Please, touch the exhibits ... Avebury Manor

I've been meaning to write this post for weeks, since my weekend in Wiltshire back in, when was it, September, but a project at work, trying to impress a new boss and being a good all-rounder got in the way, and then there were some compelling books that I picked up and couldn't put down and now it's November and that means NaNoWriMo and so ...

Enough excuses?  Enough excuses!

Avebury Manor, which pictures will remind me of late-summer and gardens filled with bumble bees and blossoms and oh, it was such a nice, friendly place to visit and a real antidote to the disappointing B&B where I'd spent the night.

Avebury Manor has been home to many families since it was built in the 1550's. In 2011 a team of historians, designers, craftsmen and volunteers transformed it for a major TV project.

The rooms are decorated to reflect key moments in its history, linked to the real stories of the house and its occupants (National Trust) 

The entrance is through a delightful garden. In September it was filled with dahlias which, I was told, would soon be lifted and stored for the winter. I spent a great deal of time dallying among the dahlias, taking photographs that would, I hoped, be the subject of some amateur art-work when time permitted and which, so far, it hasn't, so that's another reminder to myself to make time in my busy life to do that which pleases me.

A colour-coordinated bee.

I love the detail of his wings, I think that he may be my first subject when I dig out my sketchbook.

The garden was, of course, filled with the buzzing of industrious insects which, with the autumn sunshine and the scents of flowers created a very relaxing and zen atmosphere.

I could sit here uploading dahlias all day, and why not?
It occurs to me that digital photography is one of modern life's blessings, Does anyone remember the days when you took a roll of film to the chemist to be processed and received back a motley collection of prints, some of them over-exposed, many of them of people missing their feet, all pot-luck and a pretty pricey exercise.  
 

When I could finally tear myself away from the flowers I entered the manor house.

I'm accustomed to being greeted by stern-faced guides and that silky red rope that keeps the public away from the furnishings. No matter how hard I try I can't help feeling a sense of inferiority, like one of the staff grudgingly permitted to venture upstairs on special occasions, when faced with those red ropes. I do understand that we can't be trusted, I once spoke politely but firmly to a rather large American tourist who plonked her posterior on one of Victor Hugo's chairs in his house in La Place des Vosges in Paris, but still, I dislike the red ropes intensely.

So I was surprised and delighted to be greeted by smiling guides who invited me to wander at will and please, sit on the sofas and finger the furnishings to your heart's content.    

The Elizabethan room was one of my favorites.
Sad to say that I was so busy chatting to the guide and admiring the room that I only took one picture. Which means that I'll have to return before too long to take more. Such serendipity!

Upstairs in the Queen Anne room the guide asked me to climb onto the four-poster bed and, accompanied by another visitor, I sat and listened as she talked about the room and its restoration. And then a family came in and the small children clambered onto the bed with us and I told them a short bedtime story before wishing them goodnight and tip-toeing out.    

The next room was my second-favourite, or perhaps joint second with the kitchen,  because I could imagine sitting on the chaise longue with a book, the sunlight streaming through the window, a clock ticking companionably nearby and a dog snoring on the rug. It was a room in which a lady would loosen her corsets, let out a sigh of relief and relax.        

Downstairs again because sadly the Elizabethan bedroom had recently suffered a floor-malfunction when great chunks of plaster fell into the room below and a close inspection revealed woodworm and rot in the timbers. Such are the pitfalls of living in an old house.





The dining room, like the other rooms, had been decorated and furnished to match the era of one of the house's owners and I'm afraid that I can't recall who or when, but the hand-painted wallpaper was produced in China and is quite lovely.


I sat at the table, I tried out the cutlery and raised a glass of wine and imagined dinners taken there,  and all under the smiling gaze of the guide.  

My friend H.H. would love this room, quite manly and with riding boots under the side-table and crops nearby.

She also would appreciate the hunting scene. We've had many a disagreement over the cruelty, or not, of hunting foxes with hounds, she having been a keen huntsman (woman)  and me being the type who takes dead pigeons home to cremate in the fireplace and who rescues snails from busy footpaths.  

Each to their own ...




In the kitchen a couple of children were mixing bread.
"This is so cool," one of them said.
"Yeah, I'm going to peel a spud," said her brother.

The tea in the pot was hot. I poured a cup for a fellow visitor, and it struck me that we were interacting with the house and the exhibits but also, equally importantly, many of us were interacting with each other. And that was nice.

I did, however, decline to black-lead the range.

In the sitting room the time was the 1930's. On the radio Chamberlain was declaring, " This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a Final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.  I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany."

I sat in a chair and felt a chill run down my spine, and the realisation that they heralded another war with all its horror, and a sense of the futility of nations fighting nations. But I also felt a sense of pride that this little island was, once again, one of the first to stand up against tyranny.

It's strange, and it was unexpected, but it was in this room that I could, had I been given to such flights of fancy, have felt the presence of people who once lived here. Later I realised it was because it was familiar to me from my childhood and my paternal grandparents' home. It was quite comforting, feeling that connection to my own past.

And so to leave the house having only described those parts of it that appealed to me the most, and to enter the other gardens.

Of course I coveted the vegetable garden, whose produce may be purchased, although in late September there was only a marrow on offer. A large and splendid marrow of course but ...

I pinched a sprig of lavender to take with me, mea culpa but it could be considered an act of pruning, perhaps?

And so to the end of my visit to Avebury Manor.

I recommend it, in fact I encourage you to visit, especially if you have children or if your inner child is not far from the surface, because it really is as visitor-friendly and welcoming as I hope I've portrayed. And as much fun.

Is there room for another dahlia picture?

Of course there is!

Circling Stonehenge ...

The English Heritage website describes it as:

Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous prehistoric monument in the world. Begun as a simple earthwork enclosure, it was built in several stages, with the unique lintelled stone circle being erected in the late Neolithic period around 2500 BC. Stonehenge remained important into the early Bronze Age, when many burial mounds were built nearby. Today


Stonehenge, together with Avebury and other associated sites, forms the heart of Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site", with a unique and dense concentration of outstanding prehistoric monuments
English Heritage

Stonehenge had changed since my last visit around twelve years ago with The Bostonian, his son and my Rags. Not the stones, of course, they remain solid and unchanging now that they have English Heritage acting as their custodians, but the layout of the visitor facilities which have been moved from the area near to the stones and are now about a mile away.

So now you enter from a roundabout to a large car-park, a new entrance where the queues were long because I had timed my visit to coincide with the autumn equinox, a beautiful sunny day and with the recent showing of a BBC TV series about the recent archaeological work at Stonehenge and the surrounding area. I had been aware that I could have pre-booked a ticket but I'd foolishly dismissed that good advice and so I kicked myself as I joined the end of the slow-moving queue. And then I thought, why not cut the queue by joining English Heritage, which would also give me free-entry to many other places to visit and so two birds, one stone, if you excuse the pun. I popped into the E.H office and a lovely lady sorted out my annual membership, gave me a bag full of goodies and led me past the ticket office and past the queue to pick up my audio guide (I was given two which meant I was able to pass on the spare to a lady who'd neglected to collect hers) and so to enter the site. Perfect!      

I chose to take a shuttle-bus to the stones rather than walk on wonky-knees that had stiffened-up during the sixty-minutes of stop-start crawling along the two miles or so of dual-suddenly-narrowing-to-single-carriageway, trust me, the traffic can be a problem when approaching Stonehenge. (See also Equinox and The BBC above.) Some people in their reviews have complained about being 'shuttled to the stones' but it's purely a matter of choice and one can, if one wishes, walk. Or, do as I did, and hop off the shuttle-bus half-way to take in the landscape and some of the nearby barrows as you walk the last half-mile up to Stonehenge.

I love the Neolithic, I love stone circles, I love prehistoric treasures, but even so I was not prepared for the feeling of, how to describe it, the sensation of being close to the people who once walked on that land. It was like being transported back in time, and feeling as if turning my head quickly would enable me to catch a glimpse of one of our ancestors. It was like looking back through the millennia to the Neolithic landscape. Hardly surprising, perhaps, that the past should feel so present where from every angle, whichever way you turn, you see barrows and stones and the faint lines of former henges and avenues.

And I arrived at the stones...
   

I walked round once while listening to my audio player which gave a brilliant account of the history of Stonehenge, the people who brought the stones to this site, when and why, and some added extra information for those who, like me, couldn't get enough of it.

And I took photographs, lots of photographs of the stones and the crows and also some of the other tourists who asked me if I would kindly take their group photographs, quite a few of them in fact...

And I spent a great deal of time snapping and chatting, and once or twice I explained a couple of the signs to a nice Italian family who didn't speak English...

And I acted like a tourist, except that no-one took my photograph...







And then I popped my camera away and switched off my audio-player and I walked around the stones again...

And this time it felt as if everyone else had vanished...

and even though I knew that there were hundreds of people around me, and they were chattering and laughing and posing for 'selfies' ...

The second time that I walked round the stones it was as if I was totally alone...

I often feel that we spend far too much time viewing the world through the lens of a camera and fail to see it with our own eyes, and so I walked and I looked.

I could have circled the stones at Stonehenge all evening, all night if that had been permitted, but I was exhausted and felt a little punch-drunk, so I hopped on the bus back to the visitor centre, grateful to be able to sit down and rest my aching knees.

I spent a lot of money in the shop. It was a rare act of indulgence as I filled my basket with postcards and pictures, books and key-chains and a large, beautifully decorated mug that, I've discovered, holds enough liquid for me to enjoy a pleasant thirty minutes in bed each morning sipping tea and contemplating the day ahead.

And then to the exhibition...

You enter a large circular area where you are surrounded by an almost-360 degree picture of how Stonehenge would have looked when it was first constructed.  

And the images change to show a summed solstice sun rising over the stones...

And snow falling during a winter solstice...

Which, of course, I loved.
I'd have spent more time in there, watching the changing scenes but time was passing and there were no benches on which to sit and I was tired, and so I allowed myself to watch just one more year at Stonehenge and then I entered the exhibition itself.

It was thrilling to see these objects from the past

And the bones of an ancestor...

I left clutching my large bag of goodies, my knees-aching were but I was smiling as I set off to drive the 25 miles to Avebury and the B&B in which I'd booked a room for the night.

I think I may be returning to Stonehenge soon...

Advice For Visitors:
1. Pre-book a ticket or, better still, join English Heritage
2. The visitor's centre has a cafe, toilets, a large shop and an English Heritage office for info, buying membership, advice etc, and the staff are lovely.
3. Pick up the free audio-guide from the kiosk behind the ticket office.
4.Shuttle-buses take you to the stones but it's nice to walk the last half-mile.
5. Please do not climb on the barrows, unless you are the kind of person that feels it is acceptable to clamber over someone's grave.
6. Take your time, circle the stones several times.
7. It will be busy, do not feel cross because there are crowds, remember that you are also a part of the crowds and be happy to be there.
8. If your visit coincides with one of mine I will happily take your photo.
9. You may not enter the stone circle except at special times of the year. Again, do not be cross, it's for the benefit of the stones and because there may be more archaeological remains underfoot. And you really don't want to be the one who knocks over a standing stone, do you?
10. Enjoy.

One last request for English Heritage - Please consider hosting women's camping events at Stonehenge, I think they'd be very popular and I'd be there in a flash :)