explains, “My father died when I was 16 and my mother lived abroad, so rather to his surprise, my bachelor uncle Gavin Faringdon suddenly found himself landed with a philistine nephew. I was passed around the family – particularly to him but also to his sister, both of whom I loved – for part of my holidays from Eton. Looking back, I was the personification of everything he most deplored but not for one moment did he make it obvious to me. Quite the reverse: he encouraged me to join in his house parties as an adult, provided I never fell asleep on the sofa.”

“My first visits to Buscot coincided with his most politically provocative period, when the house echoed loudest to the rhetoric of Nye Bevan and, later, to the economic theories of Balogh and Kaldor. Every weekend the house was crammed with politicians, painters and friends – sometimes in improbable combinations. I remember vividly when as Chairman of both Societies he had members of the Fabian Society staying and an unexpected busload of botanists from the St Paulia Society arrived for Sunday lunch. The conversation and the food were both in very short supply! The huge bath towels and delicious greenhouse peaches – both were white and warm – were so memorable. It was the same with his collecting. He never minded being unfashionable but he particularly liked the unusual. That went for his choice of furniture as well as friends.”

“In the 1940s Gavin had been responsible for the scheme that effectively handed the Buscot Park estate to the National Trust through businessman Ernest Cook, with a leaseback to the family of the house and grounds. In the 1950s and 1960s the idea of keeping the contents together and of improving and maintaining the Collection took hold, and an autonomous trust was set up with entailed family heirlooms later added. Subsequent endowments have made it possible for the present trustees of the Faringdon Collection to continue to add to it, building on the core established by my great grandfather while being free to put the Collection on public display wherever they choose. A legacy to the Collection in the 1990s allowed the trustees to restore my uncle’s London home in Brompton Square and to open it to the public.”

“Since 1977 when my wife and I came to live at Buscot Park after my uncle’s death we have accumulated a small collection of contemporary paintings and silverware. Any reservations you may have about the internal colour schemes, the changes in the Walled Gardens or the way we open the property must be laid fairly and squarely at my door and not that of the National Trust. The Trust plays no part in the day to day running of Buscot Park nor on the vermilion reds or the germolene pinks we may choose. As a family we endeavour to maintain a country house setting for the Faringdon Collection within the framework of the National Trust that will appeal to those who want to be spared the depressing conformity and bloodless feeling of so many houses now open to the public. Each generation has a duty to breathe life into a property, to enliven it and to adapt it to meet changing circumstances, tastes and technology.”

It’s hard not to still agree with Clifford Musgrave’s description in The Connoisseur, October 1965: “Altogether Buscot Park is an astonishing instance of a house in which the best original elements have been preserved, restored and heightened. The interior further presents decoration and furnishing that crystallise the highest inspiration of their age, with additions of remarkable works of art of the Renaissance and Victorian ages, in surprising but harmonious juxtaposition, combined with some distinguished creations of our own era.”

Born in 1902, Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon, would fall in with a set of vibrant partyers as a student at Oxford. His circle included writers Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. Evelyn would immortalise some of their mutual friends in his 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited. Harold Acton and Brian Howard merged into the witty character Anthony Blanche. Hugh Lygon became the winsome Sebastian Flyte. Irish businessman Brendan Bracken was the inspiration for Canadian businessman Rex Mottram. It was the era of fops and cads and pansies performing hijinks. His bachelor party at the Phyllis Tennis Club in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, on 1 June 1927, was very Bright Young Things. Four days after the event, the Daily Mail published a piece memorably titled “Setting the Thames on fire”:

“Mr Gavin Henderson, who was married to Lord Kylsant’s daughter on Thursday, gave a bachelor party to about 30 friends at the Phyllis Court Club on Wednesday night. The young men arrived in motorcars and before dinner ordered 20 gallons of petrol in buckets. After dinner the petrol was thrown into the river and matches were thrown into it. The petrol caught fire and the flames leapt up the Cromwellian wall, burning off the roses … When the fire had died down the young men returned to their cars and went back to town.”

“Lady Violet and Lady Kylsant were a forceful alliance,” Roger Vlitos records in Gavin Faringdon Portrait of a Rebel Peer (2022), “The young couple were caught in a maternal pincer movement from which there seemed to be no escape.” Gavin’s marriage to Honor Phillips lasted six weeks and was annulled four years later. He never married again. A 1935 Walter Sickert painting hanging in the Staircase Hall captures him wearing a dapper shiny suit.

From socialite to socialist.

In contrast to his Conservative family background, Gavin joined the Labour Party and sat as a peer in the House of Lords. He was an active supporter of the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War, donating his Rolls Royce to be converted into a makeshift ambulance. Gavin housed 40 child refugees fleeing Francisco Franco’s forces in Buscot Park cottages. Exempted from fighting during World War II due to his pacifist position, he served in London and Bristol Fire Brigades. Postwar, he sat on London County Council and campaigned for the preservation of Georgian architecture.

Buscot Park is filled with his art collection. Sir Anthony van Dyke, Rembrandt, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Peter Paul Rubens and Bartolomé Murillo all make appearances. And his furniture collection: Robert Adam and Thomas Hope provide interior highlights, the latter triggering an Egyptian theme that would come to fruition in the latest landscapes. The 1st Lord Faringdon was also an art collector, installing an Edward Burne-Jones series of paintings The Legend of the Briar Rose as an eye level frieze in the Saloon.

Clifford Musgrave, once Director of the Royal Pavilion Brighton, was an expert on Thomas Hope: “Here at Buscot in an appropriate setting is found what is probably the most important surviving group of Thomas Hope’s furniture in existence. This is the Egyptian sofa and a pair of armchairs – all mounted with bronze figures of couchant lions, seated Egyptian figures and canopic vases – that once furnished the Egyptian Gallery at Duchess Street, and were later, about 1825, moved to Deepdene, Hope’s house near Dorking in Surrey.”

Gavin shaved off the architectural accretions of the previous generation, returning the house to a spare late 18th century appearance. The removal of the squashed looking porch was a particular triumph. The slimmest of pedimented projections (with a porthole below its peak) enlivens the south facing entrance front; a pair of deep bows is well placed for capturing a parkland panorama on the north front.

In the 1930s Gavin commissioned Charles Hyslop to design a pair of outlying pavilions to flank the main house. They have identical form – double height temple front ended – but the western pavilion has more windows. It was built as servants’ accommodation and is now National Trust offices. The eastern pavilion is a theatre and indoor squash court. An arch in the western pavilion leads through to a lawn abutting the side elevation of the main house. An arch in the eastern pavilion provides access to an outdoor swimming pool. The lawn and swimming pool are sheltered by tall clipped hedgerows. Charles also designed a forecourt sweeping out to a haha.

External window blinds: practical on a south facing façade with aesthetic worth of neoclassical rationalisation.

Philanthropist Ernest Cook was grandson of Thomas Cook who invented package holidays. He bought the estate in 1948 as part of a carefully structured conservation strategy agreed with Gavin and the National Trust. As Lord Faringdon has explained, Ernest acted as a benevolent financial bridge allowing the family to stay in their ancestral home while legally locking in long term preservation under the protection of the National Trust.

Lord and Lady Faringdon’s oldest son James Henderson now lives in the main house with his wife Lucinda and their three children. He explains, “My parents live on the estate as well in a smaller very comfortable house. They are still overseeing the gardens – their great passion. We love hosting dinner parties, especially when we can follow them with a concert in our little theatre. We’re always looking for ways to expand and enrich the Collection. We also want to develop new routes through the woods and the park so that visitors can enjoy the grounds all year round. We would love for future generations to be able to enjoy it here even more than we do now.”

First and lasting impressions of Buscot Park are of a country house and estate in their prime, greatly developed in the last two centuries. Looking bright, if burnt, in the fifh heatwave of the season. The avenue is flanked by a pair of ashlar gatelodges: the westernmost a 1930s remodelling of a 1780s building; the easternmost, built to match in the 1930s. Charles Hyslop’s design is pure timeless neoclassicism. The principal elevations appear single storey while the elevations facing away from the avenue reveal both gatelodges to be two storey. Their Georgian appearance (main house maquettes) along Lechlade Road contrasts with the Tudor Revival houses of the nearest hamlets: Buscot and Eaton Hastings. Little Lake lies to the southeast of the gatelodges and is a foretaste of the bucolic landscapes to come.

Buscot Park still exists; it’s worth visiting.

Design

Youghal Cork +

Pacata Hibernia

Y’all, armed with a Country Life article by Christopher Beharrell titled A Microcosm of Munster, published on 14 July 1977, this tour of the intriguing County Cork town of Youghal takes a route roughly south to north, following the western coast of the vast Blackwater Harbour and ending by crossing the bridge over Blackwater River into neighbouring County Waterford. First impressions of Youghal are good: Lighthouse Road wends its way along the picturesque water’s edge. Pairs of large Victorian villas high up on on the inland side of the road, some castellated, overlook Youghal Lighthouse. Completed in 1852 to the design of engineer George Halpin, the lighthouse marked Youghal’s growing importance as a port. The opening of the Cork and Youghal Railway eight years later allowed the town to develop in tandem as a resort.

In Christopher’s words: “The Blackwater, rivalling the Shannon among the great rivers of southern Ireland, flows out into a wide estuary between the Counties of Cork and Waterford. At its conclusion, on the western shore, lies the town of Youghal, some 30 miles east of Cork and 48 miles southwest of Waterford. Youghal itself rose to prominence from the 12th century as an Anglo Norman port, although the Danes, realising its advantages as a seaside raiding base and outport for the rich monastic settlements of the Blackwater valley, had occupied the site probably from the mid 9th century.”

Blackwater River swells into a massive basin before narrowing into Youghal Harbour. The shoreline opposite Youghal Lighthouse is dotted with grand detached houses surrounded by fields. One three bay two storey rendered house is mysteriously flanked by larger scale single storey single bay exposed stone ruinous wings. Keeping west coast of the harbour, Dublin scale late Georgian townhouses form the next concentric ring heading towards the medieval heart of the town.

One of the most prominent buildings on the main road running through Youghal is South Abbey National School. Built in 1817 as a Church of Ireland chapel of ease, this Tudoresque rendered building has a street facing crenellated gable over a pointed arched window with limestone transoms and tracery. Slim octagonal towers rise are attached to the corners of this elevation. A crenellated boxy porch topped by corner obelisks projects from the street front. At the opposite end of the building an entrance tower with a crenellated parapet rises above the pitched roof of the nave. The nave elevation has four similar pointed arched windows. A floor was later inserted when the building was used as a parish hall creating two layers of internal space each measuring 185 square metres.

A sign hanging in a vacant shop window on South Main Street tells, “The remarkable story of Jack Foley”. He was born in Youghal in 1865 and appears on the 1891 Census as an able seaman working aboard the Octacillius, then docked at Swansea. Jack signed on to the Titanic in Southampton where he was then living as a storekeeper. As the ship was sinking in 1912, Jack along with two other crewmen took charge of Lifeboat Four, guiding dozens of women and children to safety as they awaited rescue from the Carpathia. He continued working at sea, later serving on the Majestic, before his death 22 years later. A few shop windows away, a cat sleeps curled in the morning sun, nonchalantly unaware of its nautical antique backdrop.

There’s no ambiguity to when the historic centre begins: half a kilometre north of South Abbey National School a six storey building (four floors over a double height arch spanning North Main Street) marks the spot. Designed and built by local developer William Meade, Clock Gate Tower replaced an earlier structure which was one of four gatehouses forming part of the town’s original fortifications. It was previously used as a prison. Clock Gate Tower is well restored although the floorspace doesn’t appear to be occupied. Perfect as an Irish Landmark Trust property!

One of the town’s most extraordinary survivals is also one of its most understated. A stone doorway surround with spandrils, first floor slit window and lintel floating over a 20th century window on an otherwise unadorned gabled façade are the only external clues of past ecceslesisatical glories. Over to Christopher: “On the other side of Main Street and further south, there is an interesting survival of a street facing gable from the conventual buildings of a Benedictine priory founded around 1350 as a dependency to the wealthy priory of St John at Waterford. The south wall remains, built into a passage inside the electrical shop, and in it are set an original piscina and aumbry.”

“We are a food and design led company in that we like healthy, tasty and well presented food as well as practical and sustainable design,” explains Carol Murphy, Head of Marketing for Priory Coffee Company. “We were brave enough to open in Youghal in July 2017 when many people were saying they weren’t sure about the location. Youghal and its people have been super to us. We believe in sensitively repurposing old buildings and working with other local businesses and suppliers. Our building in Youghal is dated from 1350 and is called The Priory hence the name of our company. We worked closely with planners and conservation officers who have been very supportive.” It has since expanded to outlets in Fermoy, Mallow, Riverstick and two in Cork City.

A blackboard hanging on the long wall of the upper floor café contains nuggets of history and health: “Youghal folklore says that the first potatoes in Ireland were brought into the town from Virginia by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585. Potatoes are naturally fat free and low in salt. They contain more vitamin C than an orange. The Irish potato market is valued at €195 million to the Irish economy. The average annual Irish consumption of potatoes is 85 kilograms per person compared to 35 kilograms globally.” Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been granted land around Youghal in the Plantation of Munster, was Mayor 1558 to 1589.

The blackboard also contains details of suppliers to Priory Coffee Company: “Le Caveau are specialty wine merchants. Set up in 1999 in Kilkenny, they specialise in importing artisanal wines sourced directly from small family operated vineyards from around the world. The wines truly reflect their region of origin and they deliver the right balance of purity, natural freshness and drinkability.” And, “Kush Shellfish is a family run Irish Seafood business based in Kenmare. Their organic rope mussels are grown in Class A water in a special area of conservation in the deep clear Atlantic waters of Kenmare Bay.”

If the Priory could easily be overlooked, Red House a few doors down is an eyecatching piece of exuberant architecture even though it’s set back a full neighbouring building’s depth from the pavement behind cast iron railings. The two storey plus attic façade is built of Dutch orange brick painted a pinkish hue which contrasts with whitish limestone dressings of quoins, dentilled cornicing and a string course to form a highly distinctive geometric composition. A hooded doorcase’s arched outline is matched by a semicircular pedimented dormer on either side of the tall pediment lit by an oculus over the three bay breakfront. This grand seven bay wide building was most likely designed by the Dutch architect Claud Leuventhen for the landed Uniacke family who also lived at Mount Uniacke, a country estate 12 kilometres inland to the west of Youghal. Period features fill the 633 square metres of accommodation over three principal floors.

“Main Street offers the only extant examples of the type of medieval domestic building indicated on the 16th century Pacata Hibernia Map,” explains Christopher. “Of the several castles built in the town, the 15th century Tynte’s Castle remains. It is a strong square tower with embrasured walls, rather featureless, and now in poor condition.” Tynte’s Castle stands diagonally opposite Red House. Like Clock Gate Tower, this three storey building doesn’t appear to be in active use but is in good condition. The Victorian tripartite windows on the first and second floors along with the wide timber doorcase have been restored. Again, perfect as an Irish Landmark Trust property! Overall, Youghal is in a better state than its description almost half a century ago in Country Life.

The next turning on the left along North Main Street leads to the town’s two most renowned buildings. Church Street rises up a hill lined with three storey Georgian houses and a two storey building bearing the alarming plaque “Protestant Asylum” to open into one of Ireland’s great townscapes: St Mary’s Church and Myrtle Grove. Back to Christopher, “St Mary’s became a collegiate church in 1464, when the 8th Earl of Desmond placed it in the care of the Fellows of the College of St Mary, which he had built beside it. This College, although not strictly a university, was perhaps the first non monastic teaching establishment in Ireland, and the building, even when it ceased to function as a college, played an interesting part in their town’s later history. The warden lived in a house on the other side of the church, now known as Myrtle Grove, which despite its Elizabethan features and later associations with Sir Walter Raleigh appears from a deed dated 1461 to have been built about the same time as the College.”

This Anglican and Episcopalian church is filled to its antique scissors truss rafters with effigies, not least the flamboyant tomb of Sir Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, richest Irishman of his day. Pure 17th century bling! Below the Chancel East Window outside, the gravestone of English journalist Claud Cockburn (1904 to 1982) and his second wife, an Anglo Irish artist Patricia Cockburn née Arbuthnot (1914 to 1989), is close to the entrance gates. In 2024, his son Patrick Cockburn published a biography Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerilla Journalism. He records Claud being educated at Oxford alongside his cousin Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. After a career in sharp edged political journalism – he once described Lady Nancy Astor MP as “a vigorous if not very profound personality” – Claud settled in Ireland with Patricia.

Patrick recalls, “When it came to food and drink and general comfort, we lived well in Ireland, though our day to day way of life was closer to the first half of the 19th century than the second half of the 20th. Claud and Patricia had moved into our beautiful but dilapidated Georgian country house, called Brook Lodge, when they arrived from England in 1947 … the ancient town of Youghal was a mile away on the estuary of the Blackwater River on the coast of East Cork.”

Howley Hayes Cooney Architecture’s 2024 Conservation Report states, “Myrtle Grove is one of the oldest examples of an unfortified residence in the country, and is both a Recorded Monument and a Protected Structure. A similar house appears on one of the earliest surviving maps of Youghal, known as Pacata Hibernia, which is thought to represent the town around 1585 during the time of the Desmond Rebellions. Architectural merit lies in the pleasing Elizabethan style and aesthetic, and the interiors of the house are also relatively intact, with 16th century oak panelling and carved Elizabethan fireplaces throughout the first floor.” There are 226 Protected Structures in the town.

It also states, “The history is equally rich, with possible ties to the neighbouring Church of St Mary and the former College, and previous residents such as Sir Walter Raleigh. Since it was constructed, the house has served continuously as a home to many generations. The combination of these various layers of significance, the great age and the rare Elizabethan interiors, probably make Myrtle Grove the most important middle sized house in Ireland, and arguably a place of international cultural significance.” Like Red House, it’s got wonderfully tall chimneys. In recent years, the Irish Georgian Society has contributed towards restoration of its historic windows.

The two storey plus attic Myrtle Grove and its two storey gatehouse can be glimpsed over the stone boundary walls of St Mary’s. Christopher describes what lies beyond and above the hillside graveyard, “The extent and shape of the enclosing walls is not traceable in the town today, but the sizeable stretch which remains at the back on the west side is worth a visit because there are not many Irish towns which still preserve a stretch of medieval walling, and because this reach includes one of the 13 defensive towers.”

Lasting impressions of Youghal are good: not least Mistletoe Castle. This romantically named extraordinary sight lies 1.2 kilometres south of the border of Counties Cork and Waterford and is the most northerly building within the town boundary. If the symmetry of Red House and the tower that is Tynte’s Castle and the crenellations of South Abbey National School and the pointed arched windows of St Mary’s Church were thrown into an architectural blender, Mistletoe Castle may well appear. It’s a skinny rich seven bay country house dating from the 1770s which was given its dramatic Dracula meets Rapunzel meets cardboard cutout Gothic Revival makeover six decades later. The road facing front jumps between two, three and five storeys to deliver a gigantic crenellated crenellation roofline.

Sam Maderson of Keystone Masonry based in Tallow, County Waterford, completed a four year apprenticeship at Weymouth School of Stonemasonry, now located in Poundbury, Dorset. He then won a year long scholarship with The Prince’s Foundation to study the restoration and conservation of historical buildings. His career working in stone began two decades ago restoring his family home, a historic coach house in Cappoquin, County Waterford. Sam and his team of masons worked on the recent restoration of the limestone and rendered Mistletoe Castle. Built as the summer residence of the Villiers-Stuarts of Dromana House in Cappoquin, County Waterford, it gleams even under a rain cloud which suddenly appears upon departure from Youghal.

Architecture Art People

SABBATH PLUS ONE Church of the Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem + Queen Helena

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date May 17, 2024

Heir of All Things

“They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means ‘the Place of the Skull’).” John 19:17

That palimpsest of architectural taste, a panoply of passion, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks “the unexpected … unforgettable” (Pierre Loti, La Galilée, 1895) spot. Or at least one of the spots identified as the place where Christ was crucified. It’s the most ecumenical building imaginable, shared by a cluster of Christian denominations: Armenian Apostolic; Catholic; Coptic; and Ethiopian, Greek and Syriac Orthodox. Priests and their acolytes competitively stride round, swinging incense, ringing bells and chanting loudly. Emperor Constantine the Great built the founding church in the 4th century to commemorate his conversion to Christianity. “The most magnificent of his monuments,” claim Teddy Kellek and Moshe Pearlman in Jerusalem Sacred City of Mankind (1968).

Emperor Constantine’s mother Queen Helena had identified the site based on the discovery of the remains of three crosses and a nearby tomb known as ‘Anastasis’ (Greek for resurrection). “Just the place for a basilica,” Evelyn Waugh imagines she would say in his historical novel of 1950, Helena. Adrian Wolff summarises Her Majesty’s achievements in Israel: A Chronology (2004), “327 AD Queen Helena (St Helena), a devout Christian, travels to Palestina, identifying original Christian Holy Sites connected with Jesus, constructing Byzantine style churches on these sites.” Todd Fink (Jerusalem and Central Israel, 2021) expands on Queen Helena’s oeuvre, “She helped establish the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives (currently known as the Pater Noster Church), the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Reverend Andy Rider (Life is For Giving, 2018) adds, “God’s presence is thicker in ancient churches through hundreds of years of prayers. Step into it!”

William Thackeray gasps in Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (2017), “The situation of the tomb (into which, be it authentic or not, no man can enter without a shock of breathless fear, and deep and awful self humiliation) must have struck all travellers.” Through the centuries, battling the pedagogy of the unpredictable, the church was destroyed, rebuilt, set on fire, hit by an earthquake and finally restored by King Abdullah II of Jordan. The Rock of Calvary is encased in glass: a divine vitrine. Private tour guide Ibrahim Ghazzawi suggests, “The crosses would likely have been wedged into cracks in the rock.” There are three domes; Orthodox Christians believe church domes represent heaven’s vaults. Philip Larkin’s poem Church Going (The Less Deceived, 1955) contains the line “A serious house on serious earth”. It is what it was.

Daphne du Maurier (Not After Midnight and Other Stories, 1971) describes a tour guide’s experience: “On, on, ever upwards, ever climbing, the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre rearing above him … the Church of the Holy Sepulchre enveloped him. He was aware of darkness, scaffolding, steps, the smell of many bodies and much incense.” The church contains the final five Stations of the Cross. The earlier nine Stations line Via Dolorosa. “‘The royal banners forward go, the cross shines forth in mystic glow,’” quotes The Right Reverend Rowan Williams in God With Us: The Meaning of the Cross and Resurrection, Then and Now (2017). “To sing that hymn for the first time each successive year is for many of us the real beginning of the Passion season.”

Andre Moubarak’s 2017 guide One Friday in Jerusalem sets out the importance of Via Dolorosa, “On a narrow street only 2,000 feet long in Old Jerusalem, the storey of redemptive history drew to its agonising glorious climax. Maronites served as the first tour guides of the Holy Land for visiting Europeans – first the Crusaders, then pilgrims.”

Centre for Action and Contemplation teacher Cynthia Bourgeault believes, “The Passion is really the mystery of all mysteries, the heart of the Christian faith experience. By the word ‘Passion’ we mean the events which end Jesus’s earthly life: His betrayal, trial, execution on a cross, and death.” Reverend Jennie Hogan recommends, “Christ makes the way for us.”

Reverend Robert Willis details in The Architectural History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem (1849), “The Church in its general plan may be described as a Romanesque cruciform structure, having a circular nave to the West, a north and stransept, and a short Eastern limb or choir terminated by an apse. An aisle runs through the circular nave, on three of its sides. Also there is an aisle at the end of each transept, and on the east and west sides of each transept; and an aisle passes around the apse, and has chapels radiating from it, in the usual manner.” Henry Van Dyke (Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land: Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit, 1908) mentions its “dim and shadowy” interior. Borrowing from Joseph Roth’s The Wandering Jews (1927), “Candles burn now for all the dead. Other candles are lit for the living.”

Simon Goldhill notes in Jerusalem City of Longing (2008), “The first shock to anyone used to the great cathedrals of Europe such as Chartres or Notre Dame, or ever to the vast institution of the Vatican, is just how hard it is to find the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” This unresolved siting is matched only by the architecture: what the aforementioned author calls “the irredeemable confusion of the church itself”. George Knight (The Holy Land Handbook, 2011) considers it “gangly and unplanned”.

“When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals – one on His right, the other on His left.” Luke 23:33

(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design People

Saltburn + Drayton House Lowick Northamptonshire

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date January 7, 2024
42 Comments on Saltburn + Drayton House Lowick Northamptonshire

The Go Betweeners

The beautiful Rosamund Pike is such a talented comedic British actress that somehow channelling Lady Elspeth Catton she even makes naming a gravestone font “Times New Roman” sound hilarious. If you’ve heard that the film Saltburn is Brideshead Revisited on a high, The Go Between on a low or The Shining somewhere in between, think again. Writer Director Emerald Fennell’s dazzling genius is to create her own genre of thriller-comedy-romance-drama-gorefest while breaking taboos you didn’t even know existed. And then to line up la crème de la crème of British acting (Rosamund, Carey Mulligan and co) and emerging Irish talent (Barrie Keoghan and Allison Oliver). Only Emerald could musically bookend to perfection a film using Handel’s Zadok the Priest and Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor – from majestic hauteur to killer moves.

Daughter of the jewellery and silverware designer Theo Fennell, she confides, “I love my name. I think it’s all the things perhaps that I am which is unironic, unsubtle and slightly over the top!” True to form, Saltburn is unironic, unsubtle and, begging to differ, wildly over the top. Emerald goes forth, “I don’t think irony is helpful because it’s a lie, it’s double talk. Things do not have to be all done in the same way. You can be earnest, you can earnestly love things, you can be unsubtle, you can be overwrought, you can be melodramatic and gothic, you can be all those things. In terms of dramatic narratives, you’re looking to find the thing that gets inside you in a way that’s truly sexy and disturbing.”

Saltburn’s a period film set mainly way back in ye olde days of 2007 when everybody smoked indoors and got wings downing Red Bull and eyebrow piercings were à la mode. The opening scenes are all about antics in an Oxford college before things really hot up at the voluminous country house of Saltburn. Emerald chose Drayton House next to the picturesque village of Lowick in Northamptonshire to be Saltburn. She wanted somewhere that wasn’t well known or on the tourist trail. Drayton House is all that and more – it never was and never will be open to the public. The cast and crew spent a full summer here; then the six metre high wrought iron gates were locked for good. Artistic integrity is secured by shooting every Saltburn scene at Drayton. This avoids the visual confusion of Julian Fellowes’ Gosford Park film flitting between the exterior of Luton Hoo (Bedfordshire), the reception rooms of Wrotham Park (Hertfordshire), the bedrooms of Syon House (London) and a film studio kitchen at Shepperton Studios, London.

“A lot of people get lost in Saltburn,” warns Duncan the butler. The characters get lost in the mansion, lost in the maze, lost in the madness, but never in translation. There are references within references in the dialogue. Saltburn heir Felix Catton (played by Australian Jacob Elordi who delivers another masterful triumph of capturing the upper class English accent), nonchalantly boasts, “Evelyn Waugh’s characters are based on my family actually. Yeah, he was completely obsessed with our house.” Turns out Brideshead was really based on Saltburn not Castle Howard in Yorkshire! His father Sir James Catton amusingly played by Richard E Grant organises a house party and listing names of the invitees complains, “Stopford Sackville has cried off.” The Stopford Sackvilles are the owners of Drayton House.

To say Saltburn is beautifully shot is to say a Gainsborough portrait is well lit or Grinling Gibbons knew a thing or two about framing. The symmetry of reflection is just one technique used to great effect, whether a candlelit dinner table or moonlit pond. Those Caravaggio like stills. Shooting on squarish four by three aspect ratio film captures the height of the architecture and interiors. The closeted cloistered class obsessed quad of the Oxford college followed by the country house courtyard emphasises the exclusivity of this upper echelon world. There’s symmetry in the writing too: Felix takes his guest Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan accelerating from mellow to moody to murderous) on an introductory whirlwind tour of the house starting in the great hall. At the end of the film Oliver will dance the same route sans vêtements in reverse, ending in the great hall. What could possibly go wrong in such gorgeous surroundings? The clue is in the script notes, “It’s all beautiful but it’s about to get messy, fast.”

Drayton House was the cover girl of the March / April 1987 edition of Traditional Interior Decoration, a seriously seminal well written fabulously photographed short lived much missed magazine. The cover money shot of the swirling staircase was accompanied by a 14 page spread salivating over the ravishing rooms. “The grey stone Elizabethan east wall of Drayton,” writes Michael Pick, “masks the baroque façade of 1702 covering a late 13th century great hall which forms the core of the house.” The medieval hammerbeam roof of the great hall is concealed by a 17th century baroque barrel vaulted ceiling designed by William Talman, architect of Chatsworth in Derbyshire. The writer concludes, “It has never been a setting for country house parties …” Rarely has an ellipsis worked so hard or been so ominous.

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Quique Dacosta + Quique Dacosta

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date December 13, 2016
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Arts and Roses

Evelyn Waugh called life a “hamper of perishable goods”. Suppers literally are but this one’s for the memory bank. A triple starred Michelin chef cooking specially for Lavender’s Blue. It may be a long way from his eponymous restaurant near Valencia but, spoiler alert, Quique Dacosta is looking to open in London before too long. “The first thing is I love London.” Recognised as Spain’s leading chef heading up one of the world’s best restaurants, Quique digresses, “I wanted to be a DJ when I was young, not a cook. I’m too old for that now!” Music’s loss; cuisine’s gain.

“Don’t try this at home unless you have a Porcelanosa kitchen!” quips Quique. He has partnered with the luxury Spanish owned company to create a new kitchen design called Emotions. “My restaurant and Porcelanosa are neighbours. We share the same good quality and innovation so it was a natural experience.” Oak panels slide back to reveal everything and the kitchen sink: an element of surprise that is also a trademark of his cooking.

“Please don’t eat the daisies,” sang Doris Day but she didn’t say anything about roses. Yup, the crimson petals are for eating. Surely the pebbles in the ceramic bowl aren’t? “Some are stuffed with Manchego and truffle,” Quique explains. “Others are actual pebbles. Choose carefully – we guarantee we don’t have dental security!” A wooden plate holds equally enigmatic objects, this time a cluster of brown, orange and green crispy leaves. They turn out to be made of root mushroom, orange peel and green pickled pepper. Easy. An apple and gold powder cocktail completes this introductory culinary voyage of discovery.

He points to the yellowish fish containers for the ceviche course. “We throw a lemon in the sea and two days later it comes back as a lemon fish! Valencia has a tradition of cured rare fish. This is fillet of sole in salt and sugar. The sauce is made out of the roasted bones of the fish. The kumquats are from the terrace of my restaurant. So are the lemons – we have 330 small citrus trees along our terrace. This soup has a chili and citrus aroma. The pineapple juice foam on top is for decoration.”

A frying pan of eggs appears. We’re warned things are about to become a little more complicated. More so? Shirley Conran famously remarked “life is too short to stuff a mushroom” but we discover not an egg. Quique stuffs the egg whites full of truffle under a jelly skin and covers them with a white asparagus shell and gold leaf. “The good thing is my food is always good!” Albarino Martín Códax and Rioja Crianza are served.

“In Valencia the most emblematic dish is paella,” confirms Quique. “When you Google Spanish food tapas comes up but tapas are from northern Spain, the Basque Country. Rice is the principal ingredient of paella and it is always served as a main course in Spanish tradition. There’s no cheese in this dish. I’ve used cream which is lighter than the parmesan texture of risotto. Black grated truffle and trumpet of chestnut mushroom make it dark with a lot of different textures. The rice is from the landscape in Valencia.”

“You fancy a little sweet? Why not?” Nothing is Ronseal (”does exactly what it says on the tin”) with Quique Dacosta but the name of his pudding is a clue. Strange Flowers. “You won’t know any of these flowers though! They have lots of aromatic flavours but aren’t as heavy as the mains which were very rich. Their very light vibrancy contrasts with the fishy and acidic flavours earlier.” Mango and lychee are two of the more recognisable ingredients. If anyone needs to sample a hamper for Quique Dacosta London, we’re on standby.

Tags albarino martín códax, arts and roses, doris day, elbulli, emotions, evelyn waugh, lavender's blue, porcelanosa, quique dacosta, rioja crianza, ronseal, shirley conran, strange flowers, stuart blakley, valencia

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