Sandringham House and Royal Estate

Thursday 22 August 2002. We visit Sandringham, the royal house in the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

After the last few days the sun has decided to make a welcome appearance and as there may be a spot of walking through the grounds we thought it might be the ideal day to do it.

We start with a tour round the house though. The estate of almost 8000 acres and a house were bought in 1862 for the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, later to be King Edward VII. This was to be a country home for the soon to be married prince and his bride, Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The house was rebuilt almost in entirety from 1870 - 1900 and has both a West Front and East Front, but no back.

Many of the rooms that are open to the Public are regularly used by the Royal Family who have all, since Edward VII thought of Sandringham as one of their favourite places to be. It was the scene of the first ever Royal Christmas radio broadcast by King George V in 1932 and the first televised Christmas broadcast by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957.

The first ever Royal car. The 1900 Daimler Phaeton was bought by King Edward VII. As you might expect there are some beautiful collections in the house and garages.

Works of art that you recognise, having seen them in print or on TV give you a lift, but the sheer number of tiger skins just makes you wonder at an age that thought animal populations could withstand such wholescale slaughter, or that it was acceptable to just go out with the intention of killing such beautiful animals for a moment's perverse pleasure.

But despite the views of today's younger generations, you should not judge today's older generations by the actions of their ancestors. And whilst we can shake our heads at and regret the actions of our ancestors (virtually everyone regardless of race or religion has some reason to do this), no one should be expected to apologise because their great-great-grandad, however many greats, was an arrogant twonk with better than average sword skills or a bigger army to fight for him or a belief that their deity-in-the-sky was better than anyone else's.

The State Coach in the Carriage House. The delicate hangings are protected by plastic sheeting. In this case it's ok - it's not just single use...

Some of the early shooting brakes - the ancestors of today's estate cars or SUVs - are marvellous concoctions of wood and leather. Just the thing when you are out reducing the bird or small mammal population...

We visited the cafeteria for a spot of lunch. I had a Pepsi in the cardboard cup with the Royal Crest and in the plastic carton is the remains of Miss Franny's sandwich with the Royal Crust...

Lunch partaken of, we headed out into the grounds, worriedly squinting at an unusual glowing ball in the sky... Sixty acres of gardens were transformed from the formal planting of Edwardian days into huge glades and sweeping lawns with specimen trees. Parterres - water gardens - were dug up and lakes created with more natural lines and surroundings.

The horse chestnuts - not yet roasting by an open fire - were heavily laden, promising plentiful conkers for the royal children.

The lake gives a wonderful view of the West Front of the house. We admired the lily pads, the clarity of water, the large fish chasing the ducks about in case they dropped something tasty into the water...

The Nest is a summer house, built in 1913 for Queen Alexandra who used to enjoy sitting by the lake,

Several properties sit within the grounds. This Gatehouse was one that we came upon during our walk.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Caister Castle and Motor Museum

Wednesday 21 August 2002. After looking around the older parts of Great Yarmouth the sky was still a little threatening and we decided to visit Caister Castle which had a motor museum where we could spend the rest of the afternoon indoors, looking at the collection of cars.

There is little left of the castle itself. It was built in (well... "from") 1432 by Sir John Fastolfe. Born in 1378 he was ambitious, brave, educated and religious. He was a patron of the arts and universities, a statesman and a soldier with 40 years service.

It seems a shame that Shakespeare was to defame him so badly with his character of Falstaff. Fighting against Joan of Arc with extended supply lines he chose correctly to withdraw. Shakespeare depicted this as cowardice. However in real life he was awarded Governorship of Normandy for the following four years.

The tower from across the moat (previous photograph) presents almost a chocolate box image. From inside the castle (seen in this photograph) there is access to a spiral staircase that takes you up to the top of the tower where you can strike weird and wonderful poses for the cameras of your fellow tourists below. There are quite a few examples of graffiti from centuries gone by etched into the walls by daggers or coin edges.

A few vehicles are dotted about the grounds. We first came across this old London horse-drawn tram as a barely recogniseable "shed" of bare rotting wood in 1981. Ten years later it looked almost brand new. Now it was once again looking as though it needed some TLC, at least a coat of paint.

A railway platform tractor - they were used to pull trains of flat wagons for luggage. The majority of the vehicles and just about all of the cars are under cover. They are preserved rather than concours. Cleaners use dusters but not water or polish. However, the place is well worth a visit and I would not want to hazard a guess at the total value of cars on display.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Old Great Yarmouth

Wednesday 21 August 2002. The day was a little bleak weatherwise and we decided not to go wandering in the car but to stay in Great Yarmouth, with somewhere to dash towards in case of rain.

On the positive side Great Yarmouth has a fairly rich history and was one of England's walled towns. King Henry III gave the town burgesses the right to build an enclosing wall and a moat in 1260, although he had given way to King Edward I by the time building commenced in 1284.

The walls were constructed of rubble with a facing of grey and red brick and knapped flint to provide some decoration. The walls enclosed 133 acres and were 2,200 yards (2012 metres) in length, 23 feet (7 metres) in height.

16 towers or turrets were built along the wall of which a few still exist. The South Tower, pictured here, has a chequered decoration to the upper storeys and at one time in its more recent past housed a pottery.

There is a 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) walk around part of the wall that also takes in the market and a few famous houses. One was that of Miles Corbett the last signatory on the Death Warrant of King Charles I. Another we shall see in a short while.

Blackfriars Tower is named for a nearby colony of monks at the time of building in 1340.

The port of Yarmouth is on the River Yare. Although leaflets describe it as the 'historic South Quay' (which it undoubtedly is) there is little to see on the quay itself. Few trawlers or herring boats can be found these days though you may see a few support ships for the offshore gas and oil rigs in the North Sea.

I loved this though. The odd building stands out, suggesting a bustling community, where hard work and sweat were the order of the day. Ivy's Trusty Tea Shop - it was voted for, you know! Whilst the area it was situated in was very quiet to the point of being almost eerie, a light inside showed that there was still a welcome and a good cup of tea to be had.

There was one historic ship - the Audrey tied up along the wharf. The Audrey was being repainted and was a yacht rigged sailing fishing boat. There was no one aboard. Perhaps they had nipped of to Ivy's for a good cup of tea.

Between the long stretch of wharves on the Yare and the town centre and market were once over a hundred narrow streets known as the Rows. They were incredibly narrow, so much so that a law was passed that house doors had to open inwards to avoid passers-by being knocked off their feet! At points it was possible to touch the walls of houses on either side.

They were first mentioned in 1198 and were further developed during the next 200 years until there were 145 rows. Unfortunately the houses and buildings of the rows were extensively bombed during World War II and now few remain.

The house in Row 111. Many rows were paved with pebbles from the beach - not easy on the feet. After the destruction of World War II, most rows were demolished as slum clearance and more modern housing estates replaced them.

The Seamens' hospital and cottages reserved for ex-seamen over the age of 60. It was built by the Corporation in 1702 as almshouses for 20 "decayed fishermen" and their wives. The cottages were one up - one down i.e. a single room with a huge fireplace and a bedroom on the first floor reached by either a spiral staircase or ladder. Privies were provided in the yard.

The black and white timber framed building was the home of Anna Sewell who wrote the childrens' book "Black Beauty", but who sadly died before it became a best seller.

Asl anyone over the age of 60 what shop they would love to see return to High Streets and they would likely say Woolworths. But there were other shops that graced most towns' high streets. This was Great Yarmouth's Co-op building. The Co-op was a movement that started in Rochdale, Lancashire and grew into a huge concern, aimed at sharing its profits with members (shoppers) by a stamp system similar to Green Shield stamps.

Co-op stamps were blue and were stuck into books which once full could be exchanged for a certain value. The Co-op department stores were all built to a similar design and this was a typical one with the upper storey's windows separated by columns.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Oulton Broad

Monday 19 August 2002. Having left Lowestoft, we travelled round about two miles to Oulton Broad where our first job was to have a spot of lunch.

Oulton Broad is one of the famous Norfolk Broads - though really it is more correct to call it a Suffolk Broad. The Broads (a neat way of getting around the county problem) were thought to be natural features until the 1960s when it was proved that they were the result of peat workings in medieval times. Local monasteries had excavated them, selling the peat for fuel - for burning on fires basically - to local communities. Norwich Cathedral alone took 320,000 tonnes a year.

At some point sea levels rose and flooded the excavations. Bad news for Pete and Doug, who were shovelling in the pit that day, but at least their names were and will be remembered... Windpumps, often mistaken by visitors as windmills and dykes were hastily constructed but the flooding continued until the area looked like that of today with broad lakes, reed beds, marshes and groups of young men falling overboard from boats whilst totally bladdered.

The area became known for boating holidays quite early. Small yachts were available for hire from 1878, Harry Blake opened an agency for yachting holidays in 1908 and the familiar firm Hoseasons made an appearance shortly after World War II. Boats on the Broads these days vary from preserved old trading wherries, to small day-hire boats like those pictured in the foreground, all the way to modern electric cruisers as the Broads Authority is continually adding charging points at mooring places.

At the east end of Oulton Broad is Mutford Lock which links the freshwater Broad to the saltwater Lake Lothing. The lake stretches through Lowestoft and then opens to the sea.

Looking across the lock gates to the Wherry Inn, named after the large sailed trading vessels. All other boats on the Broads must give way to sailing vessels as they don't have accelerators or brakes and whether they can dodge you depends almost exclusively on the whims of the wind and your skill or stupidity whichever applies.

Depending on the direction the wind is blowing it is often the case that sailing boats can only progress along the rivers by tacking to zig-zag across the width of the river. We had booked a boat ourselves, but not for this day - that joy was still to come. For now we sat and relaxed waiting for the afternoon opening of a nearby transport museum. Which we will see in the next article!

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Fleet St., St Pauls and Golden Tableware

Saturday 30 November 2002. In my revious article we finished on The Strand with a look at St Clement Danes. We'll start in more or less the same spot then walk along Fleet Street to St Pauls, across the river to Shakespeare's Globe and then take a bus to the West End shops.

From St Clement Danes, we turn to admire the facade of the Royal Courts of Justice or as they are more usually known: The Law Courts. This is the home of the UK's High Court and Court of Appeal, although it also tours the circuit to sit in major cities around the UK. For most of England's history such courts were held at Westminster Hall - they are not called "Royal" for nothing.

Creating a purpose-built home for the Justices required two Acts of Parliament to be written and passed into Law and the displacement of families from 450 houses which had to be demolished to make way for the building which commenced in 1873 with the building being officially opened by Queen Victoria in 1882.

Standing opposite the Royal Courts of Justice is the venerable survivor of the Great Fire of London, The Wig and Pen. Named for the tools of the legal profession it was one of no doubt many such establishments catering for the lawyers, judges and clerks in the area. Dating from 1625 it was set up by the Gatekeeper of Temple Bar - then the western gateway into the City of London - as a handy place to buy food and drink from the curious who paused to view the severed heads on poles above the Temple Bar gateway. It lost a lot of regular thirsty customers when Fleet Street ceased to be the centre of newspaper publishing and since the mid 2000s has traded as Thai Square providing flavours probably unknown in the 17th century! Talking of which... Oliver Cromwell is said to haunt the place.

The old gate of the City was a wooden arched wall across the roadway but unsurprisingly that didn't survive the Great Fire of 1666. A new stone archway with three arches was built 1669-72. Once again the good folks visiting London could look upon heads on poles but by the late 1800s the gate was creating a barrier to the vastly increased amount of horse-drawn traffic.

It was dismantled in 1878, each of the 2,700 pieces of stone catalogued and stored and in 1880 it was bought and taken to Hertfordshire to be re-erected as the gatehouse at Theobalds Park. It stayed there until 2003. The following year it was returned to London stone by stone on 500 pallets, the most travelled gatehouse surely in all England. (I haven't researched that - just watch all the comments prove me wrong in the coming weeks...) It now stands just north of St Pauls Cathedral in Paternoster Square. I must go again to see and photograph it sometime.

Nowadays a tall column stands dividing the carriageways of the road and is decorated by the statue of a dragon rather than heads on poles. It marks the meeting point of The Strand to the west and Fleet Street to the east and is halfway between the former royal residences of the Tower of London and Westminster Palace.

Now on Fleet Street we find The Punch Tavern, formerly the Crown and Sugar Loaf it was renamed in the 1840s in honour of Punch magazine, which was published at nearby Fleet Street premises.

St Pauls Cathedral is one of the great visitor attractions of London. Built to the designs of Christopher Wren (who had long wanted to replace the previous incarnation, luckily for him the Great Fire of London gave him an opening). We were not allowed to take photos in St Pauls - which is a bit annoying as there are few postcards on sale. It would have been better to ban flash and tripod photography and let people get on with it as long as there were no services taking place. So no photos of the interior I'm afraid, but we went to see the tombs of both Christopher Wren and Lord Nelson.

Nelson, having travelled back from the site of his death at Trafalgar in a barrel of brandy, camphor and Myrrh, laid in state for three days at Greenwich, was transferred on a State Barge used originally by King Charles II, the coffin transferred to the Admiralty to rest overnight before being taken by funeral procession made up of 32 admirals, 100 captains and 10,000 soldiers to St Pauls.

At St Pauls there was a four-hour funeral service following which his coffin was lowered through the floor of the nave and placed in a sarcophagus originally supposed to have been Cardinal Wolseley's from Tudor times. King Henry VIII had planned to be buried in it himself in a grand monument, but this was never completed and Henry today rests in a coffin in St George's Chapel, at Windsor.

Coming out of St Pauls Cathedral we had our first viewing of the Millenium Bridge. This was after it had been cured of wriggling about of its own accord and before (just!) the spells of dark wizards chasing Harry Potter made it wriggle all over again... So we walked over with confidence, part of a quite large number of people doing exactly the same, but only half of whom were doing it in the same direction!

On the southern bank of the River Thames is the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The original was built in 1599 using materials from an earlier theatre which had been demolished elsewhere in London. It burned down during a performance of Henry VIII when a cannon used as a prop, misfired and set fire to the thatch and wooden beams. No one was hurt, although one man had his pants catch fire. The flames were put out with a bottle of ale. (I wonder if he was a liar...?)

We had a look, found we couldn't go in, breathed a sigh of relief - I'd had more than enough of Shakespeare at school - and walked back over the Millenium Bridge and caught a Routemaster red bus back towards the West End. Miss Franny, for some strange reason, seemed to want to look around the shops...

I'm not 100% sure where we saw these but it was either Selfridges or John Lewis and I think the latter - a set of 23 carat gold on silver plate full cutlery service. A bargain at the knock down price of £5,675 from the original price of £11,359. A salesman asked if he could help. "I don't really think so..." I said with a note of sympathy for his lost commission. He shrugged, "You never know!" he said.

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Westminster, Then East on The Strand

Saturday 30 November 2002. We had had a bit of a turn on the London Eye and came down to terra firma to walk across the Thames over Westminster Bridge.

We walked behind the Houses of Parliament. Fran fancied looking around Westminster Abbey but there was a huge queue. So we went back to Whitehall and a look at the imposing but not exactly inviting offices of Government.

I had an idea and we decided to go off in search of the Cabinet War Rooms, passing Her Majesty's Treasury.

We eventually found it at the end of the street facing St James' Park near a statue of Clive of India. During World War II this was Prime Minister Churchill's secret bunker from which the war was directed.

Inside all was as it had been left at the end of the war. The Government staff and Senior Officers of the Armed Forces had been replaced with waxworks but everything else was original. It was kept secret for forty years. The day after the Japanese surrendered the lights were switched off for the first time in six years, the doors locked and it was left exactly as it was. The yellow-stained maps and surfaces bear testament to the fog of years of cigar and cigarette smoke. A stark reminder of how close we came to being ruled by Hitler.

It was one of the most interesting places I've ever been. Then we decided to walk down The Strand to St Paul's, passing Charing Cross and The Savoy Hotel.

This is - and isn't - Charing Cross. It is the forecourt of Charing Cross Station, to be sure. The monumental cross is a representation, not even a replica, of the Queen Eleanor Cross which was the final such monument along the route from Lincoln to the then hamlet of Charing which at the time of the original cross in 1249 occupied what is now Trafalgar Square and the extension south along what is now Whitehall to The Strand. Twelve crosses between Lincoln and here in Charing marked the nightly resting places of King Edward I's beloved wife Queen Eleanor of Castile during her post mortem journey from Lincoln back to Westminster Abbey after dying during a Royal Progress, probably of fever, in 1290.

The original cross was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell's order in 1647. Upon it's site in 1675 after the Restoration of the Monarchy, an equestrian statue of King Charles I was erected where it stands to this day at the south of Trafalgar Square, the centre of London from where all measurements to London terminated. So if you see a sign "London 213 miles" then you are 213 miles from the horse's tail of the statue.

But back to Charing Cross Station which takes its name from the long-lost hamlet. The cross there was built to commemorate the opening of the station in 1864 and it is taller than the original Eleanor Cross.

The Savoy Hotel stands on land between The Strand and the River Thames and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte using the profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan light operas. Opening in August 1889, it set standards far in excess of the normal for its time. It was the first hotel with electric lighting throughout, the first with electric lifts, the first with constant hot and cold running water and most of its rooms included bathrooms.

After six months of opening César Ritz was engaged as manager and he brought in Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine and Louis Echenard as maître d'hôtel. In 1897 they were dismissed. Both Ritz and Echenard were implicated in the loss of wines and spirits on a grand scale and Escoffier was found to have been accepting gifts from the hotel's suppliers. This was hushed up at the time, though Ritz was inclined to sue for wrongful dismissal. With the probable scandal likely to affect other rather successful business interests he was persuaded to not to make a fuss. Amazingly the full details were only publicly known in 1985.

The Savoy became wildly successful. Even their own orchestras, The Savoy Havana Band in the 1920s and laterThe Savoy Orpheans led by Geraldo in particular became well known through early BBC broadcasts live from the Savoy Ballroom and through sales of dance music released on 78rpm records. Most of Hollywood's famous stars have stayed there including Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra and Churchill was wont to take his cabinet to lunch there.

Nearby there was the faint sound of music and happy voices and we passed under the arches into the courtyard of The Courtauld's Gallery to see what was going on.

Passing through into the courtyard we saw first a large Christmas tree and then the skating rink seen in the photograph below. The Courtauld Gallery was established at Somerset House on this site in 1932. It has a large collection of important works of art from such illuminaries as Manet, Monet, Rubens, Turner, Constable, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gainsborough, Gauguin, Degas, Van Dyke, Renoir and Van Gogh (including his self-portrait with bandaged ear).

Ice skating is a form of sport, exercise and/or fun that I've never felt the compunction to try somehow. Now don't get me wrong - as a kid you would find me in a school playground running full tilt on snow to launch myself onto an ice slide of twenty or thirty feet long, standing sideways to the direction of travel, feet rigidly spread to maintain balance and would present any torn and bloody flesh for purple iodine to be liberally painted on my knees should my exit from the slide be less than elegant... But skates, like skis, have never presented themselves of any great appeal to me.

Ice skating though is thought to go back some 4,000 years would you believe. In southern Finland travellers would skate to save energy on journeys. Animal bones would be favourite I imagine. Certainly sharp edged skates made from steel would only start to be used in the 13th or 14th centuries. But the basic design hasn't changed much since then.

In England, skating on metal skates developed after the Restoration in 1660. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that on 15 December 1662 he had gone with the Duke of York (later King James II) to watch the latter skate on the frozen lake in St James Park, remarking that the Duke "slides very well"...

We carried on along The Strand and came to The City of London - the famous square mile that contains the law courts and financial business centre of London. It is a county in its own right and at the time when the Romans were still knocking about, falling over themselves laughing at the locals' wood and mud houses, it was pretty much all there was of London.

The church is St Clement Danes, of nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons fame, although St Clement's church in Eastcheap not far away also claims to be the church associated with the rhyme.

There are several theories as to why the name includes the word "Danes". London was on the border between the English and the Norse of the Danelaw and it may have originally been built to commemorate massacres. It also was the burial place of one of England's Danish kings, King Harold I - Harold "Harefoot" from 1040, though any remains of the tomb have long since vanished.

The church was rebuilt by William the Conqueror and again in the Middle Ages. Following the Great Fire of London in 1666 the tower had to be rebuilt from the very foundations. The tower survived when the rest of the church was rebuilt in 1680-82 and a steeple was added in 1719.

On 10 May 1941 during The Blitz the church was bombed and gutted by fire. Looking at photographs taken during that night you could scarce believe that it could have survived. The ten bells fell from the tower to the ground, yet whilst the interior was devastated, the outer walls, tower and steeple survived. The church was fully restored funded by an appeal by the Royal Air Force and in 1958 it was reconsecrated in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip as the Central Church of the Royal Air Force.

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