The Insider's Guide to Britain: Architecture

Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts

Witley Court

There are four main marvels at Whitley Court. A ruined mansion, its huge manicured grounds, a rococo style chapel, and a massive, elaborately decorated fountain.

The mansion was dramatically gutted by fire sometime in the 1930's. Today you can wander around it, guided by an audio tour, and marvel at its grandiose architecture. The huge grounds, complete with a large pond, and rose garden, provide manicured paths for your strolling pleasure. Attached to the remains of the mansion is a (still intact) rococo style church that used to serve the residents. Definitely don't miss this. We haven't seen anything like it outside of the continent! Bring a picnic to eat on the lawn behind the manor and check out the magnificent fountain. It's main sculpture is Perseus fighting the sea monster and it still erupts every 15 minutes by using pressurized water from a reservoir somewhere uphill.

Brighton

England's famous seaside resort dates back to Georgian times. You may know it from all the Jane Austen characters who dream of running off there. This is the classic English seaside experience, with a carnival pier, a long pebble beach, lots of shops, good seafood, and the obligatory Flake 99.

Brighton is home to the unique and bizarre "Pleasure Palace" that King George IV built when he was

prince. What do you do when you have all the money in the world and nothing to do until your crazy Dad dies? You do whatever you want. And I like to think of this palace as a Prince's version of a lego castle. It's huge and absolutely amazing inside - it's all elaborate chinese and Indian-inspired architecture that really just looks like some rich jerk said, "I want a massive palace with gold ceilings and secret passageways and the world's biggest kitchen and the world's best chef to cook me disgustingly elaborate feasts." And that's pretty much what happened.

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A la Ronde

This is a wacky old 16-sided house that overlooks the sea in Devon.

Mary Parminter, the wacky woman who built it over two hundred years ago, inherited his big fat business fortune, but she didn't just sit around waiting for suitors with $$$ in their eyes to put a fancy ring on her rich little finger.

Instead, she packed up her stuff and marched off to Europe, taking her sister and two girlfriends with her. And the four girls toured Europe for 10 years, because why not?

When the girls came back from Europe, two of them decided to build their dream house by the sea, all on their own. And they wanted it to have 16 sides and diamond-shaped windows, because why not? And they covered the upper level of the house with seashells in intricate designs, and made friezes out of feathers in the living room.

The Eden Project

They took a gigantic lifeless abandoned mining pit and turned it into the garden of Eden.

I tell you it's amazing. The whole pit is now full of lush green plants of every imaginable kind BUT, as if that weren't cool enough, they decided to go ahead and build a few giant biomes, because hey, there's nothing good on TV right now. They're the biggest greenhouses in the world!

It's called the Eden Project. And outside, it's England, where the weather hardly ever throws you a bone, but inside....paradise! Like, literally, tropical paradise. With waterfalls and exotic birds and lush, beautiful plants from every tropical environment. It's been called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Tintern Abbey

JMW Turner's paintings and William Wordsworth's poem helped make this place famous, and it is one of the most dramatic, majestic, and eerie of all the ruined abbeys in Britain. Nestled in the rolling hills of South Wales, it is picturesque, magnificent, haunting, and humbling! Just standing among the ruins gives you a sense of being outside of time, and with a bit of imagination the experience gets even better.

Tintern Abbey was a bustling and wealthy monastery until Henry VIII destroyed it during the dissolution (1536). Henry had started the Church of England and thought the monasteries were becoming too wealthy and corrupt. What better place to cash in on funds he desperately needed? He dissolved the monasteries, often killing the monks who resisted, and took all the land and wealth for himself. Tintern Abbey is a shell of its former self - literally. It is a glorious building without a ceiling, with grass for a floor, and stairs that lead nowhere.

Bath

Nothing beats Bath. It is one of only two World Heritage cities in Britian (the other is Edinburgh), and it deserves the recognition! Bath was the Hollywood of the early 1800s, where the rich would go to see and be seen. Fashionable ladies strolled the avenues, and available young aristocrats looking for life partners spent nearly every night at the "pump rooms," dancing and mingling. It would have been a sight to see.

Nowadays, it is a different kind of site to see! Bath has been a popular resort destination since Roman times at least! Hot springs in the ground inspired the Romans to build a massive bath house for public bathing - this has been excavated and you can visit it - it's surprisingly similar to public pool complexes today. In the Middle Ages, people build another bath house (not knowing that only seven inches away the Roman baths lay hidden underground!), and then, after Queen Mary bathed in the waters and miraculously overcame her infertility in the 1700s, Bath became to place to be. Aristocrats from all over the country spent their summers there, bathing in the mineral water, drinking it, shopping, and socializing. During this heyday, pretty much the whole town was built up - and now it is one impressive monolith of grand limestone Georgian architecture. The city's historic center is just small enough to get around everywhere on foot (and lots of fascinating walking tours help guide you around).

But the cool thing about Bath is that it's full of really great museums that are sometimes half empty of tourists, or in the case of the delightful Museum of Bath at Work, totally empty!

The Bizarre Bath Comedy Walk at night is highly recommended -- a hilarious evening tour around the town! You'll need to stay the night in Bath to do this, which will make you happy.

Of course we mustn't forget Bath's most famous champion, Jane Austen herself. She lived in Bath for a while, as did most of the characters in her books. Bath is a Jane Austen mecca for fans, and a few museums and tours bring the novels alive. If you want your trip to Bath to be REALLY cool, I highly recommend the following:

Oxford or Cambridge

A visit to this intellectual center of the world is memorable! Oxford and/or Cambridge have this back-in-time feel with a ridiculously huge number of historic buildings. Aside from touring the university (which is actually a collection of rather exclusive colleges) and gaping at the architecture all around you, there are a number of free and fascinating museums. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is the home to Guy Fawkes' lantern (with which he almost succeeded in blowing up Parliament in 1603)! Harry Potter's Great Hall was filmed in Oxford -- take the tour if you like.

Here's a random sampling of some of Oxford's alumni, whose footsteps you can walk in:

John Locke
Percy Shelley
John Wycliffe
Lewis Carroll
JRR Tolkein
CS Lewis
John Donne
Thomas Hobbes
Hugh Grant
Sir Walter Raleigh
Sister Wendy Beckett
Rowan Atkinson
Jethro Tull
Oscar Wilde
Dr Seuss
Stephen Hawking
Bill Clinton

Oxford is our preferred University city. With busy bicycle traffic, an awesome botanical center, and great pubs, including the Eagle and Child, where CS Lewis, JRR Tolkein, et al. would sit around discussing their books. Good fish and chips, too.