August 13-16

A first note: This hotel has wi-fi, but it doesn't work very well more than about 5 feet from the d-link box. I've been very frustrated until i finally realized this. Therefore, it's taking WAY TOO LONG to upload pictures, so I'm not putting any more on until some night when I have loads of time. You'll notice places in the blog where I planned to insert pictures. Sorry.

August 16, 2006 A Visit to Kelmscott Manor

Kelmscott Manor was the place William Morris, his wife Janey, and her sometime lover? Daniel Gabriel Rosetti rented far outside London, in order to escape the possible gossip such an arrangement would have caused in London. Take it from me, even today with plenty of roads, it was a challenge to get there. I think it took us an hour to get there, wondering half the way if we were even going in the right direction. Signs aren’t often enough, and when they do have them, they are directly even with the road you’re going to turn off on, so if you don’t know it’s there, you’re past it before you have a chance. These simple mistakes cause us to yell at each other and cast blame regarding whose fault the problem is, navigator’s or driver’s. Since the driver is ultimately responsible, though, it usually falls to me. Of course, I’m concentrating on not driving into oncoming traffic or snapping the car off on the verge (shoulder.)

A brief digression: Here are some road signs “soft verge” “no lay by” “kill your speed” and my favorite: An arrow with a square under it. Never did figure out what that one meant.

Anyway, back to Kelmscott. It was only a summer home, because it had no heat and there was significant flooding in the area in the winter. I guess the Thames is tamed now, so flooding doesn’t happen so much, I guess, as there are a number of other houses in the area. The house is a riot of color with tapestries in every room, lots of Rosetti’s art, including Woman in Blue Silk, which is a painting of Janey, charcoal and pencil drawings of the family, and other wonderful embroideries. The house was rented from the family of a man, Turner, who had been a squire of the area, but who preferred to remain in the city. In one room there was a closed up musical instrument which I was assured was a square piano, about the size of a clavichord. Apparently the A&C people really liked Broadwood pianos. They made cabinets for them. Don't know if that was with Broadwood or not. However, the docents had a piece of paper to read from and were not allowed to touch anything or open anything. Check out this website to see some of the things in the house. http://www.arcaid.captureweb.co.uk/feature.asp?JobNo=7500.

Since they didn’t allow pictures inside the house, so you’ll have to wait to see my postcards.

Leaving Kelmscott we went back to Oxford to get rid of the car, thank God! We had used approximately half a tank of gas, driven about 220 miles, and it cost 25 pounds, or about $40 to fill the tank. Yikes. We were lucky enough to find a free parking spot in Oxford and took a quick trip to the Ashmolean museum to check out the Pre-Raphaelites. They also had a nice harpsichord there, and a clavichord, which definitely is what was in Kelmscott.

We managed to get back to the car rental place, turned out I did not do the scratch on the car, when we got out the documents, it was already notated, so I didn’t even have to worry about it. I’ve never been so glad to say goodbye to a car in my life – well, except when we were in Ireland. I hate driving on the left.

Our new hotel in London is in a nice neighborhood, and is pretty nice – nothing special, but clean. There is a sign in the bathroom that says :bathroom has no floor drain. Please keep shower curtain inside tub when showering.” (but there’s no shower curtain. Apparently they hired one of the guys that designs the highway signs.

Tomorrow we will either go to the Morris Gallery, the Red House, or the Victoria and Albert. Perhaps two of the above. Maybe the internet connection will work a bit better tomorrow.

August 15, 2006 On the trail of Arts and Crafts in the Cotswolds

Another day in the Cotswolds, this one with an achievable goal. That goal was to find some of the places famous to the Arts and Crafts movement. Yesterday in Chipping Campdem we saw an advertisement for a walking tour, but couldn’t find any information because everything was closed. So we decided to stop by there today on our way to Cheltenham to see that museum we didn’t find yesterday. It was relatively easy to get back to Chipping Campden, only two wrong turns and a minimum of screaming and shouting. We were quite lucky when we got there. It turns out it wasn’t so much a tour as a book you could buy that was a self-guided tour. In addition, the man at the tourist office was quite knowledgeable about Arts & Crafts and told us to be sure to visit the Silk Mill. This was a “redundant” building in the time of A&C that was taken over by Ashbee as a workshop in which to train people to be craftsmen.

While we were there one of the silversmiths showed us a book that has been there since Ashbee’s time and allowed us to leaf through it, unsupervised. That was actually quite a thrill. It contained what appeared to be original pictures with old-fashioned looking script that told for whom various items had been built at the workshop. The silversmiths are actual physical descendents of the original workers.

After breakfast which consisted of tea, one scone, and clotted cream and jam, we went on to Hidcote, which is a lovely garden in the Arts and Crafts tradition. It’s a large garden, and made up into a variety of “rooms.” There weren’t really a lot of exotic species, but the arrangements were wonderful. A lot of hydrangias, mostly the lace cap variety, quite a number of lilies, some smaller hydrangea types, phlox, etc. Other than the hydrangeas, most of these things were plants I think should be blooming earlier in the year.


After Hidcote, we went off again to brave the aorta of Cheltenham. An aorta is a town that has a bunch of roads going into it, a designation Zoe gave certain towns in Ireland and which we avoided if at all possible. The Cheltenham museum was described as a small museum without much of a collection. Well, maybe not much, but it had some real treasures. This piano, for instance, was designed around a Broadwood piano works and is the most unusual piano I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, last night I neglected to charge the camera, so this was the only picture there was enough battery left to take. But the lid opens forward and back from the middle.

At the museum we found out there were some Edward Burne Jones at a church in town, so we decided to walk over and see it. It was about 2/3 of a mile back to the car, and the directions were that the church was about the same distance in the other direction. Again, no way I’m getting the car out of the parking lot and driving around in town. So we started walking where we thought we’d been told. Right away, we realized we probably didn’t know where we were so we walked into a Suzuki motorcycle dealership. Believe it or not, this was now 6 p.m. and we hadn’t had anything but the tea and scones all day. I realized I was hungry and couldn’t believe that John wasn’t telling me he was ready to faint. But he was soldiering up quite well. A Snickers bar helped. John had the good luck at the dealership to find a candybar. I had the good luck to meet a guy in there who offered to walk us half way to the church. He was leaving his bike for service and walking home. Not someone I’d usually ask for directions, but he was a very nice guy. When we got to All Saints church, it was closed and the place was totally scaffolded for roof repairs.
It was all locked up, so we walked around the back where some people were watering a garden. The woman was a preschool teacher working on getting her classroom ready for the upcoming term. She told us she couldn’t let us into the church, but after we said we’d come from California, and weren’t going to be here again, and finally she told us she could let us in but she’d have to go with us. It was really quite a fabulous church. The windows were wonderful, but so was the rest of the church. I’m not sure all the windows were actually Burne Jones, and will have to look it up when we visit the V&A.

Tomorrow we go to Kelmscott and then back to Oxford. I hope we’ll be able to find a place to park the car so we can spend some time in oxford. Otherwise, we’ll have to sit around in the train station, because there’s nowhere to check bags. Damn terrorists have screwed up so many things.