The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales [8006]

Table of contents :
Professor's Biography......Page 3
Table of Contents......Page 5
Course Scope......Page 9
1 — Welcome to Britain......Page 11
Ancient Sites......Page 12
After the Romans......Page 13
Britain from 1500-1700......Page 14
Industrialization and the Sea......Page 15
Tips on Visiting Britain......Page 17
2 — Prehistoric britain......Page 19
Stonehenge and Avebury......Page 20
Hill Forts......Page 21
The Uffington White Horse......Page 23
Other Sites......Page 24
Scotland’s Prehistoric Sites......Page 25
3 — Roman Britain......Page 27
Hadrian’s Wall......Page 28
Roman Villas......Page 30
Roads......Page 32
4 — Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain......Page 34
Background on the Anglo-Saxons......Page 35
Offa’s Dyke......Page 36
The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial......Page 37
Background on the Vikings and Lindisfarne......Page 38
Alfred the Great......Page 40
5 — Britain’s Medieval Castles......Page 43
The Evolution of Castles......Page 44
The State of Castles Today......Page 46
Four Notable Castles......Page 47
6 — Britain’s Medieval Cathedrals......Page 50
Background on Cathedrals......Page 51
Styles of Cathedrals......Page 52
Notable Cathedrals......Page 53
7 — Tudor Britain......Page 56
Hampton Court Palace......Page 57
English Places of Worship......Page 58
Mary I and the Martyrs’ Memorial......Page 59
Elizabeth I......Page 60
Tudor Houses......Page 61
8 — Magna Carta and Civil War......Page 65
Runnymede and the Magna Carta......Page 66
Sites from the 17th Century......Page 67
After the English Civil War......Page 69
The Importance of Cromwell......Page 70
After Cromwell......Page 71
9 — Enlightenment Britain......Page 74
The Work of Andrea Palladio......Page 75
Homes of the Enlightenment......Page 76
Georgian Architecture......Page 78
Intellectual Figures......Page 79
10 — Industrial Britain......Page 81
Textiles......Page 82
Iron......Page 83
Canals......Page 85
Railways......Page 86
11 — Victorian Britain......Page 89
Architecture......Page 90
Intellectual Figures......Page 93
Florence Nightingale, Health Care, and Workhouses......Page 94
Prince Albert......Page 95
Town Halls......Page 96
12 — 20th-Century Britain......Page 98
Edwin Luytens......Page 99
Interwar Buildings......Page 100
Motorways and Office Buildings......Page 101
13 — Edinburgh and Glasgow......Page 103
Edinburgh’s Royal Mile......Page 104
Edinburgh’s High Points......Page 105
Glasgow......Page 107
14 — Wild Scotland: Beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow......Page 110
Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn......Page 111
Travel Tips for Scotland......Page 113
Fort William, Glenfinnan, and Loch Ness......Page 114
Scotland’s Islands......Page 116
Lockerbie......Page 117
15 — North Wales......Page 119
Conwy and Llandudno......Page 121
Snowdon......Page 122
The Slate Industry......Page 123
Castles......Page 124
Ornithology......Page 125
South Stack Lighthouse......Page 126
Llanystumdwy......Page 127
16 — Cardiff and South Wales......Page 129
Civic Buildings in Cardiff......Page 130
Mining Valleys......Page 132
Swansea......Page 133
The Countryside......Page 134
17 — The North of England......Page 136
Liverpool......Page 137
Manchester......Page 138
York......Page 139
Carlisle and Berwick-upon-Tweed......Page 140
18 — The English Midlands......Page 143
The Cotswolds......Page 144
Birmingham......Page 145
Coventry......Page 146
Nottingham......Page 148
Villages......Page 149
19 — East Anglia......Page 151
Ely......Page 152
Norfolk......Page 154
Suffolk......Page 156
20 — England’s West Country......Page 159
Glastonbury......Page 160
Dorset......Page 161
Plymouth......Page 162
Cornwall......Page 163
21 — The Museums of London......Page 167
The British Museum......Page 168
The National Portrait Gallery......Page 169
South Kensington’s Museums......Page 170
The Tate Gallery and the Tate Modern......Page 171
The Museum of London......Page 172
22 — London’s Streets and Parks......Page 173
The London Underground......Page 174
Hyde Park......Page 175
Green Park......Page 176
The Piccadilly Circus......Page 177
Regent’s Park and Camden Town......Page 178
23 — Buckingham Palace and Parliament......Page 180
Background on Buckingham Palace......Page 181
Visiting Buckingham Palace......Page 182
Background on the Houses of Parliament......Page 183
Touring the Houses of Parliament......Page 184
24 — Oxford and Cambridge......Page 186
Peterhouse......Page 187
Trinity College, Cambridge......Page 188
The Heart of Oxford......Page 189
Oxford’s Parkland......Page 190
Oxford’s Women’s Buildings......Page 191
25 — Literary Britain: Chaucer and Shakespeare......Page 192
Canterbury......Page 193
Stratford and Shakespeare......Page 194
London and Shakespeare......Page 196
Sites Mentioned in Richard II and Richard III......Page 197
Other Literary Sites and Figures......Page 198
26 — Literary Britain: The Romantics......Page 200
The Writers’ Museum......Page 201
Walter Scott-Related Sites......Page 202
Jane Austen-Related Sites......Page 203
William Wordsworth-Related Sites......Page 204
Beatrix Potter’s Home......Page 205
27 — Literary Britain: Poets and Novelists......Page 207
John Keats-Related Sites......Page 208
Lord Byron-Related Sites......Page 209
Charles Dickens-Related Sites......Page 210
Haworth Parsonage......Page 211
28 — Literary Britain: The 20th Century......Page 214
Thomas Hardy-Related Sites......Page 215
George Bernard Shaw-Related Sites......Page 216
Bloomsbury Group-Related Sites......Page 217
C. S. Lewis-Related Sites......Page 218
George Orwell-Related Sites......Page 219
29 — Artistic Britain: Painters and Sculptors......Page 221
Joshua Reynolds......Page 222
Thomas Gainsborough......Page 223
Thomas Girtin......Page 224
Henry Moore......Page 225
Antony Gormley......Page 226
30 — Britain’s Estates and Gardens......Page 228
William Kent and Lancelot Brown......Page 229
The Kew Gardens......Page 230
Trentham Gardens and Chatsworth......Page 232
The Lost Gardens of Heligan......Page 233
Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West......Page 234
Gardens in Wales......Page 235
31 — Legacy of the British Empire......Page 237
India’s Influence on Britain......Page 238
Cleopatra’s Needle......Page 239
Mosques and Hindu Temples......Page 240
Afro-Caribbean Influences......Page 241
Anglo-American Influences......Page 242
32 — Seafaring Britain......Page 245
The HMS Warrior......Page 246
Seafaring Sites in London......Page 247
The National Historic Fleet......Page 249
Lighthouses......Page 250
33 — Britain’s War Memorials......Page 253
Westminster Abbey......Page 254
The Monument to the Crimean War......Page 255
The World War I Cenotaph......Page 256
Memorials at Hyde Park Corner......Page 257
Memorials in the Provinces of Britain......Page 258
34 — Hiking England, Scotland, and Wales......Page 260
The Lake District......Page 261
The West Highland Way......Page 263
Cycling and Climbing......Page 264
Walking in London......Page 265
35 — Britain’s Sporting Tradition......Page 267
Cricket......Page 268
Soccer (Football)......Page 269
Tennis......Page 270
Golf......Page 271
36 — How to Think about Visiting Britain......Page 273
When to Visit......Page 274
How to Get Around......Page 275
Histories of Britain......Page 276
Fiction and Travel Writers......Page 277
Bibliography......Page 279
Image Credits......Page 289

Citation preview

Topic Better Living

Gain an insider’s knowledge about one of the world’s most fascinating regions.

“Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers. Academia’s best lecturers are being captured on tape.” —The Los Angeles Times “A serious force in American education.” —The Wall Street Journal

Patrick N. Allitt is the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University. He received his PhD in American History from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Allitt is the author of five scholarly books, numerous articles and reviews for academic and popular journals, and a memoir about his life as a college professor. A longtime lecturer for The Great Courses, Professor Allitt’s other courses include The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, Victorian Britain, The Industrial Revolution, and The Art of Teaching.

Professor Photo: © Jeff Mauritzen - inPhotograph.com. Cover Image: © aaprophoto/iStock/Getty Images, © Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images. Course No. 8006 © 2018 The Teaching Company.

PB8006A

Guidebook

THE GREAT COURSES ® Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, VA 20151-2299 USA Phone: 1-800-832-2412 www.thegreatcourses.com

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

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Subtopic Travel

The Great Tours

England, Scotland, and Wales Course Guidebook Professor Patrick N. Allitt Emory University

PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412 Fax: 703-378-3819 www.thegreatcourses.com

Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2018

Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company.

Professor Biography

PATRICK N. ALLITT, PhD Cahoon Family Professor of American History Emory University

P

atrick N. Allitt is the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University, where he also served as the director of Emory’s Center for Teaching and Curriculum. He was raised in Mickleover, England, and he attended John Port School in the Derbyshire village of Etwall. After graduating from Hertford College at the University of Oxford, Professor Allitt earned his PhD in American History at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Henry Luce Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, where he specialized in American Religious History, and he was also a fellow at the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion. Professor Allitt is the author of five scholarly books: A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism; The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History; Religion in America Since 1945: A History; Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome; and Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950–1985. In addition, he is the editor of Major Problems in

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

American Religious History and the author of a memoir about his life as a college professor, I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student: A Semester in the University Classroom. He has written numerous articles and reviews for academic and popular journals, including book reviews in The Spectator and The Weekly Standard. Professor Allitt’s other Great Courses include The Rise and Fall of the British Empire; The Conservative Tradition; American Religious History; Victorian Britain; The History of the United States, 2nd Edition (with Professors Allen C. Guelzo and Gary W. Gallagher); The American Identity; The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator; The Industrial Revolution; and The American West: History, Myth, and Legacy. Professor Allitt’s wife, Toni, is a Michigan native. They have one daughter, Frances. ■

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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction

Professor Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i Course Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Lectures

1

Welcome to Britain����������������������������������������������������������������3

2

Prehistoric Britain���������������������������������������������������������������� 11

3

Roman Britain����������������������������������������������������������������������19

4

Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain ������������������������������������������26

5

Britain’s Medieval Castles ��������������������������������������������������35

6

Britain’s Medieval Cathedrals����������������������������������������������42

7

Tudor Britain������������������������������������������������������������������������48

8

Magna Carta and Civil War�������������������������������������������������57

9

Enlightenment Britain����������������������������������������������������������66

10 Industrial Britain������������������������������������������������������������������73 11 Victorian Britain ������������������������������������������������������������������81 12 20th-Century Britain������������������������������������������������������������90 13 Edinburgh and Glasgow������������������������������������������������������95 14 Wild Scotland: Beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow ��������������102 15 North Wales ���������������������������������������������������������������������� 111

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

16 Cardiff and South Wales����������������������������������������������������121 17 The North of England��������������������������������������������������������128 18 The English Midlands��������������������������������������������������������135 19 East Anglia������������������������������������������������������������������������143 20 England’s West Country����������������������������������������������������151 21 The Museums of London��������������������������������������������������159 22 London’s Streets and Parks����������������������������������������������165 23 Buckingham Palace and Parliament����������������������������������172 24 Oxford and Cambridge������������������������������������������������������178 25 Literary Britain: Chaucer and Shakespeare����������������������184 26 Literary Britain: The Romantics ����������������������������������������192 27 Literary Britain: Poets and Novelists����������������������������������199 28 Literary Britain: The 20th Century��������������������������������������206 29 Artistic Britain: Painters and Sculptors������������������������������213 30 Britain’s Estates and Gardens ������������������������������������������220 31 Legacy of the British Empire����������������������������������������������229 32 Seafaring Britain����������������������������������������������������������������237 33 Britain’s War Memorials����������������������������������������������������245 34 Hiking England, Scotland, and Wales ������������������������������252 35 Britain’s Sporting Tradition������������������������������������������������259 36 How to Think about Visiting Britain������������������������������������265

iv

Table of Contents

Supplementary Material

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Image Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

v

Course Scope

THE GREAT TOURS ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND WALES

T

his course is an introduction to England, Scotland, and Wales, aimed at both visitors from abroad and armchair travelers. It describes and illustrates the places and areas most deserving of visitors’ attention, giving details of their history and anecdotes about the famous personalities associated with them. The course begins with a set of historical lectures, introducing audiences to prehistoric, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, medieval, early modern, and modern Britain. Next comes a series of lectures on regions: two on Scotland, two on Wales, and one each on the English north, the Midlands, East Anglia, and the West Country. Two lectures are devoted to London, one to Oxford and Cambridge, and one to the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. A third group is dedicated to particular interests: four on literary Britain, and one each devoted to painting, seafaring, gardens, hiking, sports, and war memorials. Certain themes are sustained throughout the course. One is the development of political stability, as a constitutional monarchy displaced the absolute monarchy of the Tudors and early Stuarts in the revolutions of the 17th century. Several lectures refer to the rise of democracy and the benefits it conferred on the British population. A second theme is the diversity of regional characteristics, which are reflected in strong local accents, a different living language in the case of Wales, and an intense loyalty to particular localities. A third theme is the influence of powerful personalities, including Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill, and Margaret Thatcher, each of whom is mentioned in several lectures. The course also emphasizes that there has never been a better time to visit Britain than now: The nation is fully aware of its

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

rich heritage, preserves it very well, and has cleaned its cities, whose buildings until the 1970s were blackened by decades of soot from coal fires. The course encourages visitors to be adventurous and not to confine themselves merely to the best-known places in Britain, such as Stratford, Stonehenge, Canterbury, and London. It begins and ends with practical advice on when to visit, how to get around, how to drive safely on the “wrong” side of the road, and various pitfalls to avoid. It encourages visitors to get out into the open as much as possible, to walk or cycle, and to interact with the people they meet. It also pays tribute to the radical improvement of restaurants in Britain since the nation opened its doors to immigrants from its former empire in India, Pakistan, and the West Indies, and (as a member until recently of the European Union) to immigrants from every part of Europe. This course will give newcomers a real education in the main lines of British history, explaining the relationship of the island’s three kingdoms, the significance of the British Empire to life in Britain itself, and the benefits of its increased wealth through the 20th and early 21st centuries. ■

2

1

WELCOME TO BRITAIN

G

reat Britain is central to the history of civilization, has been heavily populated for centuries, and is full to the brim of fascinating landscapes, cities, castles, cathedrals, parks, gardens, and inventions. This lecture gives a broad overview of the region by looking at some of its key features and also provides some general travel tips if you plan on visiting.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Maiden Castle

Ancient Sites

Centuries of internal peace and a widespread interest in preserving the nation’s heritage have ensured that evidence of all the ages of British life can still be found impressed on the landscape. It is possible to see superb examples of the ancient civilizations that lived there, including Maiden Castle, a great Iron Age hill fortress in the southwestern county of Dorset, and Stonehenge, the mysterious stone circle and earthwork in nearby Wiltshire.

Hadrian’s Wall

4

Lecture 1 ■ Welcome to Britain

Roman conquest in the first century of the Christian era also made a vivid and lasting impression. Best of the Roman remains is Hadrian’s Wall, near the current border of England and Scotland; it marked the boundary between the Britons Rome had subdued and the wild men who lived further North. Equally impressive are the Roman baths in the aptly named spa town of Bath in southwestern England. Its fashionable revival in the 18th century and its appearance in books like Jane Austen’s Persuasion make Bath a popular and very worthwhile visitors’ destination.

Roman baths

After the Romans

When the Romans left, Britain fragmented into petty chiefdoms and was invaded by Danish, Viking, and Anglo-Saxon tribesmen from Northern Europe. This was the era of the legendary King Arthur; several places in 5

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

All Saints Church

England with scattered and picturesque ruins claim to be the original Camelot. It is not as easy to find Anglo-Saxon vestiges in Britain as Roman ones, but one incredible find is the Anglo-Saxon funeral longboat and treasure hoard, discovered at Sutton Hoo in the 1930s. However, from the High Middle Ages in British history, the variety of objects still visible today is much larger. One example is the at All Saints Church in Mickleover, built in the early 1300s and extensively renovated in the Victorian era. Equally impressive are the medieval castles, which later lectures cover in detail.

Britain from 1500–1700 By looking at the great structures built in Britain between 1500 and 1700, it’s possible to trace the rise of political stability in Britain. Henry VIII, who is notorious for having married six wives and killing two of them in the 1530s 6

Lecture 1 ■ Welcome to Britain

and 1540s, also managed to abolish private armies, which made internal warfare less frequent than it had been in the foregoing age. A great civil war convulsed England in the 1640s, but after that, Britain enjoyed almost uninterrupted stability for the next three and a half centuries. The great houses from this era show a decline in the importance of fortifications and a new interest in comfort and luxury. For most of its history Britain was far more rural than urban. Even today, despite a population of 65 million, it retains much wild country and large areas of farmland. Far back in time, the area was largely forested, but human demand for firewood and building materials meant that the forest was cut down nearly everywhere, surviving best when set aside from public use by kings and noblemen who wanted forest preserves for hunting.

Industrialization and the Sea Eventually, industrialization was directly linked to cities, but the earliest industrial factories were built in hilly rural areas, where fast-flowing rivers The Iron Bridge

7

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

powered water wheels linked to the machinery. In the Derwent Valley of Derbyshire, at Cromford, you can visit the world’s first water-powered cotton spinning mill, built by Richard Arkwright in 1771. A hundred miles southwest of there, in Shropshire, you can find Coalbrookdale, the valley where the great innovations of English iron making began. There, the world’s first iron bridge, finished in 1779, still stands over the River Severn. Throughout this valley, a cluster of industrial museums has been created, beautifully preserving an important part of Britain’s national heritage. Britain was not only a rising industrial nation in the 1700s. It was also a great seafaring nation. It still bears many signs of its seafaring traditions. The obvious place to start is at Portsmouth on the South coast, where you’ll find the notable ships HMS Victory and the Mary Rose. Equally engrossing are the clipper ship Cutty Sark at Greenwich in the Thames estuary and the pioneering oceangoing steamer Great Britain at Bristol. HMS Victory

8

Lecture 1 ■ Welcome to Britain

Important Sites in London Many visitors from abroad devote much of their time in Britain to its capital, London. That’s a pity in a way, because London is unrepresentative of the country as a whole. On the other hand, there’s no denying what a treasure house it is of fascinating places and magnificent buildings. As its top three recommendations for a visit, this course makes the uncontroversial choices of the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament. The city also features countless museums and art galleries.

Tips on Visiting Britain Britain offers an immense number of places to visit, so this lecture now turns to practical tips on planning your visit. Have faith in your own convictions, go to see what you most want to see, and learn enough about it beforehand to make the visit worthwhile. Be prepared to change your plans at short notice if you see that a particular concert, play, or parade is taking place, even if it’s outside your usual range of interests. Britain has a mild climate; low winter temperatures rarely go below freezing, and high summer temperatures rarely go above 75 degrees Fahrenheit. It rains often, so it’s a good idea to take waterproof clothing and an umbrella. Be ready to switch from planned outdoor to indoor activities. Britain is a long way north of the equator, which means that the days are long and the nights short in summer. To go in winter, by contrast, is to face short days, where it’s hardly light before 9:00 AM and getting dark again by 4:00 PM. The days are even shorter in Scotland. Spring and autumn visits are likely to be less crowded than midsummer tours, when tens of thousands from all over the world are flocking in. If you rent a car, think carefully every time you get behind the wheel and have to drive on the left.

9

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

The great paradox of tourism is that no tourist wants to be jostled by thousands of other tourists. It’s simultaneously possible to be one and to think that all the others are horrible. The two best ways to deal with the paradox are to go at times less likely to be crowded and to go to the countless beautiful but undervisited places of Britain.

Suggested Reading Fraser, The Story of Britain. Lonely Planet Great Britain.

Suggested Activity 1. Compare distances between major attractions in the UK and the US. For example, the distance from Stonehenge to Windsor Castle is 68 miles. The distance from Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon is 2,193 miles. You’ll be delighted at how compact Britain is.

10

2

PREHISTORIC BRITAIN T

his lecture gives an overview of sites remaining from prehistoric Britain. Key places discussed in the lecture include:

„„ The Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles. „„ Hill Forts. „„ The Uffington White Horse. „„ The Great Orme copper mine in Wales. „„ Skara Brae in Scotland.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Stonehenge

Stonehenge and Avebury

Located in Wiltshire in southwest England, the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the most heavily visited places in the world. No one is allowed to walk among the stones—the collective impact of their trampling would quickly degrade the monument, so

12

Lecture 2 ■ Prehistoric Britain

they are kept at a safe distance, except for a select few on special occasions. Archaeologists using carbon dating estimate that Stonehenge is 50 centuries old. For visitors, an alternate option to Stonehenge is the stone circle of Avebury, which is about 20 miles away. It is typically less crowded, and as of publication, it is possible to walk among the stones themselves. Avebury

Hill Forts The area of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, covering Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, and part of Hampshire, is dotted with old hill forts, some of which date from the Neolithic era when hunters and gatherers were settling down to become farmers instead. Natural hilltops were made more secure against attack by the building of ditches and embankments. Inside them, communities could build their villages, gather the farm animals when under threat, and keep watch on the surrounding country. The passage of time has gradually eroded many of these hill forts, but a few are still impressive, none more so than Maiden Castle. That location is south of Dorchester, the county town of Dorset. It is 430 feet high and part of a natural ridge, giving excellent views in every direction.

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Archaeologists have shown that Maiden Castle was built over a long period of time. The cumulative effect is superb—a succession of great ditches, embankments, and ramparts enclosing a massive oval interior. It was extended and occupied continuously between the Neolithic era, more than 4000 years BCE, right through to the 6th century CE.

Maiden Castle

14

Lecture 2 ■ Prehistoric Britain

Another impressive Iron Age hill fort is Cadbury Castle in Somerset, widely believed in former times to be the real site of King Arthur’s Camelot. Excavations have shown evidence of a battle there at the time of the Roman invasion of Britain in about 43 CE. In addition to Maiden and Cadbury, the remains of other hill forts are scattered widely throughout the south of England.

The Uffington White Horse Along with earthworks and stone circles, the southwest of Britain contains some wonderful prehistoric objects, including the Uffington White Horse. It is located on the border between Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The bedrock of the area is chalk, which is naturally white. The horse was made by scraping out trenches, removing the grass and earth, and filling them with crushed white chalk. The work was done in the Bronze Age, probably around 1000 BCE. It is a stylized rather than realistic horse, much longer and lower than an anatomically accurate horse drawing. Its similarity to some horses depicted in Celtic art also help place it in time and suggest the influences that contributed to its unusual appearance.

15

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Other Sites Not all prehistoric sites in Britain are confided to Wessex, but if that’s your principal interest and you have limited time, it’s definitely the logical place to go. Across this district of great prehistoric riches lies the Ridgeway, an ancient route along the hilltops that since 1973 has been a recognized and government-protected national footpath. In the hill country of Devonshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Cumbria, there are many more stone circles and remains of ancient earth works. Among the best are Castlerigg in Cumbria, part of the Lake District, where a circle of Castlerigg

Great Orme Mines

16

Lecture 2 ■ Prehistoric Britain

40 stones create a ring in one of the most scenically dramatic areas of the district. Also impressive is Brisworthy in Devonshire, an oval of 24 standing stones. An enthusiastic local clergyman set most of them upright in 1909. The best prehistoric site in Wales is the Great Orme copper mine, near Llandudno. One of the reasons Britain was in close contact with the rest of Europe, even in pre-Roman days, was the presence there of large copper deposits. The mine at Great Orme was dug out in the Bronze Age, probably beginning around 2000 BCE and continued to be worked over the course of 1,000 years or more.

Scotland’s Prehistoric Sites In Scotland, too, the remains of prehistoric cultures are widespread. Many are at or below ground level, where there isn’t much to see, but more than 100 brochs still stand proud, albeit half ruined. Brochs are mysterious circular buildings, double walled and built using rocks without mortar, over which archaeologists have speculated and debated. Scotland’s best prehistoric site, Skara Brae, is on the Orkney Islands. These windswept treeless islands are among the most inaccessible places in Europe, but can be reached by plane or ferry boat by anyone with enough time, money, and determination. Skara Brae probably dates back 4,000 years, to a period when the climate was rather warmer than it is now. The site was unknown until the 1850s, when a windstorm revealed the remains of old buildings. The local lord excavated four houses. Edinburgh University took over more systematically in the 1920s, and by now, eight low houses have been fully dug out, along with the stone passages that linked them. The people who lived in them appear to have survived by a mixture of farming, herding, and fishing, to judge from recovered fragments. Stone furniture survives in several of the houses, and countless everyday objects have been discovered.

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

One contributor to the debate over Skara Brae, a museum curator from Glasgow named Julian Spalding, argues that such well-built stone objects show the site to have had a ritual rather than domestic purpose. He claims it was something like a sauna, heated by hot rocks immersed in water, around which people would gather for worship and story telling. As so often with prehistoric sites, it’s impossible to be sure because the remains are so fragmentary.

Suggested Reading Darvill, Prehistoric Britain. Schama, A History of Britain.

Suggested Activities 1. Type “Stone circle, Britain” into Google. You will find more than 1,000 examples. Narrowing it down to the best eight or ten and locating them is a good way of learning about Britain’s prehistoric heritage. 2. If you visit Stonehenge and Avebury from London, keep an eye open not just for the White Horse but also for more recent carvings into the chalk hillsides, including regimental insignia from World War I.

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3

ROMAN BRITAIN T

his lecture covers sites that remain from the Roman era of Britain. Much more evidence remains from this era than the prehistoric one because the Romans were literate and commented on what they were doing. Key topics discussed in this lecture include: „„ Hadrian’s Wall. „„ Roman baths. „„ The remains of opulent villas. „„ The notable amphitheater at Caerleon. „„ Roman roads.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Background on the Romans Roman ruler Julius Caesar visited Britain in 55 BCE and again in 54 BCE in the course of conquering Gaul. He fought against the local tribes there, exacting tribute from some and offering protection to others, but then withdrew. About 90 years later, in 43 CE, the Romans returned under the emperor Claudius and conquered Britain. Claudius’s army, led by Aulus Plautius, landed at Richborough in Kent, where the remains of a Roman fort can still be visited. The soldiers then fought their way into the island, overcoming tenacious native opposition. Finally, in the year 60, they defeated the army of Boudica (or Boadecia), a mighty female warrior. Her statue on Westminster Bridge, installed in 1902, has often been used as the symbol of strong female leadership, such as that of Queen Victoria and Margaret Thatcher. Between the years 44 and 410, when Emperor Honorius withdrew the last troops, most of Britain belonged to the Roman Empire. The only area the Romans didn’t subdue was the area they called Caledonia, today’s Scotland.

Hadrian’s Wall Hadrian’s Wall, near the current Anglo-Scottish border, is the best-preserved sign of the Romans’ presence and one of the outstanding places to visit in contemporary Britain. It stretched from coast to coast, 73 miles, from Bowness in the west to the place now aptly named Wallsend in the east.

Hadrian’s Wall

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Lecture 3 ■ Roman Britain

Even today, after nearly two millennia, large parts of it remain. It was about 15 feet high and 8 feet wide, made all the more daunting by the presence of a great ditch on each side that would put attackers at a huge disadvantage. Emperor Hadrian ordered its construction in the early 2nd century CE after deciding that the empire need grow no larger. Historians at first assumed that the role of Hadrian’s Wall was to stop invading tribes. More recent scholarship has modified the picture, suggesting that the wall should be thought of as a place where trade and tribal movements could be regulated rather than prohibited. It was never designed to be impermeable. Instead, the Romans could keep track of movements back and forth, charge tariffs to traders coming through, and close the gates and reinforce the garrison in times of crisis. Even so, attackers breached it on at least three different occasions, in the years 197, 296, and 367. Vindolanda, part of Hadrian’s Wall, is a grand archaeological site. It was a Roman garrison. A reconstruction of a section of the wall and one of the towers, as they would have been when in use, gives visitors an accurate sense of their height and solidity. Another fort along Hadrian’s Wall, at Chesters, was excavated in the early 19th century by the local landowner, John Clayton, who realized the historical importance of his estates. His house stood at the point where the wall crossed the River Tyne. To guard the crossing, the Romans built a fortress that was staffed for a century by Spanish cavalrymen.

Chesters

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After excavating Chesters itself, Clayton went on to acquire several other fortresses and to buy lands that included lengths of the wall. It is in large part due to him that so much of Hadrian’s Wall still exists.

The Roman Baths The second great site of Roman Britain still visible is the Roman baths at the city of Bath in the southwest. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sulfurous hot springs there, even though they smell and taste horrible, have long been taken to have healing properties. Research on recovered Roman-era skeletons shows that that arthritis and rheumatism were common ailments, which the waters were supposed to soothe. This was the basis of the town’s growth. An extensive and well-curated tour at Bath takes visitors through the main Roman sections, including the spring itself, the swimming pool, the temple, and a museum containing the best finds from the site.

Roman baths

Roman Villas Evidence of the Roman presence is scattered throughout Britain, though more in England than in Wales and Scotland, where the Roman presence was more temporary. Villas, all in various states of ruin, are among the best of them. Some indicate that members of the British elite switched the style of their houses from circular wood-and-thatch houses to rectangular stone buildings in the Roman era. Chedworth, in the Cotswolds of Gloucestershire, is an extensive site and well worth a visit. Built between the 2nd and 4th 22

Lecture 3 ■ Roman Britain

Chedworth

centuries, it must have been the home of a wealthy family, though scholars don’t know whether they were Romans or Romanized Britons. The villa was discovered by accident in 1864 by a gamekeeper. They were on the land of the earl of Eldon. The earl’s uncle, James Farrer, an enthusiastic antiquarian, excavated it over the next few years. It features well-preserved mosaic floors and enough of the walls to give a sense of how magnificent it must once have been. Another villa, at Woodchester, also in Gloucestershire, was excavated in 1793 by Samuel Lysons, a local enthusiast. He dug down to disclose a magnificent mosaic, more than

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2,000 square feet in area, which made it one of the biggest and best-preserved Roman mosaics still in existence.

The Ampitheater at Caerleon The best Roman site in Wales is the amphitheater at Caerleon, just north of Newport. The Romans had a fort here, which they called Isca Augusta. Along with the amphitheater, the barracks and bathhouse of Isca Augusta are also visible in outline. As for the amphitheater itself, it is oval in shape, with eight great entrances.

Roads One way visitors sometimes become aware of the Roman mark on Britain is by driving on long, straight roads. Everywhere they went, the Romans built good roads to ensure rapid and effective military communications. The roads Wade’s Causeway

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Lecture 3 ■ Roman Britain

usually went straight over hills rather than contouring around them, ignoring older pathways that were more roundabout. The greatest of the Roman roads is the Fosse Way. Very few stretches of unchanged Roman road are still visible. One is Wade’s Causeway, which is located on high moorland in the North York Moors National Park. It has a high-quality surface made from sandstone slabs closely fitted together.

Suggested Reading Branigan, Roman Britain. Burke, Roman England. De la Bedoyere, Roman Britain.

Suggested Activities 1. Walk a section of Hadrian’s Wall or tour the baths in Bath. If you’re an armchair traveler, open an atlas to trace the wall from coast to coast. 2. Read one of the many historical novels based on Roman Britain, such as Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth (1954).

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4

ANGLO-SAXON AND VIKING BRITAIN

T

his lecture looks at key sites that remain from the Anglo-Saxon and Viking eras of Britain. The lecture also provides some background information on both groups. Key topics of the lecture include: „„ Offa’s Dyke. „„ English churches and crosses. „„ The Sutton Hoo ship burial. „„ Notable Viking-related locations.

Lecture 4 ■ Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain

Background on the Anglo-Saxons In the last days of Roman Britain, Germanic tribes began to migrate to England across the North Sea. The power vacuum that followed the Romans’ evacuation of Britain in 410 accelerated this migration. From Jutland in present-day Denmark came the Jutes, while from present day northern Germany came the Angles and the Saxons. The name England means “land of the Angles.” The Edict of Thessalonica (380) mandated Christianity as the Roman Empire’s official religion. Roman remains in Britain indicate the popularity of Mithraism, a form of sun worship, but there are also scattered vestiges of Roman Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons were pagans, but between the 5th and 8th centuries, they too gradually adopted Christianity. For much of the period between the 5th and 9th centuries, Anglo-Saxon England was divided into seven kingdoms, which are known to historians as the Heptarchy. Northumbria was the most northerly of these kingdoms, while

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the middle of England was the kingdom of Mercia. East Anglia, as its name suggests, was the land of the eastern Angles. Sussex and Essex, which have survived into recent times as county names, are the lands of the southern and eastern Saxons, while Wessex was the land of the western Saxons. In the southeast of England was Kent. The kings of these seven territories were chronically at war with one another, as each strove to become the dominant king.

Offa’s Dyke The biggest and most visible Anglo-Saxon object in Britain is Offa’s Dyke. Offa was king of Mercia from the mid-750s to 796. He built a continuous barrier on his western frontier, probably as a guard against Welsh raiders. Radiocarbon dating has found evidence that some parts of the dyke are earlier, so Offa may have completed a job already partly done by his predecessors. Crossing land most of which is still farmed, it fades from view in places but is still distinct in others. The best place to visit it is at Knighton, where an

Offa's Dyke

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Lecture 4 ■ Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain

Offa’s Dyke visitor center explains its significance and where well-preserved sections are visible. Since 1971, hikers have also been able to walk Offa’s Dyke Path, which is a national trail that runs for 177 miles along the AngloWelsh border.

English Churches and Crosses In addition to earthworks, several English churches survive from the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries. One well-preserved example is tiny St. Laurence’s Church in Wiltshire. Equally well kept is the chapel of St. Peter-on-the-Wall in Essex. Built around 660, it recycled Roman bricks and cut stones. A third and much bigger example is All Saints Church in Brixworth, Northamptonshire. It too is largely unchanged since its construction in the 680s. Only the tower and spire are subsequent additions. Carved crosses from the Anglo-Saxon period are also widespread in England, though usually very worn by centuries of weathering. Probably the best is the Ruthwell Cross, now protected from the elements inside Ruthwell parish church, just north of the Scottish border.

The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial In the 20th and 21st centuries, archaeologists have been excited by major Anglo-Saxon finds. The most spectacular was the Sutton Hoo ship burial in East Anglia, east of Ipswich. In 1937, the local landowner, Edith Pretty, decided to excavate the numerous oddly shaped mounds on her property. She hired a self-taught archaeologist named Basil Brown. He uncovered a wonderful Anglo-Saxon ship burial. Mrs. Pretty’s gardener and a local gamekeeper also joined in the painstaking work of uncovering the find. When archaeologists from Cambridge University and the British Museum realized the significance of the discovery, they took over the work in 1939. Before the excavations could be completed, World War II began, so the site was not fully explored until the 1960s.

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Sutton Hoo Ship Burial

The timbers of the Sutton Hoo ship had rotted away over the centuries, but its impression was clearly shown by the excavators. This had been a real seagoing ship, with places for 40 oarsmen and evidence of periodic repairs. Its benches and mast had been removed, and a central area enclosed to receive the body. The ship had then been dragged up out of the river and lowered into an excavated chamber. After the interment, probably of King Raedwald of East Anglia, a great mound was heaped up over it.

Background on the Vikings and Lindisfarne In the 790s, Britain endured another round of invasions. This time, the intruders were from Scandinavia—the warlike Vikings. In British history, they are usually called the Danes. The Vikings’ first appearance in Britain was their attack on the island monastery at Lindisfarne off the northeastern coast. It was the first of many ruthless attacks on eastern England. The raiders seized everything of value, killed the poor men, carried the women off into slavery, and took the richest men for ransom.

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Lecture 4 ■ Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain

Lindisfarne is today one of the most enchanting places in England. Just a few miles south of the Scottish border, it’s only accessible when the tide is low. It features the ruins of the area’s attacked monastery and a superb castle.

Viking Names The Vikings had magnificent names. One of the first major Viking kings was Harald Fairhair. His son was Eric Bloodaxe. Some of their names corresponded to the individual’s father’s name. Hence, the son of Erik the Red was Leif Eriksson, and his daughter was Freydis Eriksdottir.

After the initial raid on Lindisfarne, Viking depredations became a regular fact of life in the 800s, especially along the east coast of England. Viking ships were the best in the world at that time, combining the capacity to sail long distances with a shallow draft that enabled them to sail

Lindisfarne

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

far up England’s rivers and attack inland communities. A combination of sails and oars also made them maneuverable in a wide variety of conditions.

Alfred the Great In 865, a Viking army landed in East Anglia, intent not just on raiding but on conquering Anglo-Saxon Britain. It was led by the unforgettably named Ivar the Boneless, and is remembered in English history as the Great Heathen Army. It marched north, sacked Whitby, captured York, and seemed all set to dominate the whole of Britain. Opposition came from two kings of Wessex: Aethelred and then his brother Alfred the Great, who ruled from 871 until 899. Alfred’s achievement was to prevent Viking conquest of the whole country. At one point, he was forced into hiding in the marshlands of Athelney, Somerset, where a monument to him still stands. Archaeological work at Athelney has shown that this was the site of an Iron Age fort. Signs of metalworking in the area also suggest that Alfred and his followers cast weapons there in King Alfred’s Tower

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Lecture 4 ■ Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain

preparation for their counterattack on the Vikings. Alfred’s army won a decisive victory against the Viking general, Guthrum, at Edington in 878. Guthrum was forced to become a Christian with Alfred acting as his godfather. England was partitioned into a Viking-dominated east, known as the Danelaw, and an Anglo-Saxondominated west under Alfred. The traditional site of the battle is Egbert’s Stone, an unobtrusive marker. At Stourhead nearby, however, commanding the surrounding country, is King Alfred’s Tower, a King Alfred striking triangular tower completed in 1772 to celebrate England’s victory over France in the Seven Years’ War (or, as Americans call it, the French and Indian War). It is 160 feet high and includes a statue of King Alfred and an inscription. There are also statues of Alfred in Wantage (in Oxfordshire), Pewsey (in Wiltshire), and Winchester, all from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the centuries after Alfred’s reign, the various populations of England gradually merged through coexistence, intermarriage, and trade. AngloSaxon and Viking artistic traditions also persisted and interacted with those of the Normans after 1066.

Suggested Reading Brown, Anglo-Saxon England. Care-Evans, The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial. Higham and Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World. Loyn, The Vikings in Britain. 33

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Suggested Activities 1. Work out what your name would be if you were a Viking. For example, course instructor Patrick Allitt would be Patrick Ericsson because his father is Eric. His sister would be Deborah Ericsdottir. 2. Find a book or web site explaining British place names. You can then trace the western boundary of the Danelaw by watching how place names change.

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5

BRITAIN’S MEDIEVAL CASTLES T

his lecture focuses on medieval castles in Britain, built between 1066 and 1500 for military reasons. The lecture provides some background on castle design and then moves on to discuss specific castles, including: „„ Caerphilly in Wales. „„ The castles of Edward I. „„ Four castles that are particularly interesting to visit, at Bamburgh, Dover, Warwick, and the Tower of London. Note that while this lecture highlights many notable castles, Britain contains hundreds more in various states of repair.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Dover Castle

The Evolution of Castles The Norman king William the Conqueror (r. 1066–1087) used castles from the outset to assert his authority and create strongpoints in his kingdom. The earliest were motte-and-bailey castles, in which a wooden keep was set up on a mound, or motte. An area around the motte, known as the bailey, would be fenced in with a stout palisade. The next stage in castle design was the square stone keep. Several built in the 1100s survive, including those at Dover, Orford, and the Tower of London. The logical next step was to build an outer wall around the keep, making it more difficult for attackers even to approach it. This development is visible in many of the great fortifications of the 1200s. The Tower of London, for example, was made safer and stronger by having the keep enclosed by an outer wall during the reign of King Henry III. When a second wall was added by his son Edward I, it became stronger still.

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Lecture 5 ■ Britain’s Medieval Castles

The superiority of multiple defensive layers led to the development of concentric castles, designed from the outset to present attackers with a succession of obstacles to overcome. Concentric castles also included refinements such as towers bulging out from the line of the outer wall, so that attackers would never find shelter from defenders’ fire. A notable concentric castle in Britain is Caerphilly in Wales. It was built not by the king but by an extremely powerful baron, Gilbert de Clare, struggling in the 1270s to assert his power against the Welsh rebel Llywelyn ap Gruffyd. Caerphilly Castle

Edward I was England’s preeminent castle builder. He consolidated his grip on Wales in the 1280s and 1290s by building four massive ones: Conwy, Caernarfon, Harlech, and Beaumaris. They were built for strength, to overawe Welsh onlookers, to assert Edward’s claim to the throne, and to provide him with places to live safely and comfortably when he was in the area. His architect, James of Saint George, came from Savoy, the area of the Western Alps where France, Italy, and Switzerland meet. Edward honored him with high pay and generous estates.

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The State of Castles Today Most of Britain’s castles are ruins today, and for nearly three centuries, owners and visitors have enjoyed seeing them in that state. The romantic appeal of a ruined castle matches the romantic appeal of a ruined monastery. Some are ruins simply because no one looked after them after their original military functions ceased. Many more, however, are in ruins because they were deliberately wrecked, or slighted. This sometimes occurred in the reign of Henry VIII, the king who abolished private armies, but most of all at the end of the English Civil War. The parliamentary armies of Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell devoted a lot of energy to besieging Royalist-held castles. They wanted to make sure, after the fighting ended, that they would never have to do so again. Slighting consisted of damaging them badly enough to make their restoration impossibly expensive, especially for Royalists who were forced to pay heavy fines for having been on the wrong side.

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Lecture 5 ■ Britain’s Medieval Castles

Castles that are not ruins today are well preserved either because they were converted into aristocratic dwellings or because regiments of the British army continued to use them as military bases. The Edinburgh and Dover castles, for example, were working military bases until the 1920s and 1950s respectively, before being turned into visitor attractions. Warwick, Bamburgh, and Cardiff were turned from ruins into residences by wealthy families, inspired by the idea of living in medieval surroundings.

Four Notable Castles This lecture closes by suggesting four castles that are particularly fascinating to visit: Bamburgh in the north, Dover in the south, Warwick in the Midlands, and the Tower of London. Bamburgh is just a few miles south of the Scottish border. Perched on high ground overlooking the North Sea, it has a magnificently romantic profile. Founded by the Normans on the site of a much older fort, it was besieged

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

by King William II in 1095 when its owner, Robert de Mowbray, rebelled. The castle was bought by businessman William Armstrong in 1894 and restored to more than its former glory. One of the biggest castles in Britain is at Dover, and it is also one of the best to visit. It sits atop the white cliffs where the English Channel is at its narrowest, and it looks superb if you’re approaching England on a cross-channel ferry from France. Every generation has added new elements to Dover Castle, but the boldest and strongest medieval parts still stand out clearly. Warwick Castle is another crowd pleaser. Right in the heart of the kingdom, it looks like a child’s drawing of a medieval castle. Like so many others, it started as an ancient defensive site on which a Norman motte-and-bailey castle was built by William the Conqueror. Warwick has an immense collection of arms and armor. Warwick Castle

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Lecture 5 ■ Britain’s Medieval Castles

Finally, the Tower of London the single most popular tourist attraction in the whole of Britain. Be prepared for the crowds, but go anyway. If you plan ahead, you can book tickets to the ceremony of the keys, which officially closes the tower every evening. Over time, the tower has served as a royal residence, a safe house for the crown jewels, a mint, and a prison. Now, it is largely a tourist attraction, but a splendid one.

Suggested Reading Cormack, Castles of Britain. Jones, Tower. Morris, Castle.

Questions to Consider 1. How did medieval commanders prepare to resist a siege? What factors led to their success or failure? 2. What does the survival of so many castles tell us about British historical self-awareness? Did they sometimes survive simply because they were too sturdy to be demolished?

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6

BRITAIN’S MEDIEVAL CATHEDRALS B

ritain’s 26 medieval cathedrals are among its most famous buildings. Some are over 1,000 years old and others are approaching that milestone. Elegant, majestic, and massive, they bear witness to their founders’ determination to build something that would last for generations. This lecture provides background on cathedrals in general and highlights several of them in particular, including. „„ Provincial cathedrals at Durham, Wells, and Llandaff. „„ Westminster Abbey. „„ Notable cathedrals at Canterbury, Lichfield, and Wells.

Lecture 6 ■ Britain’s Medieval Cathedrals

Llandaff Cathedral

Provincial Cathedrals Note that the most popular cathedrals—such as Westminster Abbey, York Minster, and Canterbury Cathedral—are hard to visit except as part of a crowd. If you want a less-crowded visit, this lecture recommends the provincial cathedrals, which can still be seen in quietness and solemnity. In particular, at Durham, Wells, Lichfield, and Llandaff, relative quiet still reigns at most times of the year. Around each of these provincial cathedrals stands a cluster of almshouses and old administrative buildings, set in beautifully kept grounds.

Background on Cathedrals Cathedrals stand at the center of dioceses, the administrative districts of the Church of England. Each diocese has a bishop. Canterbury and York, the most senior, have archbishops. A cathedra is a bishop’s throne. The dean is the clergyman who takes care of the daily and weekly services at the cathedral 43

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

itself, and is usually assisted by a crowd of subordinate clergy. The bishop, by contrast, has responsibility for all the churches and clergy in the diocese. The English cathedrals have a superb musical tradition, and to many of them are attached choir schools where young boys and girls with treble voices sing the liturgy every day. The choir schools have preserved distinctive ways of singing religious music.

Styles of Cathedrals The earliest medieval cathedrals were built in the Norman or Romanesque style, with heavy columns supporting great rounded arches. They generate a feeling of dark, massive solemnity. Durham Cathedral in northeast England is perhaps the best example of the Norman style in Britain.

Durham Cathedral

In the 12th century, the gothic style began to displace Romanesque. Architects accepted the challenge of creating a sense of vertical soaring, with spaces much higher than they were wide, leading the eye up to remote 44

Lecture 6 ■ Britain’s Medieval Cathedrals

vaulted ceilings and pointed arches. The most distinctive features of gothic cathedrals are wide, bright windows with elaborate tracery, brilliantly colored stained glass, and flying buttresses, spires, and pinnacles. Unfortunately, hardly any of the medieval stained glass remains. Even where it does, as at York, it has faded from its former glory. The best and most brilliant stained glass in English cathedrals today is mainly Victorian, from the mid- and late 19th century.

Notable Cathedrals This lecture closes by looking at several notable cathedrals, starting with Westminster Abbey, which is right across the road from the Houses of Parliament in London. Every monarch has been crowned there since 1066, and it has also served of the site of numerous royal weddings and burials. About 60 miles southeast of London is the cathedral city of Canterbury, the seat of the archbishop. Canterbury Cathedral achieved notoriety in the year 1170 when Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered there. Three

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The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Westminster Abbey

years later, Pope Alexander III named Becket a saint, and the scene of his martyrdom became one of the great pilgrimages of Europe. In Staffordshire, there is a lovely gothic cathedral in the city of Lichfield. It’s a distinctive structure, as it is the only medieval cathedral with three spires. Building at Lichfield began in 1195 on the site of an older cathedral. It took about 135 years to complete, with stylistic adjustments along the way. It was damaged by war in the 1640s but restored in the 19th century.

Lichfield Cathedral

In the county of Somerset in southwest England is the city of Wells, featuring the Wells Cathedral. The structure is from the late 12th and early 13th centuries, but many 46

Lecture 6 ■ Britain’s Medieval Cathedrals

of the details come from each of the subsequent centuries. Notable at this site are the structure’s strainer arches, which were installed in the late 1300s because pillars were sinking under the weight of the tower above them. If the strainer arches make Wells distinctive, a 20th-century statue of Jesus has the same effect at Llandaff, the cathedral for the Welsh city of Cardiff. Built in the 1100s, Llandaff Cathedral has sustained repeated severe damage, including from the German air force in World War II. After the German air raid, the roof was rebuilt. Jacob Epstein, a prominent sculptor, was commissioned to make the 16-foot rendering of Jesus.

Suggested Reading Jenkins, England’s Cathedrals. Johnson, Cathedrals of England, Scotland, and Wales.

Suggested Activities 1. Compare pictures of the towers and spires of any five of the cathedrals. Though they are superficially similar, they become increasingly varied and inventive the more closely you look. 2. In each of the cathedrals you visit, try to find the names of the men and women whose bequests made the building and its adornment possible. What were their motives?

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7

TUDOR BRITAIN K

ing Richard III died at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, defeated by Henry Tudor. This was the last battle in the Wars of the Roses. For more than half a century, the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, all descended from Edward III, had exchanged blows in their struggle for the throne. Henry Tudor, now crowned as Henry VII, was a shrewd, tight-fisted king from the Lancastrian side. He pacified England, married a Yorkist princess, and made a clever dynastic alliance with the king of Spain. At his death in 1509, he passed the kingdom to his talented and warlike son, Henry VIII. This lecture looks at sites remaining from the Tudor reign over Britain, which lasted until Elizabeth I’s death in 1603. Sites discussed include: „„ Bosworth Field, where Henry Tudor achieved victory. „„ Hampton Court Palace. „„ English places of worship, especially after Henry VIII began attacking religion. „„ Sites relevant to later rulers Mary I and Elizabeth I. „„ Tudor houses.

Lecture 7 ■ Tudor Britain

Bosworth Field Bosworth Field in Leicestershire is largely farmland today, but a visitor center, a museum, and a set of footpaths enable visitors to walk over the ground where the soldiers fought and died. Though one group of historians continues to claim that the location is wrong by about two miles, the exhibits give a lively sense of the participants, the immense class gulf that separated knights from men-at-arms, and the way the armies had moved to their rendezvous over the preceding weeks.

Hampton Court Palace Henry VIII became king in 1509 at the age of 18. For a taste of royal opulence in Henry’s reign, visit Hampton Court Palace in southwest London. It was designed and built by Cardinal Wolsey, a worldly churchman who was Henry’s chief advisor in the 1510s and 1520s. He aimed to show foreign ambassadors and papal envoys that, as a cardinal, he enjoyed the same high style as the cardinals in Rome itself. Italian workmen accomplished much of the detailed work. Hampton bears witness to the truth that red brick can be just as impressive as stone when it

Hampton Court Palace

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comes to building monumental houses. It has a series of superb gatehouses, handsome quadrangles, and a wonderful astronomical clock.

English Places of Worship In 1534, Henry VIII declared himself head of the English church, separating English religious life from Rome and the popes. He then abolished shrines to the saints throughout England, closed the monasteries, appropriated all their property to himself, and put a stop to pilgrimages. Today, there are more than 800 ruined abbeys, priories, and monasteries across Britain. Many are imposing, even as ruins. At Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, for example, enough of the complex remains to give a vivid sense of its extent and magnificence.

Rievaulx Abbey

Another among the picturesque monasteries dissolved by Henry is Tintern Abbey, on the Welsh side of the River Wye. Founded in the 1100s, it grew to

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Lecture 7 ■ Tudor Britain

Tintern Abbey

cathedral dimensions in the late 13th century. Henry VIII dismissed the abbot at Tintern and gave the site to a courtier in 1536, after which it gradually decayed.

Mary I and the Martyrs’ Memorial On Henry VIII’s death in 1547, nine-year-old Edward VI, the son of Jane Seymour came to the throne. He lasted only six years. At the age of 15, Edward VI, recognizing that his death was near, nominated his cousin, 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey, to succeed him because she was a Protestant. Her reign lasted only a week before 37-year-old Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s oldest daughter, marched on London from Framlingham, in Suffolk, with her sister Elizabeth and a large military contingent to displace her. The intelligent and well-educated Jane Grey was imprisoned, later tried for treason, and ultimately beheaded at the Tower of London. Mary became Queen Mary I, often known to posterity as Bloody Mary.

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Mary persecuted and killed several of England’s Protestant leaders, including three bishops—Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley—who were burned at the stake in Oxford. Their willingness to die for their faith demonstrated that there was more than cold political calculation involved in the English Reformation. The Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford that commemorates them is Victorian, from about 1840.

Elizabeth I Mary’s death in 1558, at the age of 42, made way for her younger half-sister, Elizabeth I. Elizabeth took the throne, reigned for 45 years, persecuted Catholics where Mary had persecuted Protestants, and carefully avoided marriage. Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford

Among the Catholics who suffered at Elizabeth’s hands was Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, whom she imprisoned for 18 years and finally executed in 1587. Today, travelers can visit many of the places where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, including Carlisle Castle near Hadrian’s Wall and Bolton Castle in Yorkshire. Little remains of Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary was put to death, but the site is marked by a bit of masonry from the castle’s keep along with some commemorative markers. One Catholic response to Elizabethan persecution was the so-called priest hole. Families still loyal to the Catholic faith knew that their priests were in danger for their lives. At several country

Carlisle Castle

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houses, secret rooms were built where the priest could hide when the priest hunters came searching. An excellent example is Harvington Hall in Worcestershire, where visitors can peer into a series of priest holes, including an attic hiding place that is accessed via a false fireplace.

Tudor Houses Priest holes aside, the design of English houses changed radically between 1485 and 1603. Henry VIII’s abolition of private armies and the end of the Wars of the Roses created a situation in which fortification was no longer necessary. The best Tudor houses in England have much bigger windows than the old castles, and they conspicuously do not have curtain walls, moats, drawbridges, and portcullises. Some of them might still be called castles, but really they are mansions. One fine example of the new Tudor house is Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, designed in the 1580s by Robert Smythson and owned by Sir Francis Wollaton Hall

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Willoughby. Willoughby had made a fortune in coal mining and hoped to entice the queen to visit him by creating a spectacular setting that she would enjoy. (She never actually visited.) Another fine example of the Tudor country house is Hardwick Hall. Built on a hilltop, close to the ruins of an earlier hall, it belonged to Bess of Hardwick, a larger-than-life redheaded businesswoman who somehow managed to outlive four husbands, three of them rich, each of whom bequeathed to her another fortune. Visit Hardwick if you possibly can; it has some of the grandest staircases in the kingdom.

Hardwick Hall

Melford Hall in Suffolk is a striking example of a Tudor house built on formerly monastic lands; in fact, its cellars were part of the monastery, and the current house was built right on top of them. It is a red brick structure with six impressive towers, topped by onion-shaped domes. They are echoed in its imposing gatehouse. Queen Elizabeth I visited in 1578 as a sign of favor to the Cordell family, the owners and builders. Just over a mile from Melford stands Kentwell, another fine house from the same era, built in the same style. The parish church of Long Melford, Holy

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Melford Hall

Kentwell Hall

Trinity, lies between the two houses, and it is among the most spectacular churches in the whole kingdom. A smaller scale Tudor house is Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire, which has a special significance for American visitors. The land, part of a monastic

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estate, was bought in 1539 by Lawrence Washington, formerly mayor of Northampton. The house stayed in his family for the next century until, in 1656, John Washington emigrated to the colony of Virginia, after which his English relatives sold the house. John Washington was the great-grandfather of George Washington—the planter, soldier, revolutionary, and first president of the United States.

Suggested Reading Ackroyd, The Tudors. Girouard, Hardwick Hall. Knowles, Bare Ruined Choirs.

Questions to Consider 1. Why is the story of Henry VIII and his six wives so inexhaustibly interesting? Is it possible to sympathize with Henry in his long marital drama? 2. Why were the Tudors able to achieve internal peace in England after the long Wars of the Roses?

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8

MAGNA CARTA AND CIVIL WAR O

ne of the inspiring aspects of British history is the way its kings were gradually forced to share power, to accept the rule of law, and eventually to submit to parliamentary domination. Today, Britain is a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch has a few residual shreds of influence, but is now comfortably constrained by representative institutions. Kings rarely gave up their powers without a fight. This lecture gives a guide to many of the places in which such fights happened and where many of the era’s important figures resided and visited, including: „„ Runnymede, signing place of the Magna Carta. „„ Battlefields of the English Civil War. „„ The locations of the trial, execution, and burial of King Charles I. „„ Locations relevant to military and political figure Oliver Cromwell.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Runnymede

Runnymede and the Magna Carta In England at Runnymede in 1215, King John signed the Magna Carta. The site is a broad open meadow in the valley of the River Thames, not far from Heathrow. It is delightfully rural, in view of its proximity to millions of people. If you’re politically minded, it’s the ideal first thing to see in Britain after you get off the plane, as it is only about a 20-minute drive from the airport. It was already historically significant by King John’s time, being the place where the Anglo-Saxon kings had sometimes met their Witan, or council of advisors. The meadow was donated to the nation in 1929 by Cara Rogers Broughton, a wealthy American’s daughter who had married a British engineer and knew about the area’s history. The architect Edwin Lutyens built a pair of memorials and two lodges in their honor, where you can park to begin your visit. A footpath takes you across the meadow to attractions in the area. There is a copy of the Magna Carta on display at the British Library and one each at the Salisbury and Lincoln cathedrals. It was written as an attempt to mediate between King John and his rebellious barons, affording various legal rights and protections to them. It certainly didn’t hold out much to the common people and was quickly repudiated by King John, then annulled by the pope.

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When subsequent kings wanted to raise revenue, they sometimes reissued milder versions of it to mollify their subjects. In the early 1600s, however, when James I and Charles I came into conflict with Parliament over where ultimate sovereignty lay, the Magna Carta became an important precedent.

Sites from the 17th Century The lecture now moves forward in time from King John at Runnymede to the early 17th century—a time when a combination of religious and political disagreements created a crisis in Britain. The religious differences divided the Church of England between those who emphasized its closeness to Catholicism in all but church governance and those who insisted it was a thoroughly Protestant church that rejected all vestiges of the Catholic past. This latter party was named the Puritans because they wanted to purify the church. As for politics, the main disagreement of the 1620s and 1630s hinged on whether the king enjoyed absolute power as God’s agent on earth or whether he was subject to the law and held sovereignty jointly with Parliament. In the decades after 1603, when James I came to the throne, he and his son Charles I summoned Parliament irregularly, usually because they needed to raise money for military expeditions. Parliament presented lists of grievances, saying it would grant money to the king once he had redressed them. A series of bitter standoffs finally led Charles I to attempt government without parliamentary help through most of the 1630s. It worked until a Scottish invasion of northern England forced his hand. Rather than admit the principle of Parliament’s right to a permanent place in power, Charles raised an army and declared war against Parliament. It raised an army of its own and fought back. This was the English Civil War. So much time has passed since the English Civil War that most of its battlefields are now indistinct, often indicated just by stone markers. The two decisive battles of the war took place at Marston Moor, Yorkshire, in 1644, and Naseby in Northamptonshire in 1645. Marston Moor was, in terms of numbers, the biggest battle ever fought in England. It was also the place where Prince Rupert, the king’s nephew, lost his reputation for 59

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invincibility as a cavalry commander. By contrast, Parliament’s cavalry leader, Oliver Cromwell, distinguished himself as a firstrate battlefield commander.

Naseby battlefield

At Naseby in 1645, Parliament’s welltrained New Model Army, 22,000 strong, led by General Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell, routed a smaller Royalist army, killed or captured most of the king’s veteran officers, and ended his ability to field a viable force. A few months later, the war ended in victory for Parliament. The Naseby battlefield, like Marston Moor, now comprises several working farms. A stone marker, a battlefield

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trail, a series of elevated platforms, and several historical plaques explain the main events of the battle to visitors. The best way to get a feel for the English Civil War is by watching reenactments by two groups of enthusiasts, the Sealed Knot society and the English Civil War Society. They assemble at Marston Moor, Naseby, and other sites, such as Edge Hill in Warwickshire, usually on the anniversaries of the actual battles. They also reenact several major castle sieges from the conflict.

After the English Civil War When the Civil War ended, the king and Parliament negotiated uneasily about the future balance of power. Charles I, however, took the view that God had appointed him and that Parliament had no rights except through his grace. He was imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, a beautiful medieval castle that is now open to visitors. He provoked a royalist revival, supported by a Scottish invasion into northern England. The New Model Army, outnumbered two-to-one but with Cromwell now in sole command, crushed this Royalist revival at the Battle of Preston in the summer of 1648. Many of the Puritan soldiers were politicized by the war and began to speak out on behalf of radical changes to England’s government. In the autumn of 1647, a group called the Levellers published The Case of the Armie Truly Stated, which led to a series of discussions on political first principles. These discussions, the Putney Debates, were held in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Putney, which people can still visit. Some of the soldiers spoke eloquently on behalf of a one-man, one-vote democracy. Henry Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law, a senior army officer, countered that only property owners should be permitted to vote, because only they had a permanent stake in the nation. Cromwell, like Ireton, was skeptical about the Levellers, but he had now lost all patience with the king and was determined to get rid of him once and for 61

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all. He and his supporters purged Parliament of moderates who still wanted a reformed monarchy. The remaining members in the so-called Rump Parliament put the king on trial for treason. The trial was held in Westminster Hall. This magnificent medieval building is one of the few parts of Parliament to have survived down to the present. This extraordinary roof has seen many spectacular moments over the last millennium, but probably none more dramatic than the trial of Charles I. He stuck to his original point, that Parliament had no right to try him, but the Rump Parliament found him guilty and sentence him to death. The sentence was carried out by beheading in Whitehall, in front of the Banqueting House, on a cold January day in 1649. The body, with the head crudely stitched back on, was buried at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, adjacent to the bodies of King Henry VIII and most beloved wife, Jane St. George’s Chapel Seymour. This chapel is one of the highlights of Windsor. The Banqueting House, site of Charles’s execution, is also worth a visit. Built by order of Charles’s father, King James I, it is the handiwork of Inigo Jones, one of the great luminaries of 17th-century English architecture.

The Importance of Cromwell The execution of Charles I made Oliver Cromwell the most important man in Britain, the leading regicide who had the confidence of the army and Parliament. He tried to maintain rule through the Rump Parliament until 62

Lecture 8 ■ Magna Carta and Civil War

Oliver Cromwell's house

1653, with it acting as legislature and executive. This was the English Commonwealth. Then, impatient at the Commonwealth’s inability to get things done, he abolished it, had himself declared the lord protector of England, and he ruled as a military dictator until his death in 1658. Cromwell had been born in 1599 in Huntingdon, East Anglia, to a family of prosperous gentlemen. He studied at the local grammar school, then went to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He married the daughter of a wealthy London merchant, went through a religious conversion to become a committed Puritan, and lived in a fine timbered house in the town of Ely, which is open to visitors.

After Cromwell After Cromwell’s death, it was clear that no one else enjoyed the confidence of both the army and the Parliament, as he had done. His son Richard ruled as lord protector for less than a year. Then, for the sake of political stability, Parliament decided to invite the old king’s son to return from exile in France. 63

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He did so, being crowned King Charles II in 1660. Charles II never forgot what had happened to his father. Frequently at odds with Parliament, he was nevertheless careful not to antagonize it to the breaking point. Charles II’s successor, his brother James II, was hopelessly inept when it came to politics. He had become a Catholic during his long exile in France—which made him anathema to most Englishmen. Even so, he could have survived had he not antagonized all the influential groups whose help he needed. After less than four years on the throne, he was forced to flee in 1688. Parliament then invited William of Orange, stadtholder of the Netherlands, who was married to James’s Protestant daughter, Mary, to become king instead. They were equal monarchs: William III and Mary II. This sequence of events, in effect a bloodless coup, is remembered as The Glorious Revolution, important in British history and a source of inspiration to the American revolutionaries of the 1770s and 1780s. Although William was a tireless soldier, he suffered from asthma and found life at Whitehall Palace unendurable because of the area’s foggy humidity. Instead, he and Mary bought a big house at the western end of Hyde Park, a mile farther back from the river. They hired the age’s leading architect, Christopher Wren, to extend it and renamed it Kensington Palace. It has been a royal residence ever since and is an outstanding example of late 17th- and early 18th-century design and decoration.

Suggested Reading Fraser, Cromwell, Our Chief of Men. Starkey, Magna Carta. Worden, The English Civil Wars.

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Suggested Activities 1. Read 18th- or 19th-century accounts of Oliver Cromwell by Irish Catholics, to whom he is a devil figure, and then by English Protestants, to whom he is a hero. Reflect on bias among historians. 2. Visit Westminster Hall and the Banqueting House in London, the places where King Charles I was tried and then executed.

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9

ENLIGHTENMENT BRITAIN

T

he Enlightenment refers to a historical period during the late 17th and 18th centuries when European thinkers emphasized scientific method and the power of reason to improve the human condition. The Enlightenment transformed intellectual life in France, Germany, England, and Scotland. This lecture looks at important sites and people from that time, including: „„ St. Paul’s Cathedral, the greatest achievement of architect Christopher Wren. „„ The work of architect Andrea Palladio. „„ Notable houses from the Enlightenment era. „„ The homes and gathering places of intellectual figures.

Lecture 9 ■ Enlightenment Britain

The Work of Christopher Wren Premonitions of the Enlightenment came in the work of Christopher Wren. He was a mathematician and astronomer, and one of the first members of the Royal Society, founded in 1660.

St. Paul’s Cathedral

The multitalented Wren was also the architect who set about redesigning and rebuilding London after the catastrophic Great Fire of 1666, including many churches that still stand, London’s monument to the fire, and the Royal Observatory and hospital at Greenwich. Wren’s greatest achievement was St. Paul’s Cathedral, which has been a London landmark for more than 300 years.

The Work of Andrea Palladio The Enlightenment era in Britain witnessed a fashion for the Palladian style. Andrea Palladio was an Italian architect of the 16th century who aimed to revive building in the style Chiswick House of the Roman Empire. His Four Books on Architecture, first published in 1570, were influential throughout Europe and helped define British aristocratic taste in the 18th century. One of the first great Palladian buildings in Britain was Chiswick House in west London, recently restored and now in beautiful condition. Chiswick House 67

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is open to visitors regularly, while the grounds are open every day during daylight hours.

Homes of the Enlightenment Hundreds of fine houses from the Enlightenment period survive. Many have become colleges, schools, or corporate headquarters, and some are now hotels. Luckily, dozens are open to the public as historic showplaces. Two notable sites are Kedleston Hall and Calke Abbey, both in Derbyshire. They are owned and cared for by the National Trust, but they tell very different stories.

Kedleston Hall

The estate of Kedleston belonged to the Curzon family before 1300. The current house was built by Robert Adam, a Scot who became one of the leading architects of the 18th century. Adam said his designs were not Palladian, but they certainly incorporated classical Roman themes. From Kedleston, it’s only about 20 miles to Calke Abbey, but Calke radiates a very different mood. Signs as visitors enter declare: “Welcome to Calke, the Un-Stately Home.” Built in the first decade of the 1700s on the grand scale by an unknown architect, it was the property of the Harpur-Crewe family. The 68

Lecture 9 ■ Enlightenment Britain

Calke Abbey

Harpur-Crewes became eccentric and reclusive, failed to keep up their great house, retreated into almost hermetic solitude, and let it go to ruin. When the National Trust finally received the house in 1985, their first thought was to restore it to its days of splendor. On reflection, however, and in view of the terrifying expense that would have entailed, they decided on a different approach and put it on display as they had found it. Doing just enough work to prevent further deterioration, they offered visitors a glimpse of the other side of Britain’s aristocracy. The later generations of the Harpur-Crewes compulsively collected stuffed animals and stuffed birds, insects, and rocks and shells, and crammed the house with taxidermy, neglected areas of the house that began to leak, and retreated from one room after the next as it moldered. Calke acts as a reminder that old buildings of all kinds require constant work, that privileged

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people don’t necessarily have good taste, and that the forces of order and entropy are constantly fighting it out.

Georgian Architecture Members of the rising middle-class in the 18th century could not afford great stately homes, but the townhomes they favored were often sturdy enough to have survived in large numbers. The first four King Georges sat on the throne between 1714 and 1830, so buildings from this era are often called Georgian. The place to see Georgian architecture at its best is Bath, in the county of Somerset. Robert Adam—earlier the architect at Kedleston—was also the architect of Pulteney Bridge, right in the heart of Bath. The town also features a circle of proud stone townhouses built in the 1750s and 1760s known as the Circus. The architects were a father-and-son team, both named John Wood. Circus

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Intellectual Figures Britain’s intellectual vitality continued to increase in those years, as new figures from the middle-classes began to affect national affairs. One place to trace their rising influence is in the modest Staffordshire town of Lichfield. It was home to three prominent Enlightenment-era figures: the writer Samuel Johnson, the actor David Garrick, and Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin. Johnson’s birthplace and childhood home at the corner of the town square still stands; the square itself features a large statue of him. The house is now a museum and bookstore. One of Johnson’s early ventures was to found a private school. It closed down after only one year for lack of business, but among the few pupils in attendance was Garrick. The Samuel Johnson birthplace includes plenty of pictures and busts of Garrick. A few hundred yards from Johnson’s house, best approached via Lichfield’s wonderful medieval cathedral, is the home of Erasmus Darwin. He was a successful country doctor, inventor, poet, and polymath. He was also a Erasmus Darwin's home

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founding member of the Lunar Society, which included the innovative pottery entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood, the scientist Joseph Priestley, the inventor James Watt, and Watt’s business partner Matthew Boulton. One of the rooms in the Lichfield house is an imaginative reconstruction of his medical office. His backyard is open to visitors, and this is where Mrs. Darwin kept her garden, where herbs for medicines were grown.

Suggested Reading Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile. Uglow, The Lunar Men.

Questions to Consider 1. Why should we, as tourists, be pleased by signs of the development of a vigorous middle class in the 18th century? 2. With which aspects of 18th-century aristocratic style is it easiest to be sympathetic, and with which the most difficult?

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10

INDUSTRIAL BRITAIN T

he Industrial Revolution began in the mid-1700s, picked up speed in the early 1800s, and transformed Great Britain more than any other process before or since. Several generations of inventors and entrepreneurs looked for new and better ways of solving old problems. The machines, factories, canals, railways, and cities they built transformed Britain and taught the rest of the world that industrialization could mitigate the age-old problems of mass poverty and privation. This lecture looks at sites that remain from the time of the Industrial Revolution. Topics discussed include: „„ Textiles.

„„ Canals.

„„ Iron.

„„ Railways.

„„ Coal.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Textiles Textiles were the first commodities to be factory produced in large quantities. Derbyshire in the North Midlands is the place where the industry started, and it is now a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site of early industrialization. The fast-flowing River Derwent was adapted to turn water wheels that powered early spinning machines. In the small town of Belper, more of this heritage is preserved at the North Mill. It is the oldest part of a textile-making complex that kept growing until the early 20th century, under the supervision of the Strutt family. Guides will show visitors examples of the old machines.

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Belper Mill

A third old textile mill stands in the much bigger town of Derby, a bit farther south. This is the old Silk Mill, which is widely regarded as the first factory in Britain. It was built in 1721 by two brothers, John and Thomas Lombe, but still looks more or less as it has for three centuries. The single best place in Britain to study the history of the textile trade is at Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, just south of Manchester. When Britain made the switch from water to steam power in the late 1700s and early 1800s, much of the textile business moved to big lowland towns near the coast, the most famous of which was Manchester. At Quarry Bank Mill, every generation of textile machinery is represented.

Iron If textiles were the first boom commodities in the Industrial Revolution, iron was the next. The place to see vestiges of England’s early iron industry is in the Coalbrookdale valley in Shropshire, near the Welsh border. Like the Derwent Valley, this is a hilly area with fast-flowing water that was, at first, the all-important source of energy. Many generations of the Darby family lived there and ran successful iron works.

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Ironbridge

The most distinguished object in the valley was built in 1779 by Abraham Darby III. It is the world’s first bridge made of iron. The local people were so proud of it that they changed the name of their town from Madeley to Ironbridge. It is elegant, elaborately decorated, and still strong enough to bear the weight of the thousands of pedestrians who come to visit every year. Coalbrookdale, the section of the River Severn that Coalbrookdale flows through the Ironbridge Gorge, was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986. It features dozens of interesting places to visit, including the fine home of the Darby family itself. Best of all is the Blists Hill Victorian Town, which features dozens of historical reenactors.

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Coal As coal-powered steam engines displaced water wheels, British coal mining grew by leaps and bounds. Once the world’s leading coal-producing nation, entire areas of the country were dominated by the mines. However, after World War II, the whole industry was nationalized and gradually became uncompetitive. Margaret Thatcher broke the power of Britain’s coal-mining unions in the 1980s and accelerated the closing of mines that had become inefficient and unprofitable. Only a handful of coal miners still work in Britain today. In one sense, that’s a positive because mining was always an extremely dangerous job. In another sense, it’s a negative because entire areas, once thriving with coal, are now blighted by high levels of unemployment. To learn what the life was like for coal miners, go to the Big Pit in the South Wales village of Blaenafon, from which coal was dug between the 1880s and the 1980s. It stands on a bleak hillside that looks utterly miserable in the frequent rainstorms that sweep across it, but it has a gaunt beauty when the sun shines. The underground tour of the mine, led by retired miners, is a revelation for visitors.

Canals Among the biggest problems confronting the producers of textiles, iron, and coal was how to move these heavy, bulky commodities from site to market and how to bring in the raw materials. Transportation in Britain during the 1700s was slow and costly, mostly by wagon or packhorse overland, or by sailing freighters along the coast. That situation began to change with the creation of canals, the first of which to have a major economic effect was built by James Brindley for a Lancashire coal-mine owner, the duke of Bridgwater, in 1761. Between the 1770s and the 1820s, there followed a spate of canal building that linked up all the major towns of England, including many of the new ones that were springing up as industrial centers. The innovation of locks further improved canals.

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A few spectacular canal-related sites are particularly deserving of a visit. The first is the Boat Lift in the village of Anderton, Cheshire, on the Trent and Mersey Canal. Designed and built in the 1870s, it carries boats from the high level of the canal down to the low level of the River Weaver. Another great sight is long flights of locks, where the lower gate of one lock doubles as the upper gate of the next. The best example in the north of England is the Bingley Five Rise, near Bradford in Yorkshire. A third great sight is the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal, in North East Wales. Built by the master bridge builder Thomas Telford, it took 10 years before its grand opening in 1805. It is the highest aqueduct in the world, standing 126 feet above the valley.

Railways No sooner had a comprehensive canal system been finished than it was upstaged by railways. This is another world-changing technology that was pioneered in Britain and then spread everywhere else. Britain was seized by railway mania in the 1830s and 1840s, building hundreds then thousands of miles of lines. Journeys that had taken weeks shrank to hours.

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Some ill-considered lines were destined never to make a profit. Others closed at various points in the 20th century, and they now comprise an important part of the Sustrans bicycle network and pedestrian-friendly paths. An example is the scenic High Peak Trail through the center of the Peak District National Park and the Tissington Trail to which it is linked. In 1968 British Railways, the government-run organization that had controlled the whole system since nationalization in 1948, withdrew its last steam locomotives from service. Howls of anguish arose from steam train lovers throughout the nation. They at once began buying up locomotives to prevent them from being scrapped. They also bought up lengths of disused railway and turned them back into working lines, lovingly restoring old equipment and putting it back into use every weekend. There are more than a hundred of these heritage railways, with more than 400 steam-powered locomotives still in operation. Some are just a mile or two in length, but the best of them, such as the Great Central Railway in Leicestershire, the Severn Valley Railway in Worcestershire, the North

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Yorkshire Moors Railway, and the Bluebell Railway in Sussex, are long enough to let the locomotives pick up speed and emulate their original performance. They have become a major tourist attraction in their own right, with tens of thousands of annual visitors.

Suggested Reading Hannavy, Britain’s Industrial Heritage. Smiles, Lives of the Engineers. Weightman, The Industrial Revolutionaries.

Suggested Activities 1. When you are in any of Britain’s cities, look at the way the landscape has been modified by canal and railway builders. 2. Travel by train at least once. It’s likely that you’ll be following the exact course laid down by Victorian engineers nearly two centuries ago.

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11

VICTORIAN BRITAIN Q

ueen Victoria is a monumental figure in British history. She reigned from 1837 to 1901. During her reign, Britain consolidated its worldwide empire and continued its transformation into an industrial giant. This lecture highlights some important Victorian places that belong on the itinerary of every traveler to Britain, including: „„ Examples of Victorian architecture. „„ Sites related to intellectual figures Karl Marx and Charles Darwin. „„ Sites related to Florence Nightingale, health care, and workhouses. „„ Two sites related to Victoria’s love, Prince Albert. „„ Important town halls.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Architecture Different groups of prosperous Victorians favored different styles of building. Many were revivals of older forms, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Italianate, and French Chateau style. From the Victorian era, the Gothic revival style is particularly notable. It is a confident, playful form. Gothic revival accelerated with the writings and buildings of Augustus Welby Pugin. A masterpiece among Pugin’s surviving buildings is St. Giles Catholic Church in Cheadle, Staffordshire.

Pugin’s achievement was widely admired by many Protestants. Three of the leading Protestant gothic revivalists were George Gilbert Scott, Alfred Waterhouse, and William Butterfield. The place to see Gilbert Scott’s work at its best is St. Pancras Station on Euston Road, London Alfred Waterhouse’s greatest works are the Manchester Town Hall and the Kensington Museum of Natural History. At Balliol College, Oxford, on a smaller scale, Waterhouse managed to convey the impression of everything 82

Lecture 11 ■ Victorian Britain

St. Pancras Station

Manchester Town Hall

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Balliol College

soaring upward. When you visit Oxford, stop to admire the handsome Broad Street frontage that Waterhouse designed. Oxford was also the site of several projects by William Butterfield, notably Keble College, half a mile outside the city’s center. His use of brightly patterned and strongly contrasted polychromatic brick, especially in Keble College Chapel, was loved by some and deplored by others right from the beginning. Another Victorian Gothic structure in north Oxford is the museum of natural history, designed by

Keble College Chapel

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Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward, with advice from the art historian John Ruskin. Deane and Woodward made good use of iron and glass.

Intellectual Figures Several intellectual giants were active during the Victorian era, and visitors can still see sites related to them today. One example is Charles Darwin’s dwelling, Down House in Kent. The house is now open to the public and run by English Heritage. The furnishings and decorations have been restored, including his wheeled armchair, while the gardens and greenhouses have been set up to duplicate some of his many experiments. Another figure from the time is Karl Marx, who labored away in the great circular reading room of the British Museum in London. Marx lived for 85

Karl Marx

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many years at 28 Dean Street in Soho. Although the rooms he occupied have long since been converted to other uses, visitors can sign up for a guided walk around Marx’s London, led by scholarly enthusiasts. Yet another of the era’s intellectual giants was John Stuart Mill. The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill is one of the best books about childhood in British history. Mill’s house in Kensington Square is marked with one of the distinctive blue plaques that mark historically important buildings throughout the country.

Florence Nightingale, Health Care, and Workhouses During his time serving in Parliament, Mill was the first to introduce draft legislation that would give women the vote. There were certainly plenty of distinguished and strong-minded women in Britain for Mill to admire. One was the nurse and social reformer Florence Nightingale, who lived from 1820 to 1910. A museum dedicated to her life and work is located at St. Thomas’s Hospital, just across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament. This was the hospital in which she founded a training school for nurses. Its original buildings have long since disappeared, Florence Nightingale but she continues to be honored for her work there. At the museum, visitors see her medicine chest; the clothes she and other nurses wore; her pet owl, Athena; her journals and letters; and some of the era’s surgical instruments. There are also exhibits showing how Victorian gender ideas made it difficult for women to be taken seriously as organizers of large-scale health-care initiatives. 86

Lecture 11 ■ Victorian Britain

Nightingale was also important for improving medical care at England’s workhouses. The workhouses, which destitute people were forced to enter for aid, and which they hated, were severe. One of the best surviving workhouses can be seen at Southwell in Nottinghamshire, a big, highly functional brick building with extensive grounds. Another workhouse building Southwell Workhouse at Lambeth in southern London, built in the 1870s to house 820 inmates, has been converted into a cinema museum. Charlie Chaplin, in his autobiography, describes his miserable life at the workhouse in the 1890s, when he was six and seven years old. There is also a circular tower that was designed and built in the 1890s as a workhouse infirmary at Camberwell in South London.

Prince Albert The great tragedy of Queen Victoria’s life was the premature death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861. The queen grieved the loss deeply. An area of Kensington in London was Albert Memorial given over to commemorating him; it is nicknamed Albertopolis. The two most striking buildings there are the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. The hall was another innovative polychromatic brick building, designed by two officers from the Royal Engineers and featuring an immense iron dome, 87

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unsupported by interior pillars. The memorial, a few yards from the hall, is a ciborium—that is, a canopy covering a statue. It was designed by George Gilbert Scott and dedicated by the queen in 1872. The gilded statue of Albert himself was finished and added three years later.

Town Halls In the years of Queen Victoria’s reign, between 1837 and 1901, nearly all the big cities that had prospered with industrialization treated themselves to big new civic buildings, competing with each other for the grandest structure and boldest design. Early on, the favored style was classical. Birmingham, for example, built a town hall in the 1830s that was modeled on the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum. It was meant to project the idea of Birmingham as a place devoted to republican principles. Birmingham Town Hall

St. George’s Hall in Liverpool, built a few years later, was a combination concert venue and law court complex. The interior concert hall, extravagantly 88

Lecture 11 ■ Victorian Britain

decorated from floor to ceiling, is adorned with statues of local dignitaries in its niches, and elaborate bronze doors. The open space in front of the building, St. George’s Plateau, is a space for civic celebrations and protests. The town hall in Wolverhampton, which opened in 1871, was designed in the style of a French chateau. The town hall at Leicester was built in the Queen Anne style a few years later, while civic planners in Glasgow used elements of the Italian Renaissance.

Suggested Reading Clarke, Gothic Revival. Mill, Autobiography. Paterson, Life in Victorian Britain. Wilson, Charles Darwin.

Suggested Activities 1. Compare medieval Gothic buildings with Victorian Gothic buildings to see how the Victorian architects used, but also deviated from, the originals. 2. In each town you visit, find how many buildings, streets, and parks are named for Prince Albert. You will find that they all date from the period 1840–1870 and that most date from the years immediately after his premature death in 1861.

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20TH-CENTURY BRITAIN

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nyone who visits Britain is going to see far more buildings from the 20th century than from any other century, but they are the glum background against which the many magnificent old structures stand out so proudly. However, there are some sites and topics from the time that are worth noting, including the contents of this lecture, which are: „„ Notable works by the architect Edwin Luytens. „„ Government buildings. „„ Buildings constructed in the interwar years between the World Wars. „„ Housing from the 1920s and 1930s. „„ Motorways and office buildings.

Lecture 12 ■ 20th-Century Britain

Edwin Luytens Edwin Lutyens, one of the most inventive and talented architects in British history, built impressive houses for wealthy clients, such as Tigbourne Court in Surrey, a fine country home. Another exemplary country house is Lutyens’s Castle Drogo Castle Drogo in Devonshire. Everything inside is gratuitously oversized; it is austere and opulent at the same time. The adjacent formal gardens make Castle Drogo a good place for a day out, despite its remoteness down tiny rural lanes. Lutyens also carried out commissions for major public and corporate buildings, such as a headquarters for the Midland Bank in London and for the same company in Manchester. Castle Drogo Gardens

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Government Buildings In the first 20 years of the 20th century, builders constructed most of the monumental buildings in which the British government now works, which are referred to collectively as Whitehall. Most of them stand on, or adjacent to, the street named Whitehall. For example, the Government Offices stand on Great George Street, just off Parliament Square. Designed by John Brydon, the impressive complex was begun in 1898 and finished in 1917. Equally imposing is the Admiralty Arch. The arch was commissioned by King Edward VII in memory of his mother, Queen Victoria, and was designed by Aston Webb. Webb was also responsible for the superb Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, London.

Interwar Buildings Even after World War I, some superb buildings were raised in Britain. One example is the Hoover Building, which is visible while approaching London on the M40 motorway, coming in from Oxford and the west. The firm of Wallis, Gilbert, and Partners was renowned for its Art Deco designs. The Hoover Building, in which vacuum cleaners were made, carried the distinctive big windows, curved walls, and bright colors that make Art Deco distinctive. The same company also built Wallis House, a 12-story tower that strikes the eye as one approaches London on the long, overhead section of the M4 motorway. After years as a factory, it too has been restored and turned into a combination of offices and expensive apartments. A third Art Deco building, the Carreras Cigarette Factory, built in Camden Town, London, illustrates the 1920s craze for Egyptian-themed objects. Great black cat statues guard the entrance, and a black cat motif recurs along the façade. Another gem of the interwar years is Battersea Power Station. Its designer, Giles Gilbert Scott, responded to concerns about a power station being huge and ugly by coming up with an imaginative design, creating the impression that its chimneys are classical columns. It is recognizable on the cover of Pink Floyd’s album Animals. 92

Lecture 12 ■ 20th-Century Britain

Housing The 1920s and 1930s were an era of suburbanization. Respectable and decent housing spread throughout the land, greatly improving the quality of domestic life for the growing middle class. Probably the most representative style of house from this era was the suburban, semi-detached, threebedroom, one-bathroom home. England possesses hundreds of thousands of examples; no city is without them. As the interwar, semi-detached houses approach their centenary, they’re still sought after and well maintained. The means of their owners have gradually increased with improvements in the standard of living.

Motorways and Office Buildings In the 1960s and 1970s, new motorways arrived, designed to make it easier to get around the overcrowded country. The first to be built, the M1 from London to the north and the M6 from Birmingham to Scotland, display many of the modernist features of their age. They feature concrete bridges 93

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and flyovers, along with the convenient motorway service centers that were heralded as triumphs of modern functionalism when new. Another familiar element of postwar building was modern schools and office buildings, which also emphasized function, not style.

Suggested Reading Amery, Lutyens. Lodge, Changing Places. Nairn, Nairn’s London. Prince Charles, A Vision of Britain.

Questions to Consider 1. Why did the tastes of architects differ so greatly from those of ordinary Britons in the decades after World War II? 2. As you travel around Britain, try to estimate the year of construction of the many undistinguished houses you’ll see. With a little practice, you can learn to be accurate to within the decade.

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EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW E

ngland and Scotland have had the same monarch since 1603 and have been politically united since 1707. Scotland covers 30,000 square miles and has a population of 5.2 million. This lecture looks at notable sites in Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, and another important city, Glasow. Sites discussed include: „„ Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. „„ High points in the city of Edinburgh. „„ Edinburgh’s museums and galleries. „„ General sites and museums in Glasgow.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Edinburgh’s Royal Mile Edinburgh is a magnificent city, and the obvious place to start a visit there is with the city’s main axis, the Royal Mile. As you begin to climb the Royal Mile, you’ll come first to the Scottish Parliament building, a structure famous for its architectural daring and for its breathtaking delays and cost overruns. It was begun in 1999 and completed in 2004, three years late. Continuing up the Royal Mile from Parliament, tenement buildings on either side rise sharply from the street. On your right, you’ll see the graveyard of Canongate church. Go inside, turn left, and you’ll at once come upon the grave of Adam Smith, the moral philosopher and pioneering economist. A bit farther up the Royal Mile is a statue of Smith in front of St. Giles’s Cathedral. Just across the road from Adam Smith is a statue of his near contemporary, the philosopher and historian David Hume. David Hume

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Royal Mile

A famous house on the Royal Mile is the John Knox house, built in the 15th century. Knox was one of the firebrand leaders of the Scottish Reformation and the founder of Presbyterianism. The farther up the Royal Mile you go, the higher and grander the buildings become. Eventually, you will emerge onto a great, gently sloping plaza in front of the entrance to Edinburgh Castle. Here each August, at the height of the Edinburgh Festival, bleachers are set up for audiences to watch the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, featuring marvels of precision marching by the best military and civilian squads from all over the world.

Edinburgh’s High Points Edinburgh Castle is one of the city’s three great high points, all worth the effort of climbing for the great views they afford. The other two are Calton Hill and Arthur’s Seat. The top of Calton Hill is covered in monuments, mainly from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. If the weather is good, you can

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Edinburgh Castle

View from Calton Hill

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see the whole city from this point, including the dozen or more towers and spires that contribute to Edinburgh’s wonderful vertical feeling. The third high point for views of the city is Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano that used to be part of the royal estates but is now open to everyone. It’s wild country, yet it’s right next to the capital.

Edinburgh’s Museums and Galleries There are many fine museums and galleries in Edinburgh. In the National Museum of Scotland, visitors are drawn to an early version of the guillotine called the Maiden. Used between 1564 and 1710, the Maiden claimed over 150 victims, mostly in public executions. Another, very different, attraction at the National Museum is Dolly, a sheep (now stuffed) that played a vital role in the development of genetics. She was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell and lived from 1996 to 2003. This course particularly encourages you to visit the Scottish National Gallery, centrally located on Princes Street Gardens. It was opened in 1859 and occupies a beautiful building, reminiscent of a Greek temple. Highlights of the gallery’s collection include paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco, Goya, Botticelli, Vermeer, Reynolds, Turner, Cézanne, and many others.

Glasgow West of Edinburgh stands Glasgow, Scotland’s other great city. Through the long era of the British Empire, it was the shipbuilding capital of Britain. The banks of the River Clyde still bear evidence of this shipbuilding history, especially a series of immense but no longer active marine cranes. The University of Glasgow is an attractive hilltop structure, with an iconic tower visible from all across the city. Though the university was founded in the 15th century, the main building of the current campus was designed by George Gilbert Scott in the 1870s, and is the second largest neo-Gothic building in Britain, after the Houses of Parliament.

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University of Glasgow

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Another Victorian edifice, almost too big and too decorative to be believed, is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum that stands nearby. Its curators obviously know that museum going is supposed to be fun, but also that most visitors have short attention spans. They cater to these realities by having different exhibits on display in close proximity.

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Lecture 13 ■ Edinburgh and Glasgow

A second superb museum in Glasgow is the Riverside Museum, located on the banks of the Clyde in a dramatic new building by Zaha Hadid. Made of glass and stainless steel, it shimmers and seems to draw a zigzag line across the landscape. It opened in 2011 and now draws over 1 million visitors per year. On land that was once dedicated to shipbuilding, it has a tall ship right outside the front door, the only Glasgow-built sailing ship still afloat.

Suggested Reading Fry, Edinburgh. Taylor, Glasgow. Wilson, A Life of Walter Scott.

Suggested Activities 1. Climb Arthur’s Seat, one of the three hills that give great views over the whole of Edinburgh. 2. Ask one of the custodians at the Scottish Parliament building why it cost so much. 3. Before a summer visit to Scotland, buy tickets online for events in the Edinburgh Festival and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

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WILD SCOTLAND: BEYOND EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW

S

cotland has a wild history and a wild landscape. Its highlands are the least densely populated part of Europe. Scotland has a complicated western coastline, indented with long inlets from the sea, along with dozens of islands. Most of it is poor farmland, where for centuries crofters eked out a bare existence, organized in clans and beholden to their local chieftains. Castles, most of them now in ruins, dot the landscape, bearing witness to centuries of strife, bloodshed, and chronic insecurity. This lecture covers some interesting travel topics regarding Scotland, including: „„ Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn, which are sites commemorating Scottish victories over the English. „„ Travel tips for Scotland. „„ Glencoe. „„ Fort William, Glenfinnan, and Loch Ness. „„ Scotland’s islands. „„ Lockerbie.

Lecture 14 ■ Wild Scotland: Beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow

Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn King Edward I of England, in the late 1200s, conquered Wales and then set out to conquer Scotland too. He never managed it. Great English armies crossed the border but met fierce resistance. Two battlefields—Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn—commemorate English defeats and Scottish victories.

Stirling Bridge

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Stirling Bridge is the place where, in 1297, Scottish fighter William Wallace defeated a much larger English army under the earl of Surrey. The medieval bridge over the River Forth has gone now, but there’s a fine 15th-century stone bridge in its place, surrounded by meadows on which historical markers recall the event. A few miles from the battlefield, on a dramatic hilltop named Abbey Craig, stands the Wallace Monument, a great craggy tower in his honor. Wallace Monument

Stirling Castle, on a great rocky outcrop, dominates the area. As with Edinburgh Castle, Stirling has an ideal defensive location, being unapproachable from most directions because of the near-vertical cliffs. This Stirling Castle castle commands the best routeway from southern to northern Scotland, the Stirling Gap, so it’s not surprising that armies should often have met there.

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Only two or three miles from Stirling Bridge is Bannockburn, where, in 1314, Robert the Bruce defeated another English army. An ambitious interpretive center on the site describes the battle and the war of which it was a part, with plenty of interactive features for children.

Travel Tips for Scotland Keep in mind that if you drive from the lowlands into Scotland’s mountains, roads are scarce. Even those that do exist are narrow, winding, and slow. Don’t expect to average more than about 30 miles per hour in northern Scotland. One of the most scenically spectacular major roads is the A82, which leads north across the bleak ground of Rannoch Moor and, eventually, to the valley of Glencoe. Hike there if you possibly can. Note that the steepness of the hike can be challenging, and waterproof clothing is advised. Glencoe

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Glencoe Glencoe, another site in Scotland, was the scene of a famous massacre in the year 1692, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. King James II of England, who was also King James VII of Scotland, had fled to France after alienating nearly all the important people of his kingdom. Parliament invited William of Orange, a Dutch prince, to become King William III of England in his place. William secured the throne and ordered all his new subjects to swear oaths of allegiance. The Macdonald clan of Glencoe, however, had been allied with the cause of King James and were slow to sign the oath. As a result, soldiers in British service who belonged to the Campbell clan massacred 38 members of the MacDonald clan. At the Glencoe visitor center, you’ll learn that long before the massacre, the area already had a history of hard fighting. Eight centuries earlier, a fleet of Viking long ships had sailed up Loch Leven to seize the lands around Glencoe from their current owners.

Fort William, Glenfinnan, and Loch Ness If you drive north from Glencoe, you’ll reach the town of Fort William, named after King William III. Here you’re standing in the shadow of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain. Ben Nevis

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The road west from Fort William to the town of Mallaig is called the Road to the Isles because from Mallaig, there’s a ferry across to the Isle of Skye. A few miles down this road, you’ll come to Glenfinnan, at the head of Loch Shiel. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the whole of Scotland. Glenfinnan Lake

Drive back to Fort William to see another marvel, Neptune’s Staircase. It is a series of canal locks built in the early 1800s. They are part of the Caledonian Canal, a broad canal designed to carry seagoing ships across Scotland without exposing them to the stormy dangers of Cape Wrath and the Pentland Firth. The canal was designed by Thomas Telford, one of the leading engineers of the early Industrial Revolution. The most famous of the lochs along the

Neptune's Staircase

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canal is Loch Ness. It’s 800 feet deep in places and 23 miles long, and is notable for unconfirmed rumors of a monster living in its depths.

Scotland’s Islands A large part of Scotland’s land area is made up of islands, most of which are accessible by ferry and a few by air. They can be bleak and barren in winter, and not always hospitable even in the summer, but they have a craggy charm along with some terrific historical lures. North of the mainland are the Orkney Islands, comprising some of the richest archaeological sites in the whole of Britain. The Orkneys became famous as the headquarters in World War I of the British Grand Fleet. The island of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland, is the haunt of hikers and climbers. A broken and narrow ridge, the Cuillin Ridge, is among its most Skye

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daunting challenges. It is one of the few places in Britain that looks as jagged as the Alps or Rockies.

Lockerbie If you drive south out of Scotland at the end of your visit, think about going to the village of Lockerbie, just before you reach the English border. It’s an old town whose medieval prosperity was based on the wool trade. An endearing statue in the main street depicts a line of lambs trotting along beside the shops. Lockerbie became famous in a horrible and unexpected way in December 1988, when a jumbo jet blew up in the sky overhead and the debris rained down on the town. All 259 people on the plane were killed, and 11 more died in Lockerbie itself when a large section of the wing fell on a suburban street, Sherwood Crescent. An official of the Libyan government was convicted and jailed for the attack. Sherwood Crescent today is a quiet suburban street again, but the line of single-story houses breaks off at one point, and a well-kept garden of high shrubs and flowers takes its place. Tucked away behind the greenery stands a marker in memory of the two families whose homes had stood there. A mile or two away is the town’s cemetery, a special section of which has been set aside as a memorial garden to the victims. It’s a windswept setting that is sobering to visit.

Suggested Reading Prebble, Glencoe. Traquair, Freedom’s Sword. Williams, A Monstrous Commotion.

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Suggested Activities 1. At a fish and chip shop, ask for the local specialty, haggis and chips. 2. Find the family names of all the people who live on your street or everyone at your place of work. Then, check a map of the Scottish clans to see how many of those names you can find there.

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NORTH WALES W

ales is a lovely place to visit: hospitable, charming, scenic, and full of places that vividly bring to mind its turbulent earlier history. North Wales is often wet and windy—you need to be prepared with badweather gear—but it’s a worthwhile visit. This lecture looks at some notable sites that can be seen if you drive into North Wales from England, including: „„ The walled town of Conwy and nearby Llandudno. „„ Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. „„ Sites related to the Wales’s railways. „„ Sites related to Wales’s slate industry. „„ Castles in the area. „„ A prime ornithology area near the town of Holyhead. „„ South Stack Lighthouse. „„ Llanystumdwy, the home of David Lloyd George.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Conwy

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Conwy and Llandudno As you drive into North Wales from England, you’ll come first to the walled town of Conwy, which stands on the north coast, fronting the Irish Sea. King Edward I designed and built it as an entirely English colony inside Wales. He deliberately placed it on the site of a venerated Welsh monastery, whose monks he displaced, sending them to a new site eight miles away. Conwy was built between 1283 and 1289, in the form of a triangle. The site’s castle forms one of the triangle’s corners. An almost continuous set of high city walls, very well preserved and partly on dramatic sloping ground, make up its sides. From the east wall of the castle, look out over the Conwy River, which is crossed here by three bridges. The middle one is the oldest. It was built by Thomas Telford between 1822 and 1826. His Conwy bridge is among the earliest suspension bridges in Britain. Conwy Telford Bridge

The oldest dwelling in the town, probably from the early 1400s, is Aberconwy House. Occupied over the centuries by merchants, officers, sea captains, and a temperance hotel, it’s been imaginatively restored by the National Trust and is open to visitors. About four miles from Conwy is Llandudno, a beach resort town built on an elegant curving bay. The seafront hotels are dignified Victorian places, built on the grand scale, and still popular among British holidaymakers who want to stay in the British Isles. The most interesting part of Llandudno is a huge headland called the Great Orme, which is protected from urbanization. A tram climbs the hill using the same system as the San Francisco cable cars. 113

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Llandudno Hill

Snowdon From Llandudno, drive about 20 miles inland to Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. It is just over 3,500 feet high and can be climbed in three or four hours. According to legend, the pile of rocks on its summit is the burial place of a fearsome giant named Rhitta, who tried to kill King Arthur, failed, and paid the ultimate price. Three of the lakes on the mountain’s lower slopes each claim to be the one into which Arthur’s sword Excalibur was thrown as his life neared its end. Snowdon

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The easiest way to climb Snowdon is on the Snowdon Mountain Railway, a narrow-gauge line that snakes up the mountain using antique steam locomotives.

Railways North Wales is honeycombed with narrow-gauge railways, which can negotiate steeper bends than standard-gauge lines and squeeze through tighter cuttings. Some have always been tourist-oriented: the Snowdon Mountain Railway is a case in point. Most of the others began life as commercial railways, linking stone quarries with the main lines or with ports from which stone could be shipped abroad. Two superb examples of quarry lines are the Talyllyn Railway and the Ffestiniog Railway, which have long since converted from carrying rocks to carrying visitors.

The Slate Industry In North Wales, the slate industry was big business for two centuries. While you’re in the Snowdonia region, visit the National Slate Museum in the town of Llanberis. It stands on a flat patch at the bottom of a steep mountain slope, and you can see that in its years as a working quarry, its quarrymen were steadily dismantling the mountain itself. The disused quarry is now a challenging arena for rock climbers. At the museum, you’ll see workshops and blacksmith’s forges where all the quarry equipment was maintained and repaired. Skilled slate workers reproduce the work of their predecessors.

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Castles From Llanberis, go a few miles west to the coast. A narrow passage of water, the Menai Strait, separates the mainland from the island of Anglesey. At this location are two of Wales’s more famous castles.

Menai Bridge

On the mainland side is Caernarvon. It’s spectacular, even bigger than Conwy, and in better repair because of almost continuous habitation. By tradition, it is the site of the investiture of the prince of Wales, the male heir to the British throne. Caernarvon

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Beaumaris Castle

On the Anglesey side of the Menai Strait stands Beaumaris Castle. Beaumaris means “the beautiful marsh” in Norman French, and fittingly, it’s built on low ground right by the sea. Its walls are so thick that there’s a warren of staircases and passages inside them, which are fun to explore.

Ornithology Across Anglesey Island from Beaumaris is Holyhead, the most northwesterly town in Wales and the ferry port for Ireland. Just beyond the town, the land rises into high moorland that breaks off in dramatic sea cliffs. The area is honeycombed with the remains of ancient habitations. A series of stone rings on one of the hillsides are the remains of farmers’ huts from the Roman era or even earlier. The cliffs are the nesting grounds of puffins, seagulls, cormorants, and guillemots. One bird, the chough, a kind of crow with an orange beak, is rare throughout Britain but is breeding well there, carefully monitored. The 117

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Anglesey cliffs

Chough

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has organized the area as a sanctuary. Not surprisingly, this is a good place to see ornithologists in their natural habitat, with their powerful long-distance lenses and rugged bad-weather clothes.

South Stack Lighthouse South Stack Lighthouse stands on an island just offshore. It’s a lighthouse worthy of the best adventure stories, because to get to it you have to climb down 410 steep steps, zigzagging down the cliffside, and then cross a girder bridge that spans a high chasm where ocean waves crash against the rocks. The lighthouse has been there since 1809. It’s all white and just over 90 feet tall.

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South Stack Lighthouse

Llanystumdwy Heading south from Anglesey Island, you can drive across the Llŷn Peninsula to the village of Llanystumdwy. This is the home of David Lloyd George, the only British prime minister to come from Wales. The house where Lloyd George grew up is a modest little place, but is open to visitors. His widowed mother brought him up there with the help of her brother, a shoemaker and Baptist minister. The home radiates lower-middleclass respectability and a sense of moral rectitude. A picture of Abraham Lincoln hangs in the parlor; he was a hero to many mid-century British artisans for his belief in free labor and his opposition to slavery. The museum attached to the house includes the shoemakers’ workshop and the Victorian classroom where Lloyd George studied as a schoolboy.

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Suggested Reading Davies, A History of Wales. Taylor, The Welsh Castles of Edward I. Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill. Wilson, Narrow Gauge Railways of North Wales.

Suggested Activities 1. Learn a few Welsh phrases before you visit, and then try out your accent at hotels, shops, restaurants, and petrol stations. 2. Stand on the battlements of Conwy, Beaumaris, Harlech, or Caernarvon. Try to imagine what it would be like when the castle was surrounded, besieged, and cut off from outside help.

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CARDIFF AND SOUTH WALES C

ardiff, featuring an ethnically and racially diverse population, is the capital of Wales. This lecture looks at sites in Cardiff and South Wales, including:

„„ Cardiff Castle. „„ Civic buildings in Cardiff. „„ Mining valleys. „„ Swansea, the home of poet Dylan Thomas. „„ The region’s countryside, for which hiking boots and cameras are recommended.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Cardiff Castle The first thing to see in Cardiff is Cardiff Castle, right in the city center. The first castle on the site was built soon after the Norman conquest, a fine example of the classic motte-and-bailey design. It still stands. Of greater interest, however, is the section of the castle that was converted during the 19th century into a pseudo-medieval fantasy house. The owner was John Crichton-Stuart. He may well have been the richest man in the world, though as a near contemporary of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, he certainly had rivals to the title. With his architect friend William Burges, he proceeded to transform Cardiff Castle into one of the most elaborate and ornate creations of the Victorian neo-Gothic revival.

Cardiff Castle

Civic Buildings in Cardiff Near the castle stands a set of three impressive civic buildings from the end of the 19th century. The first is the law courts, the second is City Hall, and the third is the National Museum of Wales. They were designed to project the pride and dignity of Cardiff. Cardiff’s civic buildings, backed by spacious parks, are close to the city’s main shopping area, much of which has been improved by the exclusion of traffic. A mile away is the harbor, where urban renewal is in full form. As the British

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Cardiff Town Hall

Cardiff Dock

coal industry died in the 1980s, so did Cardiff docks, becoming a desolate wasteland. The area’s transformation since then is encouraging. Nearby is the new Welsh assembly building. Devolution of power from London to the Welsh and Scottish capitals came in legislation of the 1990s, and was the impetus for its creation. The architect was Richard Rogers, and it was opened by the queen in 2006. On the plaza before the assembly building is an artful monument to merchant seamen from the area who died in wartime shipwrecks.

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In the same complex is a major performing-arts building: the Wales Millennium Centre, from the beginning of this century. It includes an auditorium that holds nearly 2,000 people and two smaller concert halls for 250 and 300 people each, along with shops, rehearsal rooms, offices, and even some accommodation. In front of the Millennium Center is a large open area, the Roald Dahl Plass. Dahl was the author of many wonderful children’s books, such as The Big Friendly Giant and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This bowl-shaped plaza, often used for outdoor concerts, is named to honor his memory.

Mining Valleys Aberfan

North of Cardiff are coal-mining valleys. Most of the mines have gone now, and this is an area of high unemployment. The remains of its mining history are all around, though most of the slag heaps have now been turned into grassy hills rather than being the ugly grey-black mounds of former years.

A few miles away, in the Taff River Valley, is the sad village of Aberfan, whose junior school was smothered by a landslide in October 1966. Nearly all the children in the village aged between 7 and 11 were killed, along with 28 adults. The site of the school has been transformed into an elegant memorial garden. Queen Elizabeth II, who first went to Aberfan a week after the tragedy, has returned three more times, most recently in 2012, to open a new junior school nearby. 124

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Half a mile along the valley from this garden is the cemetery. The graves themselves are a painful sight, especially those bearing photographs of the children. These South Wales mining valleys specialize in Methodism, male-voice choirs, and combative trade unions. They are also the source of many prominent Labour politicians. The nearby town of Tredegar, for example, was home of Aneurin Bevan, probably the most famous and emotional socialist in Welsh history.

Swansea Moving west from Cardiff and the mining valleys of South Wales, you will soon arrive in Swansea. It was the home of the poet Dylan Thomas and is now the site of the Dylan Thomas Centre. It is housed in the old Guildhall, one of the most distinguished civic buildings in the city, centrally located and dating from the 1820s. Another house, the Dylan Thomas Boathouse at Laugharne, another 40 miles west, is also now a museum. A wealthy admirer, Margaret Taylor, bought the house for Thomas in 1949, and he lived the last few years of his life there, from 1949 to 1953. The adjacent writing shed, where he worked, has been left deliberately messy.

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The Countryside Southern Wales contains wonderful countryside. On the country’s southwestern tip, for example, the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was created in the 1950s. The park is made up of sections designed to preserve an area of special geological interest. The Pembrokeshire Coast Path, suggested in the early 1950s and officially opened in 1970, covers 186 miles of coastal cliffs and inlets. Nearly all its sections are lovely, and nearly all are challenging hikes. Don’t worry about having to commit to the whole distance. A well-timed bus service enables you to walk short sections and then get a ride back to your starting point. The Preseli Hills, in the northern section of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, are the source of the famous bluestones from which Stonehenge is made. The Preseli Hills are themselves rich in Neolithic remains. Not far away is Castell Henllys, an Iron Age site, on which a set of prehistoric round houses has been built, where archaeologists try to farm according to the original dwellers’ methods. The little city of St. David’s is about halfway along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. St. David is the patron saint of Wales. He lived in the 6th century and was the founder of a strict monastic order in the area.

Suggested Reading Coombes, These Poor Hands. Davies, Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute. Ferris, Dylan Thomas. Thomas-Symonds, Nye.

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Suggested Activities 1. Visit the Big Pit and Cardiff Castle on the same day, and then think about the gap between the very rich and the very poor. 2. Look at a map of Pennsylvania to find dozens of Welsh names, indicating one part of the great Welsh diaspora. Start at Bryn Mawr, the women’s college in suburban Philadelphia.

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THE NORTH OF ENGLAND T

he north of England is an interesting area. Its regional accents are so different from those of the south that it’s not always easy for people from one area to know what people from the other are saying. This lecture looks at notable sites in England’s north, including: „„ Liverpool. „„ Manchester. „„ The Pennine Hills. „„ York. „„ Carlisle and Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Lecture 17 ■ The North of England

Three Graces

Liverpool A good place to begin your tour of the north is in Liverpool. All of the most distinctive buildings in today’s Liverpool are from the early 20th century. A dignified cluster at the waterfront is known as the Three Graces. The first of these, the Port of Liverpool Building, was opened in 1907, in the era of King Edward VII, when the British people still believed in their destiny and duty to dominate the rest of the world. Nearby is the Royal Liver Building, from 1911. It’s an office block, but it’s historically important because it is generally recognized as the first reinforced concrete building in Britain. The third of the Graces is the Cunard Building, an office block inspired by palaces of the Italian Renaissance but many times bigger. It was built during World War I and was headquarters of the most famous trans-Atlantic liner company. The Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were designed there, and this was the building to which passengers would report for their Atlantic crossings.

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Two other buildings deserving of your attention are the two cathedrals, Anglican and Catholic, standing half a mile apart along the aptly named Hope Street.

Manchester From Liverpool, it’s 30 miles east to Manchester, another city worth visiting. This was a powerhouse city during the Industrial Revolution, serving as a world-leading manufacturing center. Manchester’s Town Hall, built in 1877, has been cleaned and looks marvelous. It’s a Victorian Gothic building, designed to look as though it dates back to the Middle Ages. Inside, in the Great Hall, a series of pre-Raphaelite paintings by Ford Madox Brown tell the story of the city.

Manchester’s Town Hall

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The Pennine Hills From the great industrial cities, you can drive northeast into the Pennine Hills. Be sure to stop off for an hour or two at Haworth, the village where the Brontë sisters spent most of their lives. Another notable location is Ribblehead inside the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The limestone country there has many distinctive waterfalls. The best known is Malham Cove, a beautiful arc of rock, over which, when it’s wet, the river falls 230 feet. The Pennine Way, a great footpath that meanders up the backbone of England, passes through Malham. Not far away, also close to the Pennine Way, is another waterfall, Hardraw Force. It stands on private land, and the only way to get to it is through a pub, the Green Dragon, where you have to pay a small entry fee. It’s worth the price, however, because the waterfall has created a dramatic overhang, where softer rock has eroded faster than the limestone band at the top.

Hardraw Force

York The great ancient city of the English north is York. Archaeological findings show it to have been occupied for thousands of years, and it was already an old settlement when the Romans built a fort there, named Eboracum, in 71 CE.

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It was the center of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, but was overrun by the Vikings in 866. They called it Jorvik, which is now the name of a museum that mixes genuine artifacts from local excavations with costumed reenactors and animatronic Viking robots. York is also the site of one of the greatest cathedrals in Britain, York Minster, containing more medieval stained glass than any other church in the country.

York Minster

York is also the home of the National Railway Museum, a mecca to enthusiasts who still grieve over the disappearance of regular-service steam locomotives in 1968. It is best museum of its kind in the world.

Carlisle and Berwick-upon-Tweed From York, go north, all the way up to the border country between England and Scotland. Today, this is a pretty area, but a visit to Carlisle or to Berwickupon-Tweed brings home the reality of a long, harsh history. For centuries, the border was contested ground. Warlords from both sides, English and Scottish, fought back and forth, and some towns changed hands repeatedly. 132

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Carlisle Castle is a red sandstone fortress that stood on the front lines of the border wars for centuries. Founded by King William II in 1092 and built up over the centuries until it was immensely strong, it endured a succession of sieges during the Wars of the Roses. On the other side of the country, at the North Sea shore, the Elizabethanera fortifications at Berwick-upon-Tweed are even grander. They were built in the late 1500s to end an era in which the city had repeatedly changed hands between the English and the Scots, suffering frequent sieges and bombardments. Immense earthworks, strengthened with stone abutments, surround three-quarters of the city. They are designed in such a way that attackers, approaching, would have to cross open ground under withering crossfire. Markers on these great fortifications explain that Elizabeth I, over the course of her reign, spent more money on the Berwick fortifications than on any other defense project. The battlements make a wonderful hike today, with 133

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Berwick-upon-Tweed

great views over the sea, the city. They are, alarmingly, unprotected. Take care if you’re there with young children to prevent them from falling.

Suggested Reading Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Gaskell, North and South. Kidd, Manchester. Moffat, The Reivers. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier.

Questions to Consider 1. Why was the Anglo-Scottish border the site of chronic low-level warfare for centuries before the 1600s? 2. What characteristics of the English north made it suitable for industrialization? 134

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THE ENGLISH MIDLANDS D

ensely populated, the Midlands encompasses the counties of Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire, along with parts of Northamptonshire and the former county of Rutland. At its center is Birmingham. The region has been industrial territory since the 1760s and a hub of Britain’s network of canals. This lecture looks at some notable sites in the area, including: „„ The Cotswolds.

„„ Nottingham.

„„ Birmingham.

„„ Several villages.

„„ Coventry.

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The Cotswolds In the southern Midlands is the Cotswolds, an area of charming villages and gentle hills. It is the personification of rural England. This lecture begins its visit with Stoke-on-Trent, a middle-sized Midlands town that used to be one of the most polluted places in the world. It and the towns around it are collectively referred to as the Potteries because they have been centers of pottery making for centuries. The bottle-shaped brick kilns that can still be seen all over the town have been eclipsed by Bottle-shaped brick kilns newer and cleaner technology. 136

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The arrival on the scene of Josiah Wedgwood transformed the area and gave it a position of world leadership that it held for two centuries. Wedgwood, who lived from 1730 to 1795, was the son of a small-scale pottery manufacturer. He thought big almost from the outset. He subdivided the manufacture, painting, glazing, firing, distribution, and sale of china and pioneered many marketing techniques, including “buy one, get one free.” A factory tour takes visitors along a series of elevated walkways, from which they can look down to watch each stage of the manufacturing process. The museum attached to the factory is a gem, guiding you through the stages of Wedgwood’s innovations, his painstakingly thorough experiments, and his sharp eye for changing fashions among the British upper classes, whose patronage he cultivated.

Josiah Wedgwood

Birmingham Birmingham, in the heart of the Midlands, is Britain’s second-largest city. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is a superb Victorian building that opened in 1885. It stands on Chamberlain Square.

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Birmingham Museum

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Birmingham was a major target for the German bombers in World War II and suffered severe damage. After the war, the city center had to be extensively rebuilt. Much of the concrete rebuilding of the 1950s and 1960s was praised by architects and hated by everyone else, so much so that there has been a second round of rebuilding since then.

Coventry From Birmingham, it’s a 25-minute train ride to Coventry, an ancient city whose most famous resident was Lady Godiva. Legend has it that she rode naked through the town in protest against the heavy taxes imposed on the people by her husband, the earl of Mercia. There’s a fine statue of her in the town square, with her long hair artfully preserving her modesty, and a superb romantic painting of her by John Collier in the town’s Herbert Art Lady Godiva Gallery. Coventry was the site of a great medieval abbey but it was destroyed during the Reformation—just a few remains can still be seen at a partial excavation. The biggest remaining church in the town, St. Michael’s, itself a superb medieval Gothic building, was designated as a cathedral in 1918 when Coventry became a diocese. German bombers destroyed it in a shattering air raid of November 14th, 1940.

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The elegant spire somehow survived, along with a few fragments of the walls, and these ruins, now open to the sky, remain as consecrated ground. Descend a staircase in the old north transept, and you will enter the new Coventry Cathedral, built in the late 1950s and consecrated in 1962. Coventry also features a museum of transport. The city was a bicycle and car-manufacturing center in the early 20th century, and the museum contains over 200 old cars, some highly exotic.

Coventry

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Coventry Cathedral

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Nottingham Nottingham, like Coventry, was a bicycle town; it was the home of Raleigh bikes. Nottingham was also the home of writer D. H. Lawrence. Robin Hood is also a notable (albeit debatable) figure from the area. According to the legends, Robin Hood was a loyal follower of King Richard the LionHeart, wrongly outlawed by bad Prince John, and dedicated to feuding with John’s henchmen, the sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne. The debate among folklorists and antiquarians about whether he existed continues. At Sherwood Forest and at Nottingham Castle, the displays about Robin Hood dodge the question of whether he actually existed. Instead, they leave it up to you to decide. Nottingham Castle itself was started just after the Norman conquest and became an important royal site in the Middle Ages. It was converted into a mansion by the duke of Newcastle in the 1670s. When one of his descendants in the House of Lords voted against parliamentary reform in 1831, a mob of angry Nottingham workers broke in, smashed the furniture, and set it on fire.

Nottingham Castle

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It was restored in the 1870s by a local philanthropist, who turned it into an art museum—the first municipal art gallery in Britain outside of London.

Villages The southern area of the Midlands is more rural and encompasses the Cotswolds, which have a well-deserved reputation for exceptional beauty. They’re not far from London, Birmingham, Bristol, or Oxford, and yet have preserved a relaxing feeling of remoteness and rusticity. Gently sloping hills and a warm yellow stone make the Cotswold towns little architectural gems. Notable among the Cotswold towns are: „„ Bourton-on-the-Water, which has a shallow river, the Windrush, running right through its main street, crossed by a series of elegant low bridges. This area also features a model village. „„ Burford, whose main street runs down a long hill toward the Windrush. A Tudor market hall, now the Tolsey Museum, is halfway down the hill.

Burford

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„„ Broadway, which is 20 miles north. Before you get there, stop on a nearby hilltop to admire Broadway Tower. Broadway itself contains shops on the Cotswold Way, a 100-mile-long footpath that incorporates some of the area’s best scenery.

Suggested Reading Chinn and Dick, Birmingham. Dolan, Wedgwood. Teller, The Rough Guide to the Cotswolds.

Suggested Activity 1. Print a map of the British counties from the internet and try to fill in the names. Warning: It’s a great deal more difficult than naming the American states because there are no straight lines.

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EAST ANGLIA E

ast Anglia is the flattest part of Britain. It is hotter in summer and colder in winter than the rest of the country. Much of it is remote and rural. It comprises the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, and part of Lincolnshire. Large parts of it were once marshes and swamps, known collectively as the fens. Several attempts to drain them and create farmland, beginning in the early 1600s, led to difficulties with the land sinking as it dried out. Not until the 19th century, when powerful steam engines were able to control water levels, could the area develop into some of the richest agricultural land in Britain. This lecture looks at some of the notable locations in East Anglia, including: „„ The fens.

„„ Norfolk.

„„ The town of Ely.

„„ Suffolk.

„„ Walsingham.

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East Anglian Fens

The Fens There are just a few patches of the old fen land left. One is the Wicken Fen Nature Reserve, between Cambridge and Ely. A range of traditional plants and sedges makes this an area of exceptional ecological interest. A labyrinth of footpaths weaves through the area, often on boardwalks to prevent you from getting soaked. Another of the great fen areas is the Norfolk Broads, much farther east. This is an area where, over the centuries, peat was gathered for fuel. As it was removed, the area gradually flooded and became a maze of rivers, ditches, and dykes. It has become a boaters’ and fishermen’s destination, and is also an area of great natural diversity.

Ely One East Anglian rebel against foreign invaders was Hereward the Wake, who opposed the Normans in the 1060s and early 1070s. His base was the town of Ely. When a Norman army advanced against Hereward across a 144

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Ely Cathedral

wooden causeway, the weight of the men and their armor was so great they sank into the marshes. The Normans, undeterred, bribed local monks to show them a safe approach, and were finally able to take the town. Hereward disappears from history after that, pardoned, exiled, or killed, depending on which source you read. Ely is home to a beautiful medieval cathedral. Its most distinctive feature is the octagonal lantern over the great crossing. There used to be a tower, but it crashed down into the body of the church in February 1322. The lantern was built in its place, lighter in weight and admitting daylight, so that this central part of the cathedral is superbly beautiful, above all on sunny days. Ely, like most of East Anglia, was fervently puritanical in the era of the Reformation. Two men were burned at the stake on the green in front of the Cathedral in 1555, in the reign of Catholic Queen Mary, because they denied that bread and wine were turned into the body and blood of Christ by transubstantiation. 145

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Walsingham Britain is a far less actively religious country than the United States, but a visit to Walsingham, especially if it comes around Easter or around the September Feast of the Virgin Mary, shows that a fervently active Christianity is still alive and well. The Anglican shrine there, which also contains a replica of the Virgin Mary’s house, is the dominant presence, with gardens, a church, beautiful glass, candles, statues of saints, and a pilgrims’ center. The little town is dotted with shops where you can buy statues of saints, with everything set among picturesque old houses. There’s also a newly built Catholic church on the market square. A mile down the road at Houghton, the Slipper Chapel has a retreat center of its own for Catholics.

Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham

Norfolk Like most other parts of Britain, Norfolk is dotted with old castles and stately homes. The best of the bunch is Castle Rising, near King’s Lynn. Built in the mid-1100s, it’s a gaunt Norman tower, as matter-of-fact as the great keep at Dover. Three of the most interesting country houses, all from later eras, are Houghton, Holkham, and Blickling. Blickling was the home of Mary Boleyn, who became Henry VIII’s mistress, and birthplace of Anne Boleyn, her sister, who became Henry VIII’s second wife. The house now at Blickling was built in the early 1600s on the site of the older one.

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Blickling

Holkham Hall

Houghton Hall, built in the 1720s and 1730s, was the home of Robert Walpole, the man usually regarded as Britain’s first prime minister. Holkham Hall, from the same era, owes a debt to the Palladian revival style mentioned in this course’s lecture on Enlightenment Britain. William Kent worked on it, 147

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just as he did on Chiswick House. The most interesting occupant of Holkham was Thomas Coke, who is a famous figure in the history of British agriculture. Norwich, the county town of Norfolk, is full of medieval remains. It has a series of beautiful old medieval lanes. Norwich Castle, standing on the highest land in the city, is a Norman keep. The area’s cathedral was built using stone imported from Normandy; it’s one of the most complete and impressive Romanesque buildings in England. In fact, it rivals Durham; equally impressive inside and out, and sitting in a calm and opulent close of old Georgian buildings.

Norwich Castle

Norwich officials had the very sensible idea of identifying and promoting all the town’s best heritage sites as a package, and they’re now known as the Norwich 12. Get a map of them when you arrive in the city and tour all of them.

Suffolk The county of Suffolk prospered in the late Middle Ages as a center of the wool trade. Its merchants devoted much of their surplus wealth to immense churches, which still stand as monuments to their success. In the village of 148

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St Peter and St Paul's Church

Lavenham, for example, St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church dominates the entire landscape. It rivals in size and splendor some of England’s smaller cathedrals. The village of Lavenham itself is full of ancient houses, being one of the best-preserved medieval settlements in England. The old Guildhall of Corpus Christi is the most striking building. Built in the same era as the church and finished in 1529, it was the meeting place of the wool merchants and the starting point of processions to the church on religious feast days.

Suggested Reading Friday, Wicken Fen. Kildea, Benjamin Britten. Meeres, A History of Norwich.

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Suggested Activity 1. Trace the history of the noble families of East Anglia through the 500 years between 1500 and 2000. Start with the Howards and Boleyns, then find other recurrent names like the Walpoles, and watch the waxing and waning of their fortunes and estates.

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ENGLAND’S WEST COUNTRY W

hen people talk about Britain’s West Country, they are typically referring to the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire. This is the area of Britain most associated with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This lecture covers some notable sites in the area, including: „„ Glastonbury.

„„ Plymouth.

„„ Cheddar Gorge.

„„ Cornwall.

„„ Dorset.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Glastonbury This lecture begins with Glastonbury, which is a good place to visit. In recent years, it has been the site of a massive annual music festival, usually on the last weekend in June, which has attracted upward of 150,000 people. Glastonbury Abbey was once second only to Westminster Abbey in wealth. It suffered a catastrophic fire in 1184. Now, the abbey is a roofless ruin. Also ruined and roofless is St. Michael’s Tower on the top of Glastonbury Tor. Glastonbury

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Cheddar Gorge One magnet for visitors to Somerset is the Cheddar Gorge, where the ground makes an abrupt transition from fertile lowland to the stony Mendip Hills. Craggy rock spires rise up at the sides of a narrow zigzag valley, giving travelers, briefly, the impression that they’ve moved from England to Switzerland. Rock climbers love the area, which is full of challenging routes. Tours of the area’s limestone caves reveal elaborate formations of stalagmites and stalactites. In one of the caves, in 1903, the skeleton of a man about 10,000 years old was discovered. The cave also disclosed evidence of cannibalism. The gorge is the point of origin for cheddar cheese. Somerset is also a cidermaking county. Cheddar Gorge

Dorset Moving south from Somerset into Dorset, you’ll encounter a succession of sleepy rustic villages. One of them, Tolpuddle, is sacred ground for Britain’s

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trade unionists. In 1833, a group of six farm laborers, facing severe wage reductions, joined together in a friendly society, an early form of trade union. Since 1824, such organizations had been legal, but the British government was jittery about working-class radicals. The farm laborers made the mistake of swearing a secret oath to be loyal to one another. In doing so they violated a law of 1797, passed when fears of the French Revolution had been at their height and when the Royal Navy had just suffered a mutiny. All six were convicted and sentenced to penal transportation to Australia, Britain’s prison colony. Trade unionists and supporters who knew the Tolpuddle men were being scapegoated petitioned the government for their pardon, described them as martyrs, and held great protest marches. The men were pardoned, and all but one returned to Britain, though several later tried their luck in Canada. Tolpuddle suddenly took on symbolic significance. On the centenary of the men’s trial, in 1934, the Trades Union Congress built a terrace of six workers’ houses there, each named after one of the laborers. The central space of the terrace is a museum, retelling the story in highly partisan rhetoric and adding a summary history of British trade unionism since then.

Plymouth Another place where the Tolpuddle martyrs are remembered is at the waterfront in Plymouth, in Devonshire, 100 miles to the south and west. A wall plaque shows the place where the returning men, pardoned, came ashore in 1838 to a hero’s welcome. Right next to it are the famous Mayflower Steps. According to tradition, this is where the passengers of the Mayflower left English ground for the last time as they set out in 1620 on their voyage to New England. Plymouth is a dramatic town with a colorful history. Built on a steeply sloping limestone site, with old fortress walls, its high point is an open park called Plymouth Hoe. In 1588, when the Spanish Armada was sailing up the English Channel, lookouts spied the enemy fleet in the distance and rushed to tell Sir Francis Drake. He was playing bowls on Plymouth Hoe with his 154

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Plymouth Hoe

fellow privateers and a group of Royal Navy captains. Coolly, Drake told the messengers: “There is time enough to play the game out first and thrash the Spaniards afterwards.”

Cornwall In the county of Cornwall lies the exposed high country of Bodmin Moor. It’s the wildest area in Cornwall, dotted with exposed stone crags, one of which, Brown Willy, is the county’s high point at nearly 1,400 feet. At the edge of the moor stands Jamaica Inn, named for the local Trelawney family, two of whose members were royal governors of Jamaica. The whole of Cornwall was famous in the 18th and early 19th centuries as a smugglers’ paradise. For many people, Cornwall’s somewhat notorious history is best known from the work of novelist Daphne du Maurier, who spent much of her life in Cornwall.

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Bodmin Moor

One day in 1930, while riding around Bodmin Moor with a friend, she got lost in the fog. Stumbling upon Jamaica Inn, they sheltered there until the weather improved. A local clergyman passed the time by telling them Cornish legends. The event inspired her to write Jamaica Inn, which became a bestseller and was then made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. South of Jamaica Inn, you will find the little town of St. Austell and, nearby, a great ecological experiment called the Eden Project. The Eden Project is an experimental garden, with two major biomes under its domes, one re-creating Eden Project

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the conditions of a tropical rain forest, the other a drier Mediterranean environment. Head west from the Eden Project, passing near the dramatic hilltop island church of St. Michael’s Mount, and you’ll arrive at Penzance, the most westerly town in England, and then at Land’s End, a rocky clifftop site that is the most westerly point in England.

St. Michael’s Mount

Tintagel

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On the Atlantic shore of Cornwall is the ancient fortress of Tintagel. This is a great Arthurian site, and nearly every shop in the nearby village has an Arthurian name and sign. According to the medieval chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, this is the place where Arthur was conceived by his mother Igraine, thanks to a bit of devious magic from Merlin.

Suggested Reading Ashe, Arthurian Britain. DuMaurier, Jamaica Inn. Jones, Cornwall’s Secret Coast.

Suggested Activity 1. Look for references to King Arthur, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, Merlin, and the Round Table in everyday life. You’ll find that everyone is familiar with them, even those who know nothing about the history of England.

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THE MUSEUMS OF LONDON L

ondon is probably the best place in the world for museums and art galleries. You can spend months exploring them, big and small. Even if your time in London is limited, it’s still best to get a good sense of one or two museums, or particular parts of them. This lecture highlights some of London’s notable museums, including: „„ The British Museum. „„ The National Gallery. „„ The National Portrait Gallery. „„ A trio of museums in South Kensington—the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum. „„ The Tate Gallery and the Tate Modern. „„ The Imperial War Museum. „„ The Museum of London.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

The British Museum

The British Museum The British Museum opened its doors to the public in 1759 and has been accumulating and displaying treasures ever since. It now has more than 8 million holdings, only a fraction of which can ever be on display at the same time. The building, in Bloomsbury, looks like a Greek temple and embodies in stone the 18th-century idea that the civilization that the ancient Greeks began, and passed along to the Romans, had now come into British hands. The most controversial objects on display are the Elgin Marbles. They are a series of carvings that were taken from the Parthenon in Athens by Lord Elgin, British ambassador

Elgin Marbles

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to the Ottoman Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. They are controversial because some think they should remain in the museum while others believe they should be returned to Greece. One spectacular exhibit is the Rosetta Stone, a great slab from Egypt on which is written the same message in three different languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic, and Ancient Greek. It was vital to translators working on the puzzle of hieroglyphics in the 19th century.

The National Gallery The National Gallery presides over the high side of Trafalgar Square. Its steps have been, for nearly 200 years, one of the great places in London to meet friends, to socialize, and to demonstrate against injustice. It was founded by the government in 1824 and gradually accumulated a comprehensive collection, representing all the old masters and the great schools of art from the 13th century to the early 20th century.

The National Portrait Gallery Just around the corner from the National Gallery is the National Portrait Gallery. It was founded in 1856 by a prominent politician, Lord Stanhope, and two of the era’s leading intellectuals, Thomas Carlyle and Thomas Babington Macaulay. The criterion for inclusion here is not the artist’s importance, as at the National Gallery, but the subject’s importance. There are hundreds of outstanding paintings in the National Portrait Gallery. One standout is The Death of the Earl of Chatham by John Singleton Copley. The earl of Chatham was William Pitt the elder, a former prime minister and the man after whom Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is named. He suffered a heart attack while giving a speech in the House of Lords in 1778, urging the government to conciliate America and end the War of Independence. He is shown slumped back in his red robes, looking ghastly, and surrounded by the rest of the peers. There is a marvelous sense of the way a stately occasion has suddenly been interrupted by an unforeseen crisis, and great drama in the poses. 161

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Another notable painting is Paul Brason’s The Conservative Party Conference: Brighton, 1982. It shows Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher giving a speech, with various subordinates sitting behind her.

South Kensington’s Museums From Trafalgar Square, travel a mile or two to South Kensington, where you’ll discover a trio of world-class museums. First is the Victoria and Albert Museum, an initiative of the 1850s. It was designed to feature the best examples of workmanship from all over the world, as a useful guide to British manufacturers, and as a curiosity to amuse interested citizens. By now, it’s marvelously eclectic, with exhibitions to suit just about every taste. Victoria and Albert Museum

Nearby is the Natural History Museum. Britain has a distinguished tradition of geologists and biologists, of whom Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin are probably the most illustrious. The fruits of their labors are exhibited here, along with those of thousands more natural scientists.

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The third of the South Kensington triumvirate is the Science Museum, on Exhibition Road between the other two. It concentrates on science and technology since 1800. It features very rare items (such as the capsule of the Apollo 10 lunar mission) and very common ones, such as wrenches and screwdrivers. It also has a marvelous collection of models that are simultaneously lovely to see and useful for demonstrating how the full-scale machines of which they are miniatures actually work.

The Tate Gallery and the Tate Modern From the South Kensington museums, walk east toward the Thames to reach the Tate Gallery. It began in 1897 as a spinoff from the National Gallery, to hold the collection of British art. One notable painting at the Tate Gallery is John Martin’s The Great Day of His Wrath, in which the artist imagines the end of the world as a mass of earthquakes, volcanoes, fire, and tumbling mountains. When a coal-fired power station on the south bank of the Thames closed down in 1981, the trustees of the Tate Gallery bought it and converted it into a home for their modern art collection, opening to the public in 2000. Right from the start, The Tate Modern was a sensational success. It includes works by Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Mondrian, de Chirico, Franz Marc, and many others. Tate Modern

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The Imperial War Museum South of the Thames is the Imperial War Museum. Its name is a bit misleading because it is actually devoted mainly to the history of the two World Wars rather than to the history of Britain’s four centuries of imperial warfare. One annex of the Imperial War Museum is a series of concrete bunkers that housed Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his staff during the worst years of German bombardment, in 1940 and 1941. Take the tour if possible.

The Museum of London Right in the middle of the city of London, in the financial district, stands the Museum of London in a circular building. Archaeologists have unearthed objects from the last 3,000 years, all found nearby, and displayed them here. Galleries of each era in the city’s history increase visitors’ appreciation for its longevity and for the central role it has played in the life of the nation and the world.

Suggested Reading Ackroyd, London. Black, London. Gale, Tate Modern. King, The Elgin Marbles. Parker, Museum of Life.

Suggested Activity 1. Wear a fitness tracker at the British Museum and astonish yourself at the number of miles you can cover on a visit to this vast edifice.

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LONDON’S STREETS AND PARKS L

ondon is immense, and whatever your particular interests may be, you’ll spend a lot of time getting from place to place. Don’t regard travel time as dead time. Enjoy it and revel in the history of the trains, buses, and taxis that contribute a particular flavor to London life. Also enjoy the way the city, even at its center, is punctuated by parkland and pedestrian areas—great zones of peace, quiet, and beauty in the midst of the urban rush. This lecture covers some information to keep in mind as you traverse London, including: „„ The London Underground metro system, also known as the Tube. „„ The Southbank Centre. „„ Hyde Park. „„ Green Park. „„ The Picadilly Circus. „„ Regent Street and Carnaby Street. „„ Regent’s Park and Camden Town.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

The London Underground The best way to get around in London is on the London Underground metro system, better known locally as the Tube. Dozens of the stations have been decorated with imaginative tiling, elegant signs, and distinctive façades, which bespeak a pride in craftsmanship and a determination to go beyond the merely practical. For example, the façade of Belsize Park Station is covered in gorgeous deep red tiles. The most spectacular of all the stations is Westminster, radically redesigned in the 1990s and opened in 1999, underneath Portcullis House, a parliamentary office building. Raw concrete and steel, often objectionable aboveground, find their niche here very well. The trains themselves are an experience as well. As you stand waiting on the platform, a rumble starts, and a warm wind begins to blow. Then, from the mouth of the tunnel surges the train, its gently curved roofline exactly

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mimicking the shape of the tunnel, with just a couple of inches to spare at every edge.

The Southbank Centre Large parts of London, especially eastern areas like Bethnal Green, lay in ruins by the end of World War II. The great task of the late 1940s and early 1950s was to rebuild them. In 1950, however, the government declared that it would hold a great national festival the following year. The Festival of Britain was an attempt to declare that the hardships of the war and its aftermath were now ending and that prosperity was returning. Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison planned it to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and to be a showpiece for British creativity. He deliberately chose young, forward-looking planners and architects, many of whom had worked on propaganda projects during the war. The site chosen was on the unfashionable south bank of the Thames. A dome, 365 feet across, and looking like a flying saucer, enclosed exhibits about science, technology, and urban planning. The addition of a theater and an art gallery on the site in the 1960s has made this area a hub for the arts. Collectively, it is known as the Southbank Centre. It fronts the river and is approachable along a footpath or over two footbridges that flank the Hungerford Railway Bridge. An array of cafes, bars, and open plazas make the Southbank Center an ideal place to meet people, have a drink, or just watch the river, especially because there is often free entertainment in the open spaces.

Hyde Park The London Underground is the best way to get around for long distances, but this lecture recommends walking for shorter trips. London is blessed with parkland right in its center. As so often in Britain, the parks are there because they were privately held during centuries of extreme misdistribution of wealth, but have now been democratized to benefit everyone. 167

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Hyde Park, the biggest of them all, was seized from Westminster Abbey by King Henry VIII as a hunting ground when he dissolved the monasteries in the 1530s. Charles I opened it up to everyone in 1637. Ever since, it’s been a great gathering place, often for relaxation but also as the starting and finishing point for demonstrations. At the northeast corner of Hyde Park, just over the road from Marble Arch, stands Speakers’ Corner. This used to be the site of the Tyburn gallows, where, from the 1190s to the 1780s, criminals were put to death, often in front of big crowds that regarded executions as public entertainment. The condemned man or woman had the right to make a speech before the hangman took over, and they frequently used the occasion to denounce the government or to speak in justification of the act for which they were now being killed. In 1783, the executions were moved to Newgate Prison, but the symbolic significance of the spot persisted. In 1872, Parliament confirmed the right of anyone to speak at this particular corner, so long as they were not creating an imminent public danger or insulting the monarch. Every weekend you can witness the Speakers’ Corner tradition; some speeches are religious, some speakers have a great nostrum for saving the world, some are conspiracy theorists, and some are struggling to publicize forgotten political prisoners.

Green Park From the southeast corner of Hyde Park, a pedestrian subway takes you under Hyde Park Corner and into Green Park. Here was held the world premiere of George Frederick Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks in 1749. Green Park, built on a great slope, leads down to Buckingham Palace, the Mall, and then St. James’s Park, which in turn leads you to Horse Guards Parade and Whitehall.

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Piccadilly Circus

The Piccadilly Circus If you head northeast out of Hyde Park, you’ll be walking along Piccadilly, past the Ritz Hotel on your right and then the Royal Academy on your left. The street’s name refers to piccadills, which are pieces of frilled fabric used for decorative collars. They were made there by one of the street’s early inhabitants, the tailor Robert Baker. Five more minutes will bring you to Piccadilly Circus, whose statue of the god Anteros is one of the most popular landmarks in London. It has been popular ever since its unveiling in 1893. The statue is made of aluminum, the first time this metal was used for a public monument in London. The sculptor, Alfred Gilbert, was commissioned to commemorate the great work of Lord Shaftesbury, one of the outstanding humanitarians of the Victorian era.

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Regent Street and Carnaby Street One of London’s most impressive shopping streets leads northwest from Piccadilly Circus. This is Regent Street, built by John Nash in the first and second decades of the 19th century and named in honor of the Prince Regent, who was standing in for the mad King George III and would soon become king in his own right as George IV. It was the first purpose-built shopping street in world history, and has always since then been one of the most costly and luxurious areas. Just behind Regent Street runs Carnaby Street, made famous and fashionable in the 1960s by Brigitte Bardot, Elizabeth Taylor, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and other rock stars. The broader neighborhood around Carnaby is known as Soho.

Regent’s Park and Camden Town Continuing north from Soho, you’ll soon come to another of the great London parks, Regent’s Park. As the name suggests, it was developed at the same time as Regent Street, in the early 1800s, and is surrounded by superb Regencyera terraced houses built by John Nash and Decimus Burton. The best of these ranges, Cornwall Terrace, looks almost too splendid for human habitation, and the price of houses there, when they come on the market, is otherworldly. A short walk east from Regent’s park is Camden Town. This is a neighborhood that has come into its own as a fashionable area for shopping, restaurants, and nightclubs.

Suggested Reading Atkinson, The Festival of Britain. Ocran, London’s Parks and Gardens. Ovenden, London Underground By Design.

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Suggested Activity 1. Take the three-mile walk from the Churchill War Rooms beside Horseguards to the Princess Diana Memorial Playground in the northwest corner of Hyde Park. Apart from road crossings, you’ll be in parks the whole way, even though this is the heart of London.

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ost visitors to Britain are going to see Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament, at least from the outside. They are two of the most conspicuous and most historically significant buildings in the nation, representing the balance of forces that make up Britain’s constitutional monarchy. They also blend beauty with authority. This lecture focuses on those two buildings, covering topics such as: „„ Background on Buckingham Palace. „„ Visiting Buckingham Palace. „„ Background on the Houses of Parliament. „„ Touring the Houses of Parliament.

Lecture 23 ■ Buckingham Palace and Parliament

Background on Buckingham Palace Buckingham Palace is the monarch’s official London residence, while the Houses of Parliament, less than two miles away, are the seat of Britain’s legislature. Both are architecturally impressive and each has an interesting history. When you look at Buckingham Palace today, you are seeing an 18th-century house that was extended in the 1840s and finished in 1913. Parliament is housed in a Victorian building, built in the 1840s and 1850s but designed to look much older. Buckingham Palace sits on land that for centuries was swampy, close to the Tyburn and Westbourne Rivers. The duke of Buckingham built a house there between 1703 and 1705, designed by William Winde. After the duke’s death, the house went to his illegitimate son, who sold it to King George III in 1762. George gave it to his wife, Queen Charlotte, in 1763, and they lived contentedly there for much of the rest of their lives. Buckingham Palace

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In 1837, King William IV died, and his 18-year-old niece, Victoria, came to the throne. She moved in to Buckingham Palace, and for the first time it became the royal family’s official London residence. Further extensions and improvements were made to the palace in the late 1840s.

Visiting Buckingham Palace The way to approach Buckingham Palace today is along the Mall, which stretches about a mile from Admiralty Arch leading out of Trafalgar Square. This road, cutting through St. James’s Park, was built in 1911 by Sir Aston Webb. It is wide, spacious, and straight, normally very busy but closed on Sundays and given over to pedestrians. The changing of the guard takes place in front of Buckingham Palace at 11:00 am on alternate days of the week in winter and every day in summer. There are seven guard regiments in the British Army, and they take turns defending the palace. The daily change, usually attended by thousands of visitors, includes military bands, men in brilliant red uniforms and black bearskin busbies marching in step, plenty of shouted commands, and a general feeling of precision. On ceremonial occasions, the royal family appears on the central balcony of the palace and waves to the crowd. In August and September each year, the State Rooms are open, in addition to the Queen’s Gallery, which exhibits parts of the royal art collection. The State Rooms, where the queen entertains official guests, feature white and gilded walls, cloth of gold and gilded fabrics, brilliant red carpets, and immense chandeliers. The marble pillars and intricate inlaid ceiling of the Blue Drawing Room and the gold and black banisters of the Grand Staircase are among the best features of the whole sequence.

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Background on the Houses of Parliament The old Houses of Parliament were part of a great complex called the Palace of Westminster, which had also been a royal residence. Most of this complex burned down on the night of October 16, 1834. Most of the old Westminster Palace was destroyed, but old Westminster Hall survived. As for the rest of Westminster Palace, when the extent of the damage became clear, the government had to decide what to do next. The prime minister, Lord Melbourne, decided that new Houses of Parliament would be built on the old site, incorporating the elements of the old complex that had survived the fire. The contract would be awarded to the winner of a competition, whose rules specified that the building had to be in the Gothic or Elizabethan style. Ninetyseven anonymous entries were made, and number 64 was chosen as the winner. It was the entry of Charles Barry. His design for Parliament was

Houses of Parliament

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strongly reminiscent of the chapel of Westminster Abbey, right across the road, England’s last great pre-Reformation Gothic structure. Other figures in the construction include Augustus Wilby Pugin, whose chief task was interior decorations and furnishing, and David Boswell Reid, who was responsible for a third tower added to the design. The tower helps ventilate the structure.

Touring the Houses of Parliament To tour the Houses of Parliament, you need to buy a ticket. It is advisable to book ahead online to be sure of getting the time you want, especially in summer. You then stand in line beside the statue of Oliver Cromwell, pass through a rigorous security check, and begin your tour in old Westminster Hall. More of the rooms are open to you when Parliament is not in session, but you’re not allowed to take photographs. Apart from touring the Palace of Westminster, anyone willing to stand in line can also visit the Houses of Commons or Lords and witness the debates. After being searched and screened through security, visitors are escorted up to the so-called Strangers’ Gallery, which oversees the floor of each house. Of the two houses, the House of Lords is far more elaborate. The House of Commons suffered a direct hit during a bombing raid in 1941, had to be temporarily abandoned, and was rebuilt in a much plainer style due to wartime and postwar austerities.

Oliver Cromwell

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Many of the most famous speeches in British history were made in the House of Commons, perhaps none more so than Churchill’s August 20, 1940 speech of gratitude to the Royal Air Force. It included the memorable line: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed, by so many, to so few.” Other speeches that caused a sensation in their day were William Gladstone’s 1886 speech in support of Home Rule for Ireland, David Lloyd George’s 1909 speech on the introduction of the welfare state, and Aneurin Bevan’s speech justifying the creation of the National Health Service in April 1946.

Suggested Reading Cannadine et al., The Houses of Parliament. Robinson, Buckingham Palace. Shenton, Mr. Barry’s War.

Suggested Activities 1. Find online newspaper stories from the 1940s about the bombs that fell on Parliament during the Blitz and the way Parliament adapted to wartime conditions. 2. List the benefits of separating the head of state or monarch from the leader of government, as practiced in Britain. Compare that to the American method of combining both in the president.

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OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE T

his lecture focuses on Oxford and Cambridge, England’s two ancient university towns, which contain the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and their assorted colleges. Oxford is in the south of the Midlands, while Cambridge is in the flat country of East Anglia. This lecture recommends visiting two or three in each city to get the feel of them. Sites and topics discussed in this lecture include: „„ Balliol College and Merton College, the two oldest colleges at Oxford. „„ Peterhouse, the oldest college at Cambridge. „„ King’s College, Cambridge. „„ Trinity College, Cambridge. „„ Merton College, Oxford. „„ The heart of Oxford, featuring five distinguished buildings. „„ Oxford’s parkland. „„ Oxford’s women’s buildings.

Lecture 24 ■ Oxford and Cambridge

Balliol College and Merton College The oldest colleges at Oxford, Balliol College and Merton College, dispute with one another for the right to claim first place; they arose in the middle of 1200s. Significantly, the lovely old structure that goes by the name of New College is new only by comparison with them, having its own foundation in 1379.

Peterhouse Peterhouse, founded in 1284, is admitted by all to be the oldest college at Cambridge, though the university itself was founded in 1209. Its founders were a group of Oxford scholars, escaping from the wrongful accusation of having committed a murder. Both universities received royal charters in 1231 from King Henry III, exempting them from taxation. Two years after that, the pope issued a decree authorizing students trained at Oxford or Cambridge to teach anywhere in Europe. Peterhouse

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King’s College

King’s College, Cambridge

King’s College is in the heart of Cambridge. Its grounds are bounded on one side by the River Cam, along which it’s possible to travel by boat in summer, getting the best views of the buildings. The chapel at King’s College is one of the most outstanding buildings in the whole country. Its ceiling features the grandest example of fan vaulting anywhere.

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is another magnificent Cambridge site. Founded by Henry VIII, it was the college of Isaac Newton, six prime ministers, and 32 Nobel Prize Trinity College

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winners. On the other hand, it was the college attended by three notorious spies: Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, who collectively betrayed most of Britain’s important secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Merton College, Oxford At Merton College, Oxford, visit the old library, which dates far back to medieval times. Each reading desk stands adjacent to a window, which prompts you to recall that throughout most of history, interiors were dark and that reading must have been difficult. More striking is the fact that each desk has an elaborate chain, to which the books were once attached. During your visit to Merton, also pause in the gatehouse to see the memorial to students of the college who died in World War I. Every college has one, and together they make a mournful spectacle, revealing an awful waste of life.

The Heart of Oxford At the heart of Oxford stands a lovely sequence of five distinguished buildings between 300 and 400 years old. They are the Clarendon Building, the Sheldonian Theater, the Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera (a gorgeous circular building), and a church. The Sheldonian, where graduation ceremonies still take place in Latin, was built by Sir Christopher Wren, the mastermind of London’s resurrection out of the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666. The Bodleian Library towers over it. A copyright library, to which a copy of every book

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Clarendon Building

Sheldonian Theater

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published in Britain is required to be sent, it is built around an impressive stone quadrangle.

Oxford’s Parkland Carefully protected parkland right in the middle of Oxford makes it a wonderful place to walk. Christ Church Meadow is particularly popular. Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, used to stroll there. At the far end of Christ Church Meadow is the River Thames. Many miles downstream, it flows through London, then out into the North Sea. In Oxford, it’s known as the Isis, and it is joined by a second river, the Cherwell. On this stretch of river, the annual competition between the colleges’ eight-man boats takes place. On both rivers, you can also experiment with punts, which are long, thin boats propelled by pushing a pole against the bottom of the river, then trailing it

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behind as a rudder. Punting isn’t a very efficient method of getting around, but it’s a time-honored tradition at Oxford and Cambridge. The two disagree about which end of the boat the punter ought to stand.

Oxford’s Women’s Buildings Until the late 19th century, Oxford and Cambridge were universities for men only. When women finally were able to join, they were obliged to build their colleges outside the central university area. The buildings of St. Hugh’s, Lady Margaret Hall, and Somerville in Oxford are all fine structures, now softened and hallowed by age. The most famous of them is probably Somerville, where Dorothy Sayers was a student, scenes of which she later incorporated into one of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, Gaudy Night.

Suggested Reading Evans, The University of Oxford. Horton and Simmons, One Hundred and Eleven Places in Cambridge that You Should Not Miss. Russell, Autobiography. Tames, An Armchair Traveller’s History of Cambridge.

Suggested Activities 1. Rent a bicycle to get around in Oxford and Cambridge. Driving in the narrow streets is either forbidden or, where permitted, punishingly difficult. By contrast, both cities are set up for bikes. 2. In both cities, it’s worth paying to climb church towers for the sake of rooftop panoramas of the architectural splendors. 183

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LITERARY BRITAIN: CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE

B

ritain is a fine place for literary tourism. Many of its best poets, playwrights, and novelists are strongly associated with particular places. Enough of these places survive that you can get a strong sense of the author in question by visiting their homes or the places they commemorated in their writing. This lecture looks at places relevant to the work of literary figures, including: „„ Canterbury, the inspiration of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. „„ Stratford, birthplace of William Shakespeare and home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. „„ London, home of the Globe Theatre. „„ Sites mentioned in the Shakespearean plays Richard II and Richard III. „„ Other literary sites and figures.

Lecture 25 ■ Literary Britain: Chaucer and Shakespeare

Canterbury Canterbury was a medieval pilgrimage site because Archbishop Thomas Becket had been martyred there; he was killed in 1170 on the orders of King Henry II and canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1173. It became second only to Santiago de Compostela as the leading pilgrim site of medieval Europe. A pilgrim route from London made its way through Middlesex and Kent, and another from Winchester. A journey now taking less than two hours by car or train used to take about a week. Pilgrim bands would travel together for safety and sociability, some fulfilling penances, others enjoying a religious vacation. The man who immortalized the pilgrims’ experience was Geoffrey Chaucer—a courtier and office holder who traveled widely in Europe on official business. He apparently won the favor of King Edward III, who ordered in 1374 that he be given a gallon of wine per day, at the king’s expense, for the rest of his life. He had the important job of comptroller of the customs, and held it for 12 years. It was probably during that time that he began writing the tales, creating a fiction around one of the familiar activities of his own era. A group of pilgrims sets off from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine. On the journey, they take turns telling stories, with the agreement that the best story will be rewarded with a fine dinner paid for by the others at the end of their journey. Chaucer’s pilgrims start near Southwark Cathedral, just south of the River Thames. The cathedral is a beautiful building, and it was already there in Chaucer’s time,

Southwark Cathedral

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though in his day it was part of an Augustinian priory. A Chaucer window was added to the cathedral in 1900, showing the pilgrims starting on their journey to Canterbury. The pilgrims’ gathering point is the Tabard Inn, where they agree to travel together. The Tabard has disappeared, but it was where two Roman roads met, Watling Street and Stane Street. It’s now possible to make an off-road walk nearly all the way from central London to Canterbury—about 90 miles. This is the Pilgrims’ Way, one of many longdistance footpaths worked out by hikers and cooperative local governments. Canterbury itself is a distinguished market town. Many of the older streets have been pedestrianized, so it’s possible to walk safely in the area around the cathedral precincts. Houses from each of the last four centuries are still common, and the cathedral still soars over everything else. Shakespeare is the next obvious candidate, chronologically, for any literary traveler. Here the trail is both thick and thin. It’s thick in the sense that the entire town of Stratford upon Avon lives and breathes the idea of Shakespeare, and would be desolate without him. It’s thin in the sense that Shakespeare himself remains a bit of a mystery. We don’t have his original manuscripts, we don’t know a lot about his biography, and we even have articulate spokesmen for the idea that the plays and poems were actually written by somebody else.

Stratford and Shakespeare Stratford is a pretty Midlands town that is the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. They put on performances of Shakespeare plays such as Coriolanus and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s possible in Stratford to visit Shakespeare’s birthplace, a 16th-century cottage fitted out with period furniture. Minstrels play guitars in the garden on fine days, costumed actors help set the scene, and guides explain what

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Stratford

Holy Trinity Church

is known about his early life and family connections. Inside Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church stands Shakespeare’s memorial, placed there soon after his death in 1616.

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London and Shakespeare Like so many other provincial Englishmen before and since, Shakespeare left behind his Midlands home and achieved greatness in London. The transformation of London over the centuries means that nothing much remains that he would have recognized, except perhaps one or two churches and the Tower of London. In Southwark Cathedral, a Shakespeare window was installed in 1890, along with an alabaster statue. When Nazi bombs destroyed the window in 1940, it was replaced and is still there today. There’s also a large statue of him at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey from the 1740s and another from the 1870s in Leicester Square. The construction of a replica of his Globe Theatre on the South Bank of the Thames in 1997 has revitalized Shakespearean performance in a style he would recognize. Seeing a play at the Globe is one of the things you must do in London, however short your stay. The man who made it happen was himself an American actor, Sam Wanamaker.

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

The Globe is an open-air facility, where most of the audience stands and hopes for dry weather. By paying more, you can sit around the edges and have a little shelter.

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The Globe is an important educational center too. Tours led by well-prepared guides explain what the old theater was like, the literary and archaeological studies that preceded the building of the new one, and the discoveries actors have made by replicating performance traditions from Shakespeare’s day. The tours also take you to the adjacent Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which is a replica of slightly later indoor Jacobean theatres, and there is an exhibition area on the history of the whole project. Plays by Shakespeare’s near contemporaries, Webster, Marvell, and Ben Jonson, are also performed there.

Sites Mentioned in Richard II and Richard III Another way of catching a breath of Shakespeare is by visiting the many English and Scottish places he mentions in the plays. Many of the court scenes in Richard II take place at Windsor Castle, one of the places in Britain no visitor should miss. At the end of Richard II, the king is murdered in Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire, now a stately ruin. Pontefract, or Pomfret, is also used in Shakespeare’s play Richard III as the site of another murder. Tower of London

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Other key scenes in Richard III take place at the Tower of London, notably the murder of the two young princes, one of whom, Edward V, is the rightful king. That play’s climax comes with Richard’s death at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Other Literary Sites and Figures England has a writing tradition well beyond Chaucer and Shakespeare. Notable sites that reflect this tradition include: „„ The many English country churches where you can find old editions of the King James Bible still in use. They are immensely heavy, often sitting on eagle-shaped lecterns. „„ The memorial to churchman and poet John Donne in St. Paul’s Cathedral. „„ The Bunyan Museum in Bedford, which focuses on the writer John Bunyan. The museum has gathered many of his manuscripts, his violin and flute, the anvil he used as a metalworker, his chair, and even the stoneware jug in which his family brought refreshments to him while he was in jail.

Suggested Reading Arnold, Globe. Bryson, Shakespeare. Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Drabble, A Writer’s Britain. Robinson, Windsor Castle.

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Questions to Consider 1. How does a visit to Canterbury Cathedral, and especially to the site of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, affect your understanding of the work of Chaucer? 2. How did Shakespeare take advantage of British places and people, and how scrupulous was he with the historical record?

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LITERARY BRITAIN: THE ROMANTICS L

iterary tourism thrives on looking in unexpected places and appreciating works of very different writers: children’s authors, poets, academics, and novelists. This lecture looks at locations related to an eclectic collection of writers, covering: „„ Robert Burns–related sites. „„ The Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh. „„ Walter Scott–related sites. „„ Jane Austen–related sites. „„ William Wordsworth–related sites. „„ Beatrix Potter’s home.

Lecture 26 ■ Literary Britain: The Romantics

Robert Burns–Related Sites Robert Burns is one of Scotland’s great literary figures. He started out in life as a poor plowboy but his dialect poems, first published in 1786, delighted educated Scottish readers. A large, drum-shaped memorial at the foot of Calton Hill in Edinburgh commemorates his life and work. It was built in 1831 and originally contained a marble statue of the poet, which has since been moved down the hill and is now on display inside the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Robert Burns

Burns lived only to the age of 37. The solid stone house in Dumfries, Scotland, where he spent the last 10 years of his life, is now a museum. After his death in 1796, he was buried in a simple grave with a plain stone marker, but a group of his admirers thought he deserved much better. They collected the money to build a domed white mausoleum in 1817. It now dominates the yard of St. Michael’s church. In the 1880s, by which time Burns’s name was famous all over the world, the citizens of Dumfries commissioned a statue. It was designed locally by artist Amelia Hill, but carved in Italy from Carrera marble and unveiled near the city center.

The Writers’ Museum Burns is also one of three writers enshrined at the Writers’ Museum in the center of Edinburgh. It’s an imposing house, built in 1622 and restored at the end of the 19th century by Lord Rosebery. Large exhibits are devoted to Burns and Walter Scott. The third writer represented there is Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Abbotsford House

Walter Scott–Related Sites

Walter Scott’s importance lies partly in the fact that he restored, for the English, the respectability of all things Scottish. Scotland had been in disrepute among the English following Prince Charles’s rebellion of 1745– 1746. Scott did more than anyone to create the romantic ideal of Scotland associated with tartan kilts, bagpipes, and the highland games. The place to see Scott’s idealized version of himself and his native land is at the house he designed and built, Abbotsford, in the lowland hills near the English border. His literary success enabled him to buy the place, demolish the small house there, and build according to his tastes in a style that’s now known as Scottish baronial. Visitors are given a warm welcome, and you’ll find eager and informative guides in each room. Scott died at the height of his fame, in 1832, and was given an immense funeral in the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. Dryburgh is an apt place for Scott to be buried—a romantically picturesque ruin that dates back to the 12th century. 194

Lecture 26 ■ Literary Britain: The Romantics

Jane Austen–Related Sites One of Scott’s near contemporaries was Jane Austen (1775–1817). Her novels are quiet and domestic, and they have maintained their popularity. The logical places for Austen pilgrims to visit are the villages around Winchester where she lived for much of her life, along with Bath in Somerset and Lyme Regis in Dorset, where important scenes are played out in some of her books.

Jane Austen

Austen grew up in the village of Steventon, in Hampshire. Though her childhood home no longer stands, you can still visit St. Nicholas Church, where her father served as rector. The family moved to Bath in 1801 and then, after Austen’s father’s death in 1805, to Southampton, a major naval base. Four years later they moved again, to the nearby village of Chawton in Hampshire. Austen lived the rest of Jane Austen's House her life there, in a modest brick cottage, where she completed Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park. Chawton is now a museum full of Austen memorabilia. Austen died at the age of 41 in 1817. Her funeral was at Winchester Cathedral, attended by only four mourners. Her gravestone made no mention of her work as a writer, but her fame kept growing as the 19th century 195

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progressed. Enthusiasts added a brass plaque in 1872 and worked for a memorial stained-glass window in 1900. By now, these are the objects in Winchester Cathedral that, to many visitors, are its principal attraction.

William Wordsworth–Related Sites Another active writer was William Wordsworth. He is strongly associated with one of the most picturesque areas of northwest England: the Lake District. Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, a town at the western edge of the Lake District. He and his sister, Dorothy, eventually settled for a time at Dove Cottage, which has become a magnet for Wordsworth pilgrims from all over the world. It’s a tiny house at the edge of the village of Grasmere. William Wordsworth

Lake District

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In 1808 and again in 1813, the Wordsworth family moved. They eventually settled at Rydal Mount in what was to become their home for the rest of William’s life. It is a Wordsworth museum, more spacious than Dove Cottage and with bigger gardens, which he designed. During Wordsworth’s lifetime and partly because of his work, the Lake District became a tourist attraction and has remained one ever since. Whitewashed houses are among its many attractions, and it contains some of the finest hiking country in the whole of Britain.

Beatrix Potter’s Home Another Lake District figure is Beatrix Potter, the author of children’s books including Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and Jemima Puddleduck. Her home was Hill Top, near Hawkshead. Potter’s residence is a sturdy, no-nonsense grey farmhouse with low ceilings, thick stone walls, and small windows. To Potter, it symbolized freedom. Brought up in London by a restrictive upper-middle-class family, she felt Hill Top

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hemmed in except on occasional family vacations to the hills. Publication of her first book in 1903 led to good sales and sudden acclaim, which she used to declare her independence from the family. By then, she was almost 40. In the Lake District, she carried on with the books. The desk at which she worked is preserved, as is her bed with its view over the hills. She started raising Herdwicks, a rare sheep breed, and married a local solicitor in 1913. She was known locally as Mrs. Heelis. Later, she became interested in conservation, buying up land in the area to prevent it from being developed and donating it to the National Trust. Sickly and often depressed in childhood, she became a stouthearted independent woman who lived into her late 70s.

Suggested Reading Crawford, The Bard. Goodier, Literary Walks. Stafford, Jane Austen. Wilson, A Life of Walter Scott.

Suggested Activities 1. Locate Lake District places mentioned by Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and see how well their description tallies with what you can see today. 2. Sit on a bench in the garden of Jane Austen’s house in Chawton and read a dozen pages of Emma, such as the marriage proposal of Mr. Elton.

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LITERARY BRITAIN: POETS AND NOVELISTS T

his lecture visits places associated with three of England’s greatest poets: Percy Shelley, John Keats, and George Gordon Byron (also known as Lord Byron). Next, the lecture switches genres to retrace the steps of some of the giants of the Victorian novel: Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters. Sections of this lecture include: „„ Percy Shelley–related sites. „„ John Keats–related sites. „„ Lord Byron–related sites. „„ Charles Dickens–related sites. „„ Haworth parsonage, related to the Brontë sisters.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Percy Shelley–Related Sites Percy Shelley, son of a baronet, was born at Field Place in Warnham, Sussex, south of London. Shelley spent most of his 20s in Europe, but drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Italy in 1822, just before his 30th birthday. His writing brought him wide fame, especially in the last years of his life. One notable example of his work is “Ozymandias,” which describes the statue of a megalomaniac king, now reduced to shattered fragments in an empty desert. A museum dedicated to Shelley and Keats is in Italy, where each of them spent his last days, but there are also several relevant Percy Shelley sites in England. The school Shelley went to, Eton, is almost in the shadow of Windsor Castle. It has nurtured many of Britain’s greatest writers. There is also a memorial to Shelley at University College, Oxford. It was unveiled at a grand ceremony in 1893 and consists of a large white alabaster statue on a plinth, showing Shelley’s body, drowned, as it might have looked when it washed up on the beach.

John Keats–Related Sites John Keats was three years younger than Shelley and lived an even shorter life, dying at 25. He was a Londoner who left school early and took up an apprenticeship to be an apothecary and surgeon. At first, he seemed set for a life in medicine, but abandoned it in 1816 to become a poet. Keats House, in Hampstead, London, was his home between 1818 and 1820. He did much of his best writing here, including the composition of “Ode to Autumn.” After contracting tuberculosis in 1820, on a doctor’s advice, he moved to Italy in the hope that the warmer climate would help him recover. He died there 200

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Keats House

and is buried in Rome. News of his death prompted Shelley, who admired Keats, to write “Adonais,” a long elegy to his memory. Keats’s reputation grew steadily in the 19th century, by the end of which he was regarded as one of the greatest poets in British history. At Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, there is a marker to Keats and Shelley, which was installed over the Shakespeare Memorial in 1954. In 2007, the sculptor Stuart Williamson made a statue of Keats for Guy’s Hospital.

Lord Byron–Related Sites Like Shelley and Keats, Lord Byron was attracted to southern Europe, which is the setting for much of his poetry. At the age of 24, in 1812, he published the first half of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, an intellectual and spiritual coming of age poem based loosely on his own travel experiences. It was acclaimed a masterwork. However, his lack of self-control and a series of scandals relating to his promiscuity eventually made life in England impossible. Byron’s turbulent life ended at the age of 36 in Greece, where he had gone to fight for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He died of disease 201

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at Missolonghi. To this day, he is remembered as a great hero in Greece, with towns, roads, and inns named after him throughout the country. Byron’s grave is in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. A memorial tablet was embedded in the church floor by the king of Greece in 1881, and a marker nearby indicates that the poet is buried in the crypt beneath. Outside the church, there’s a marble monument to Byron in the shape of a book. Across St. Mary Magdalene the street, you’ll find a statue of the poet in a niche over the entrance to a commercial building. For more than a century, the British establishment refused to admit such a scandalous fellow as Byron to Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Only in 1969 did they relent, and a modest stone marker now represents him there.

Charles Dickens–Related Sites Charles Dickens displaced Walter Scott as Britain’s most popular novelist in the 1830s and delighted Victorian audiences with stories that blended sentiment, coincidence, virtue, adventure, and the quest for social justice. Dickens spent hours walking in London when it was a murky, misty place, but nonetheless fascinating. Walking tours of Dickens’s London today, often with enthusiasts who can quote long passages from his books, include a visit to the great wall of the debtors’ prison where his father suffered and to the riverside steps where, in 202

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Oliver Twist, Nancy is murdered by Bill Sikes. They cover other locations as well. Dickens’s birthplace, in Portsmouth on the south coast, is now a museum. It’s a respectable Georgian house. The London house from which he published his first three novels is also a museum. It is located at 48 Doughty Street in Holborn, not the biggest of his London homes but the only one to survive more or less intact.

Charles Dickens

Haworth Parsonage The Brontë sisters were an extremely private trio of writers, almost to the point of social invisibility. In 1847, all three of them published first-rate novels that are still read and admired today: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey. Their home, Haworth parsonage, stands at the top of a steep hill above the Worth Valley in Yorkshire, on the edge of the moors but not far from the Haworth Parsonage

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Haworth Street

textile towns of Keighley and Halifax. So great is the Brontës’ fame that the whole district has been turned into a heritage site. The steep street, closed off to traffic, is a long succession of shops selling Brontë memorabilia. The parsonage itself is more reverent. The hilltop site is gaunt, especially in winter. In the site’s museum annex are preserved many of the Brontës’ childhood projects, including stories written in tiny notebooks, with minuscule print, microscopic pictures, maps, and diagrams. Once they had grown up, Charlotte and Anne worked as governesses while Emily stayed at the parsonage. Governess was one of few jobs available for genteel women needing money, and it gave them the experiences they used as the basis for Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey.

Suggested Reading Flanders, The Victorian City. McCarthy, Byron. Whitehead, The Brontes’ Haworth. 204

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Questions to Consider 1. How does the windswept, hilltop setting of Haworth increase your appreciation of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre? 2. Is Dickens a reliable guide to urban life in Victorian England, or does his penchant for melodrama undermine his sociological value?

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LITERARY BRITAIN: THE 20TH CENTURY T

his lecture is devoted to British literary figures of the 20th century. In particular, it focuses on the following:

„„ Thomas Hardy–related sites. „„ Arthur Conan Doyle–related sites. „„ George Bernard Shaw–related sites. „„ Bloomsbury group–related sites. „„ C. S. Lewis–related sites. „„ George Orwell–related sites.

Lecture 28 ■ Literary Britain: The 20th Century

Max Gate

Thomas Hardy–Related Sites The county of Dorset is extremely relevant to Thomas Hardy’s work. Hardy transfigured the rural area where he lived in a succession of novels that were acclaimed as soon as they appeared and have remained popular ever since. He called the area Wessex, reviving the name of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that had dominated southwestern England 1,000 years earlier. The county town of Dorchester is full of references to Hardy’s life and work. A site on the edge of town is probably most important to Hardy pilgrims. This is Max Gate, the house Hardy designed and that his father and brother then built for him. Now run by the National Trust, Max Gate is a characteristic late-Victorian home, comfortable and solid, with two decorative towers. It overlaps an ancient Neolithic site where Hardy found fragments of Roman pottery. He moved into Max Gate in 1885 and lived there for the last 43 years of his life. After his death, Hardy’s ashes were buried at Poet’s Corner in Westminster 207

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Abbey. His heart, however, was taken back to St. Michael’s Church in Stinsford, just a mile or two from his birthplace, where it was buried alongside the grave of his first wife, Emma.

Arthur Conan Doyle–Related Sites Literary tourists usually seek out places connected with authors, but in the case of Sherlock Holmes, the character has supplanted his creator. The detective lived and worked at 221b Baker Street, just off Marylebone Road in London. At first, the street numbers did not go that high. Later, the street was extended and 221 became part of the address of a building society, which found it had to employ a full-time correspondent just to deal with the Sherlock Holmes mail that came pouring in every day. Today, there is a Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker Street. It features lateVictorian furniture, chemistry experiments, and props from the stories, and it has a convincingly cluttered appearance that feels just about right. A pub near Charing Cross railway station, on Northumberland Street, also has an upstairs room decked out with the same kind of materials. Its name is the Sherlock Holmes.

George Bernard Shaw–Related Sites Another successful writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the Irish-born George Bernard Shaw. Shaw made his name as a music and theater critic in London, then as a playwright. He is best remembered today for Pygmalion, the play in which the elocutionist Henry Higgins transforms a poor Cockney flower girl into an elegant, well-spoken young lady. It’s a satire on the British class system and on the close relationship between accent and social status, but it’s brimming with good humor. Shaw was a knowledge-devouring genius. He was an early member of the Fabian Society, socialists who opposed revolutionary violence and favored the gradual transformation of society. H. G. Wells was another famous member. Shaw was also a bundle of contradictions and susceptible to fads, which he then intellectualized to a high degree. The place to see their effects 208

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Shaw's Corner

is his country house, Shaw’s Corner, in the tiny Hertfordshire village of Ayot St. Lawrence. Shaw’s Corner is a solid middle-class house with a big garden and space for servants, but it’s not ostentatious. In his wardrobe still hang some of his clothes, made by a tailor who was convinced that wool had therapeutic powers beyond all other fabrics. Shaw accepted the theory. He was a vegetarian and exercised energetically; his bicycle is on display. In a glass case near the bicycle are Shaw’s Nobel Prize and his Oscar. The house also contains photographs, and outside it are a garden and Shaw’s writing hut.

Bloomsbury Group–Related Sites Bloomsbury is the area of London around the British Museum. The Bloomsbury Group was a cluster of writers and artists who lived and worked there in the early 20th century. Two notable members were the writer Virginia Stephen (better known as Virginia Woolf) and her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell. 209

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Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf in 1912. Together, they founded the Hogarth Press, which they set up in their own home, Hogarth House, in 1917. A blue plaque at 34 Paradise Road in London marks the origins of the press, which published not only the works of Virginia Woolf but also those of many other Bloomsbury figures. After World War I, the Woolfs moved to Sussex, settling at Monk’s House in the village of Rodmell, just inland from the south coast. Now run by the National Trust, Monk’s House is a fascinating place to visit. It was built in the late 17th century and surrounded by gardens and orchards. Here, in a little writer’s cabin during the 1920s, Virginia Woolf wrote Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando, her masterpieces.

C. S. Lewis–Related Sites C. S. Lewis is best known for the Narnia stories, The Screwtape Letters, and his many books of Christian apologetics and philosophy. Magdalen College in Oxford, where Lewis worked, is spacious and opulent. Its chapel and

Magdalen College

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cloisters, dating from the late 1400s, were among the last Catholic English structures in the Gothic style to be finished before the Reformation. Even though it is near the center of the city, the college has beautiful gardens, extensive grounds, a great deer park where a herd of fallow deer grazes, and a rustic walk beside the River Cherwell, named after the writer Joseph Addison, who was a fellow of the college. Magdalen’s New Building, from 1733, is a honey-colored structure where Lewis had rooms. Two hundred years earlier, Edward Gibbon had lived there before setting out to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Tolkien was a don first at Pembroke College and then at Merton, another of the great Oxford powerhouses.

Magdalen's New Building

George Orwell–Related Sites The writer George Orwell was just a few years younger than C. S. Lewis. By 1945, Orwell, newly famous because of the success of Animal Farm, was 211

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afraid that the entire world faced a totalitarian future and that the appearance of nuclear weapons made survival unlikely. He had lost his London flat to a German flying bomb during World War II and now wanted to get away from the city. He moved at war’s end to the island of Jura in the Scottish Hebrides. Barnhill, the farmhouse where he lived while writing 1984, was—and still is—about as remote as it’s possible to get in Britain. Orwell was already suffering from the tuberculosis that would kill him in 1950. He made matters worse by almost drowning himself and his three-year-old son Richard in the Gulf of Corryvreckan, where a whirlpool challenges even experienced sailors. Barnhill is still there now, available to rent, but with cautions about its remoteness and primitive condition.

Suggested Reading Licence, Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles. Lycett, Conan Doyle. Wallis, Thomas Hardy’s Dorset Through Time.

Suggested Activities 1. Explore the area around Baker Street to see just how well Arthur Conan Doyle knew and exploited the landscape of London. 2. Walk from Max Gate, Thomas Hardy’s Dorchester home, to nearby Maiden Castle, where he set several dramatic scenes in his novels.

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ARTISTIC BRITAIN: PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS

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ritain has a distinguished artistic tradition. This lecture emphasizes particular artists and places around the country that are associated with them. Notable people discussed include: „„ William Hogarth.

„„ Joseph Turner.

„„ Joshua Reynolds.

„„ Henry Moore.

„„ Thomas Gainsborough.

„„ Barbara Hepworth.

„„ John Constable.

„„ Antony Gormley.

„„ Thomas Girtin.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Beer Street and Gin Lane

William Hogarth William Hogarth was an engraver, painter, social commentator, and satirist. His sequences of illustrations like A Rake’s Progress, showing how a degenerate young man wasted his fortune and came to ruin, prefigured the development of cartoon strips and graphic novels. A pair of his drawings from 1751, Gin Lane and Beer Street, illustrate the contrast between the disastrous effects of hard liquor and the benign consequences of drinking good English beer. Parliament was preparing to pass the Gin Act, making it more difficult to obtain gin, and these drawings acted as propaganda for the cause. Hogarth lived partly in the center of London but partly in Chiswick, a village west of the capital that has now been absorbed by it. His Chiswick home is a museum of Hogarth’s life and work. He lived there from 1749, moving in when the house was about 30 years old and residing there almost until his death.

Joshua Reynolds Another notable 18th-century artist, Joshua Reynolds, thrived as a society portraitist, charming and flattering his clients. He was one of the founders of

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the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, and he served as its first president. It was initially established in Somerset House in the heart of London. From Somerset House, the Royal Academy moved, first to Trafalgar Square and then to Burlington House on Piccadilly, where it remains. There, Joshua Reynolds’s statue has pride of place in the courtyard.

Thomas Gainsborough Reynolds’s great rival as a society portraitist was Thomas Gainsborough. He was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, in a house that is now dedicated to commemorating his life and work. After early struggles to establish his reputation, he settled in Bath in 1759, where he was soon able to command high fees. He too was a founding member of the Royal Academy but had a bumpy relationship with its leaders, periodically withdrawing his work from the annual exhibitions. The Gainsborough House in Sudbury was already 200 years old when the future artist was born. His family modified it, adding a new façade, before going Thomas Gainsborough

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bankrupt when Thomas was nine. In the house today is a fine collection of his prints and drawings, several portraits, many letters, his artist’s equipment, and his library of books on artistic taste and technique. Its walled garden adds to the appeal of the house, which has been a museum since 1961.

John Constable One notable landscape painter of southern England was John Constable. Born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, just a few miles east of Gainsborough’s home, he came of age during the Napoleonic Wars. He concentrated on what he knew best: the landscape around his Suffolk home at Flatford Mill in the Dedham Vale. His best-known works are landscapes, notably Dedham Vale, Boat-Building near Flatford Mill, The Hay Wain, and The Lock. They caught on more quickly in France than England; Constable’s reputation gained ground only slowly at home, and he became a member of the Royal Academy only at the age of 52. Flatford remains today a rustic village in Dedham Vale.

Thomas Girtin An important development of the early 19th century in Britain was the vogue for landscapes in watercolor. The advantage, from the artists’ point of view, was that they could be finished much more quickly than oils, an important consideration for men who needed to produce and sell enough works to make a living. Constable’s contemporary Thomas Girtin was among the first specialist watercolorists of the landscape. His painting Jedburgh Abbey from the South East conforms closely to Gilpin’s ideas about the picturesque, featuring a dark foreground and a grand ruin at its center.

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Joseph Turner One of Girtin’s friends as a teenager was Joseph Turner, his exact contemporary. Championed by the art critic John Ruskin, he emerged as a major landscape artist while creating works that sometimes gestured toward abstraction. Notable for its daring style is his Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway, from 1844. A railway train, then something new in the world, is crossing a river bridge, approaching the viewer in a setting that is smudged, lacking all detail, and slashed by diagonals that suggest heavy rain. The recently opened Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate, Kent, stands on the site of a boarding house where he used to visit the landlady, Mrs. Sophie Booth, who was also his mistress. It’s a vast space, featuring a series of angular white concrete boxes, designed by David Chipperfield. The gallery does not possess his originals at present, but it has become the centerpiece of an attempt to revitalize a seaside town in decline.

Henry Moore After 1900, modern artists began to break out of conventional genres, experimenting with new materials and new approaches to the setting of art works. Several British sculptors worked on a large scale with abstract shapes, of whom Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth are the most prominent. Both came from Yorkshire. Moore was a coal miner’s son from Castleford. He became one of the top sculptors in the world. His works are mostly semi-abstract, reminiscent of human figures, while sometimes dramatically distorted. Many are of reclining nudes or mother-and-child pairings. By 1970, they were placed prominently outside the House of Lords in London and outside the West German government buildings in Bonn. Numerous world-class museums also positioned his monumental abstract works beside their entrances. The garden of Moore’s house, Hoglands, in the Hertfordshire village of Perry Green, is the best place to see a cluster of his works all in the same place, unless you are lucky enough to catch a special retrospective exhibition. 217

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Barbara Hepworth Hepworth was a friendly rival of Moore for much of her lifetime. Her massive abstract sculptures in the 1940s and 1950s appealed to corporate and government clients, including the United Nations in New York City. In 2011, a museum dedicated to her work opened in Wakefield, her hometown, adjacent to the Calder River. In the 1970s, the idea of sculpture parks caught on. Two good examples are Grizedale in the Lake District and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield.

Antony Gormley Monumental objects often become shorthand ways to identify places. An example in Britain is the Angel of the North, a steel sculpture on a hilltop in the town of Gateshead, near Newcastle on Tyne. Designed by Antony Gormley, it is 65 feet high, has a wingspan of 175 feet, and is anchored by hundreds of tons of reinforced concrete to withstand high winds Gormley also created Another Place, which consists of 100 life-size nude male figures, modeled on his own body, that are spread over a large area of Crosby Beach, Liverpool, all facing out to sea. When the

Angel of the North

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tide comes in, they are covered. As it goes out, leaving a vast flat, they are exposed. Public reactions have been mixed with this work, and Gormley had to campaign hard to keep them there.

Suggested Reading Reynolds, Constable’s England. Rosenthal, British Landscape Painting. Wilton, Turner in His Time.

Suggested Activity 1. Take a sketchbook along to Dedham Vale and draw some of the scenes, as they are now, that Constable painted 200 years ago. Similarly, sketch in one of the sculpture parks to remind yourself of how the art related to the landforms.

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BRITAIN’S ESTATES AND GARDENS

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ritain is full of gardens. Its mild, wet climate is well suited to a vast array of flowers, herbs, bushes, and trees. This lecture looks at several notable gardens and estates, including:

„„ The Botanic Garden and the Chelsea Physic Garden. „„ The work of garden designer William Kent and his apprentice, Lancelot Brown. „„ Garden buildings at Stourhead. „„ The Kew Gardens. „„ Trentham Gardens and Chatsworth. „„ The Lost Gardens of Heligan. „„ The work of garden designers Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West. „„ Gardens in Scotland. „„ Gardens in Wales.

Lecture 30 ■ Britain’s Estates and Gardens

The Botanic Garden and the Chelsea Physic Garden Two of the earliest gardens that can still be seen in something approximating their original form are the Botanic Garden at Oxford and the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. The former dates back to 1621, when the earl of Danby donated the money for a physic garden at Oxford—in other words, a garden in which medicinal plants could be grown and studied. The Chelsea Physic Garden in London was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. It had a similar function to the Oxford garden: to be a concentration of medicinal plants. It has been open to the public since the 1980s and includes the oldest rock garden in Britain.

William Kent and Lancelot Brown In the early 1700s, an influential group of innovators guided garden design. The first celebrity designer was William Kent. He collaborated with the duke of Burlington in designing Chiswick House and Gardens in the 1720s, blending formal elements, such as straight avenues of trees, with rolling meadows, lakes, and classical temples. Kent later became head gardener at Stowe House in Buckinghamshire, whose gardens still bear the imprint of his work. Stowe is full of references Chiswick House and Gardens

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to the classics, including a Doric arch from the 1760s, built in honor of King George II’s daughter Amelia, and a Corinthian arch from the same decade. Kent acquired a talented apprentice, Lancelot Brown, who eventually outstripped his master in influence. The great parks at Kedleston and Chatsworth in Derbyshire were landscaped by Brown; so were those at Blenheim, Warwick Castle, and Althorpe. In 1764, he also became master gardener to King George III at Hampton Court.

Kedleston Bridge

Stourhead There is a notable collection of garden buildings at Stourhead in Wiltshire, built in stages through the 18th century, mainly by Francis Cartwright and Nathaniel Ireson. Among the buildings is a pantheon, best seen across the site’s lake. There is also an Italian Renaissance–style grotto that includes the statue of a sleeping nymph. Hiking around this area is a fun activity.

The Kew Gardens Skillful manipulation of the landscape was one direction in estate management. Another was the gathering of specimens from around the world for study and amusement. This impulse can best be seen at work in London’s 222

Lecture 30 ■ Britain’s Estates and Gardens

Stourhead

Kew Gardens, which were founded by the royal family in the 1750s and became important after 1770. Their curator in those days was Joseph Banks, a leading scientist who had traveled to the Pacific with Captain James Cook. They brought back hundreds of plant species previously unknown in Britain, and Banks cultivated as many of them as possible at Kew. He made Kew preeminent in the world as a place to which exotic specimens could be brought or sent. Kew Gardens

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Today, more than 30,000 species are on display, most in the open air, more in great hothouses. One prominent feature is a pagoda over 150 feet high, which was a sensation when completed in 1762. A second spectacle is the Japanese gateway, built as a symbol of Anglo-Japanese friendship in 1910 and now surrounded by an elaborate Japanese-style peace garden.

Trentham Gardens and Chatsworth In the 19th century, some owners revived the more formal French and Italian style of garden design. Trentham Gardens near Stoke on Trent is a characteristic example. Its formal gardens, Italian in style, were laid out in 1840 by Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament. The most influential gardener of the 19th century was Joseph Paxton. He began his career at Chiswick House in London, where the sixth duke of Devonshire noticed his work and brought him to his great country estate, Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. There, Paxton built a series of imposing glasshouses to keep alive tropical plants that could not survive the English winter.

Trentham Gardens

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Lost Gardens of Heligan

The Lost Gardens of Heligan Another 19th-century achievement was the Heligan Gardens of Mevagissey, now known as the Lost Gardens of Heligan. The mild climate of Cornwall, England’s most southwesterly county, enables many tropical plants to survive the winter out of doors, and the Tremayne family that designed Heligan took advantage of species that would have perished elsewhere. Heligan required 22 full-time gardeners. During World War I, however, 16 of the 22 were killed in the trenches, and the others could not cope. After the war, the estate’s discouraged owner moved away to Italy. Only in the 1990s did restoration begin, thanks to the work of a record producer, Tim Smit, who was also the mastermind of the nearby Eden Project. A large crew of gardeners now works at Heligan to grow food in a productive garden, while others are continuing to reclaim the wilder areas. Resident artists create earth sculptures, and the gardeners themselves are happy to show themselves at work.

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Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West In the late 19th and early 20th century, two women gardeners became nationally famous. The first was Gertrude Jekyll, who lived from 1843 to 1932. Born to a wealthy London family, the story of her life challenges the idea that Victorian women were denied opportunity. In a long and felicitous relationship with the architect Edwin Lutyens, she became Britain’s most influential garden designer. One of the best places to see Jekyll’s work today alongside that of Lutyens is at Hestercombe House in Somerset. The structure of the garden is quite strict, but the plantings are deliberately irregular to soften the impact of the strong shapes. Gardeners there have carefully restored her approach to color and form. She also designed a walled garden next to Lindisfarne Castle in Northumberland when Lutyens was rebuilding it. This too has been restored in accordance with her designs. The second of these distinguished women gardeners was Vita SackvilleWest, best remembered as a popular Gertrude Jekyll Garden novelist and as one of Virginia Woolf’s lovers. Sackville-West met Gertrude Jekyll in 1917 and was clearly influenced by her ideas on garden design, which were then at their height. She then went on to do a series of BBC broadcasts on gardening in the 1930s, which made her name well known in gardening circles. The finest monument to Sackville-West is the garden at Sissinghurst Castle—an old Tudor tower in Kent that she bought with her husband, Harold

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Nicolson. The estate had been badly neglected, but Sackville-West and her husband worked to restore it. Today, visitors can enjoy the fruits of Vita and Harold’s efforts. Sissinghurst has been open to the public since the 1960s, and its gardeners have attempted to preserve her approach to gardening. The beds tend to be crowded with a profusion of plants and flowers, offsetting the disciplined structure with random elements.

Gardens in Scotland There are plenty of gardens to see in Scotland. The challenge to Scottish gardeners is the combination of acidic soils, high rainfall, and low temperatures, but an offsetting opportunity comes with very long summer days. The Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh has responded by specializing in hardy plants from temperate latitudes. Further north, at Pitmedden, near Aberdeen, stands another garden. In continuous use at least since 1675, the garden is surrounded by high walls to offer protection from the area’s harsh winter winds. Fruit vines are trained to grow against these walls, including gooseberries and redcurrants. Pitmedden also exhibits careful topiary on its yew and beech hedges, while the ground has been modified to create high points that overlook the main garden areas. Far smaller in scale, but still delightful, is the garden at J. M. Barrie’s birthplace, a weaver’s house in Kirriemuir, near Dundee. Barrie was the author of Peter Pan. Beside the house stands a statue of Peter, based on the author’s older brother, who died in childhood. There is also a crocodile made out of undulating willow saplings that children can climb through.

Gardens in Wales Wales also has many outstanding gardens. Conwy, which is home to one the country’s best castles, is also the site of Bodnant, whose gardens have the Snowdon mountain range as their background.

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Wales’s National Botanic Garden is in a remote part of Carmarthenshire, northwest of Swansea. It is popular in part because of its dramatic domed glasshouse, built by Norman Foster.

Suggested Reading Campbell, British Gardens in Time. Phibbs and Cornish, Capability Brown. Price, Kew Guide. Way, Gertrude Jekyll.

Questions to Consider 1. What is the connection between the development of political stability and the rise of English gardens? 2. Why did British aristocrats of the 18th century try to cultivate the illusion of isolation on their estates?

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LEGACY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE F

rom the early 1600s to the mid-20th century, Britain was a colonial power. Among its possessions were India, Burma, Malaya, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, large parts of central and southern Africa, and many Caribbean islands. For a century, Britain was also the most influential foreign power in China. When the empire ended, many citizens of the former colonies emigrated to Britain. Parts of many British cities are now strongly influenced by their immigrant communities, especially from India, Pakistan, and the West Indies. This lecture looks at some of those influences, highlighting: „„ Tea.

„„ Indian food.

„„ India’s influence on Britain.

„„ Afro-Caribbean influences.

„„ Cleopatra’s Needle.

„„ Anglo-American influences.

„„ Mosques and Hindu temples.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Fortnum & Mason

Tea One of the many things that came to England from the Far East was tea, originally from China. Fortnum & Mason, on Piccadilly, is the place to experience the full ritual of teatime. It’s not quite as formal as a Chinese tea ceremony, but it does offer plenty of challenges relating to proper disposition of the cups, saucers, milk jug, sugar bowl, spoons, and cake plates. Waiters will also guide your choice of tea, explaining the proper sipping technique. Lots of the other hotels, such as the Ritz and Brown’s Hotel, also offer pricey and elaborate high teas.

India’s Influence on Britain India has also had an influence on Britain. The nabobs were men who made fortunes in India in the late 18th century, brought them back to Britain, and used their money to buy landed estates and political influence. Sezincote 230

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House in Gloucestershire, built in 1805, is an example of Indian style adapted to an English setting. It was designed by Samuel Cockerell for his brother, one of the nabobs, using a mixture of Hindu and Muslim designs. The prince regent George, who would eventually become King George IV, visited Sezincote in 1807 and admired it. He also enjoyed regular vacations at Brighton, on the south coast, where he could meet discreetly with his mistress, Maria Fitzherbert. He asked the architect John Nash to extend his house there in the Indian style. The result was Brighton Pavilion, which he completed in 1823.

Cleopatra’s Needle While George was building his pavilion, Britain was given an ancient pharaonic monument by Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman governor of Egypt and Sudan. This was Cleopatra’s Needle, a gift given as an expression of gratitude to Britain for defeating Napoleon’s armies and navies in Egypt. The British government thanked Muhammad Ali but declined to pay for the needle’s transportation to the UK. That was in 1819. Only in 1877 did

Cleopatra’s Needle

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private philanthropists work out how to transport it safely to England, inside a custom-built floating iron cylinder, towed by a steamer. Even then it was almost lost in stormy weather on the Bay of Biscay, and it was rescued at the cost of six sailors’ lives. Since 1878, Cleopatra’s Needle has stood beside the River Thames, just downstream from the Houses of Parliament, flanked by a pair of sphinxes that were newly carved by an English sculptor. It is an obelisk, and obelisk-shaped memorials subsequently became familiar across the British landscape. Other Egyptian motifs have become common as well.

Mosques and Hindu Temples After the death of Queen Victoria’s faithful Scottish servant John Brown in 1883, she adopted an Indian Muslim, Abdul Karim, as her favorite and companion. Although she never went to India, she felt that her closeness to him gave her an intuitive sense of what India was like and what its people wanted. By then, enough Indian people were coming to England to justify the building of a mosque. The first one still stands in the town of Woking. It is named after Neasden Temple

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Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal. The first mosque in London itself was the Fazl Mosque, which opened at Southfields in 1926 and was paid for by donations from supporters in India. Hindu temples are also now familiar features of the urban landscape. The grandest is in Neasden in northwest London. It opened in 1995 and was celebrated at the time as the biggest Hindu temple outside of India itself.

Indian Food Indian food was another important arrival to Britain. The earliest Indian restaurant goes all the way back to 1809. It was opened by Sake Dean Mohamed, who was one of a generation of Indian sailors, known as lascars, who crewed the ships of the East India Company. The restaurant lasted only a year before Mohamed had to sell it and move on to other ventures, but another proprietor kept it going into the 1830s. The oldest surviving Indian restaurant in England today is Veeraswamy on Regent Street in London. It has been in business without interruption since 1926. Today, there are an estimated 8,000 Indian restaurants in the UK. By now, the single most popular dish among all British people is something introduced from India: chicken tikka masala.

Afro-Caribbean Influences Britain today also has a large Afro-Caribbean population. In the days of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a handful of Africans and Afro-Caribbean people worked as servants and coachmen in England. In an important legal case of 1772, a British judge declared that slavery was not recognized in English law and that an American slave who had been brought to England could not be shipped out of Britain against his will. This is known as the Somerset decision, and it was encouraging news to William Wilberforce and other abolitionists. After years of effort, they secured passage of an anti-slave-trade act in Parliament in 1807. Wilberforce’s 233

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campaign is commemorated in the 2006 film Amazing Grace. His house in the northeast English city of Hull is now a museum of slavery and the slave trade, with a statue of Wilberforce himself in its grounds. It opened in 2007 to mark the 200th anniversary of the landmark legislation. Slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire in 1833. Since World War II, Britain has witnessed a large-scale immigration from Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados. The arrival of the ship Empire Windrush from Jamaica in 1948, bringing 500 immigrants, is often taken to be the moment that Britain began its transition to a multiracial society. They had been encouraged to come by organizations that were short of employees, notably London Transport and the new National Health Service. On the other hand, they were resented by working-class whites who disliked them as competitors for scarce housing. London witnessed ugly racial attacks on black citizens, culminating in the Notting Hill race riots of 1958. The Notting Hill Carnival, founded in 1959, was an attempt to emphasize the positive side of Caribbean culture, and it has become an important annual event.

Anglo-American Influences By 1970, Britain had granted political independence to virtually all its former colonies. America, of course, had gained it much earlier. Throughout Britain, you will come upon signs of Anglo-American connections that bear witness to the debts each country owes to the other. Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire is the ancestral home of George Washington’s forebears. Another example of the Anglo-American connection is Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, London. John Adams lived in a house there when he was the first US ambassador between 1785 and 1788, just after the Revolution. Today, the old US embassy structure occupies one side of the square. Also in Grosvenor Square are statues of Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose wartime headquarters were in the square. Near the statues stands a memorial to the Eagle Squadrons. These were 234

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Grosvenor Square

three Royal Air Force squadrons, manned by American volunteers, who flew Spitfire fighters in the Battle of Britain before the United States entered World War II. Seventy-one of the 244 Eagles were killed. The rest had forfeited their American citizenship by joining the military of a foreign power, but were pardoned by Congress in 1944 and reinstated as Americans. Finally, a memorial garden to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack stands close to the embassy. A new US embassy building has been constructed in the Nine Elms district of London in a former railroad yard. Like all modern buildings, it is loved by some critics and hated by others, though the State Department says it is easier to defend from attacks, far more environmentally friendly, and bigger than the old one.

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Suggested Reading Panayi, Spicing Up Britain. Rose, For All the Tea in China. Wambu, Empire Windrush.

Suggested Activity 1. Try England’s versions of Indian, Chinese, and Caribbean food. You’ll find them distinctly different from the American versions of the same thing.

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SEAFARING BRITAIN B

ritain became a world power through its domination of the seas. This lecture looks at notable sites from Britain’s naval past, including:

„„ The replica of the Golden Hind. „„ The remains of the Mary Rose. „„ The HMS Victory. „„ The HMS Warrior. „„ The HMS M33. „„ Seafaring sites in London. „„ The SS Great Britain. „„ The National Historic Fleet. „„ Lighthouses.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

The Golden Hind The Golden Hind was the ship captained by Sir Francis Drake, an English privateer active in the mid- to late 1500s. The ship is famous for its battles with Spanish craft and for circumnavigating the globe. Its replica is named the Golden Hinde, and it is now located in a side dock of the River Thames in London, near the Tate Modern art gallery.

The Mary Rose At Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on the south coast of England, you can see the remains of a Tudor warship, the Mary Rose. It sank in 1545 and was preserved in the oxygen-free mud. Raising the Mary Rose in 1982 was a brilliant accomplishment in marine archaeology, and the sheer volume of material goods recovered from it has revealed a great deal about life in the Tudor navy.

The HMS Victory The HMS Victory is probably the most famous ship in British history. It shares pride of place with the Mary Rose at Portsmouth, and is the oldest ship in the world still under military commission. A 104-gun fighting ship, HMS Victory was the flagship of Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. On its quarterdeck, an enemy sharpshooter killed him just at the moment of his triumph over a combined French and Spanish fleet. He had carried out a daringly unconventional maneuver to break the enemy’s line, and it worked. The tour of the Victory gives a vivid sense of what British sailors of the time had to endure. This course recommends the tour highly.

The HMS Warrior Equally fascinating is HMS Warrior, also on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Launched in 1860, it shows the effects of a century of shipbuilding progress. It was the world’s most powerful warship in the 1860s.

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HMS Warrior

The HMS M33 A third preserved ship at Portsmouth is the M33, a monitor gunboat. It was designed and built in 1915, all in the space of a few weeks. It was built as part of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, by which Britain had hoped to knock Turkey out of World War I in one dramatic stroke. It sits in a dry dock and is painted in the dazzle camouflage that aimed to confuse German submarine captains. Open to the public since 2015, the M33 makes a trip to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard more informative than ever.

Seafaring Sites in London London was the greatest port in the world in the 19th century, hub of a vast maritime empire. Most of the working dockyards have gone from London now, replaced by container terminals, but no tour of seafaring Britain would be complete without a visit to Greenwich. The best way to approach it is by taking one of the tour boats that leave from Westminster Bridge and then sail downriver to disembark at Greenwich. There, you will find the beautifully restored Cutty Sark, a clipper ship launched in 1869 to bring tea from China and wool from Australia.

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Greenwich

Cutty Sark

Also at Greenwich is the Royal Observatory. Just down the hill from that is the National Maritime Museum. It contains high-quality models of ships from many eras; several preserved and repainted boats; a library of plans, charts,

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photographs, and flags; and a collection of the imaginative figureheads that decorated the prows of sailing warships.

The SS Great Britain Another ship to visit is the SS Great Britain. It stands beside the River Avon in Bristol, painstakingly restored to its former glory after being reduced to a mere hulk in the early 20th century. It was built in the early 1840s by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian era’s most visionary engineer, who daringly broke the rules to make ships bigger, faster, and more powerful than ever before. Great Britain, the second of his three masterpieces, used propellers instead of paddle-wheels, had an iron hull rather than wood, and broke the speed record for an Atlantic crossing in 1845 by making the voyage in two weeks flat.

The National Historic Fleet Britain now has a National Historic Fleet, which is a list of old boats and ships of special interest or significance. Some are in museums, some in dry dock, but others are still at work along the rivers and coast. Among the most visible is HMS Belfast, a World War II–era cruiser that also served in the Korean War. HMS Belfast

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It is now anchored just upstream of Tower Bridge in London. Tour it to get a sense of the hard life sailors used to have on these bare-bones warships. Not so visible, but more important historically, is Turbinia, the world’s first steam turbine vessel. Built in 1894, it was much faster than anything else afloat. Its architect, Charles Parsons, publicized his technology with a daring stunt in 1897 by sailing it up and down the great rows of British battleships at the annual Spithead Review. The Turbinia is now on display at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Lighthouses A visit to seafaring Britain should include lighthouses as well as ships. Many parts of the nation’s broken coastline are guarded by lighthouses. Useful as aids to navigators and as warnings about dangerous reefs, these lonely sentinels have an instant romantic appeal. The Romans built the oldest surviving lighthouse in Britain. It’s now just a stone shell, standing on a hilltop inside the perimeter of Dover Castle in Kent. Lighthouses today are mainly automatic and need no permanent staff. For centuries, however, people were needed to keep them The Roman Lighthouse in working order and to ignite their lamps every night. Lighthouse keepers needed to be strong and self-reliant, able to live alone for weeks at a time and unfailingly dependable. One exemplary tale is the story of Grace Darling, who was the daughter of the keeper of Longstone Lighthouse. In 1838 at dawn one morning, Grace saw a steamer that had run aground on a nearby reef during a night storm. Despite a towering gale, she and her father set out in a rowing boat, reached the wreck, and rescued the survivors,

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Beachy Head Lighthouse

Longstone Lighthouse

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who were then compelled by the weather to shelter at the lighthouse for the next three days. Today, you can visit the place where Grace and her father kept watch. Accessible only by boat, the Longstone Lighthouse tour also includes a cruise around the Farne Islands, which are a breeding ground for many seabird species and for a large colony of seals.

Suggested Reading Bathurst, The Lighthouse Stevensons. Knight, The Pursuit of Victory. Wheatley, National Maritime Museum Guide to Maritime Britain.

Suggested Activity 1. Take boat rides as often as possible when you are in coastal Britain to see the shore from a sailor’s point of view.

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BRITAIN’S WAR MEMORIALS

B

ritain is full of war memorials because it has fought so many wars over the centuries and has looked for ways to honor the men who served and died. A recent estimate put the number of UK war memorials at more than 100,000. This lecture highlights some notable war memorial locations, including: „„ Blenheim Palace. „„ Westminster Abbey. „„ Trafalgar Square. „„ The monument to the Crimean War „„ Boer War memorials. „„ The World War I cenotaph. „„ Memorials at Hyde Park Corner. „„ The Animals in War Memorial. „„ Memorials in the provinces of Britain. Because of the sheer number of war memorials in Britain, this lecture does not provide an exhaustive list. Before your visit, do some research to build your own list of memorials to visit.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Blenheim Palace This lecture begins at Blenheim Palace in the pretty town of Woodstock, a few miles north of Oxford. The land and money for the palace were given by Parliament and Queen Anne to the era’s most successful general, the duke of Marlborough. He was one of Winston Churchill’s ancestors, and Churchill wrote an immensely readable four-volume biography of him. Marlborough was the victor of the Battle of Blenheim in Germany, 1704. The palace and estate were named for this event, and among the embellishments was an immense victory column with a statue of the duke on top. The palace itself is superb, built in the Baroque style by Sir John Vanbrugh; from its immense frontage, there’s a long beautiful walk along an unfenced open avenue to the victory column itself. On each face of the plinth is a description of one of Marlborough’s victories. Blenheim Palace

Westminster Abbey

General James Wolfe, whose victory at the Battle of Quebec in 1759 won Canada away from the French empire during the French and Indian War, died on the battlefield just when victory was assured. A memorial to him was set up in Westminster Abbey a few years later, where you can visit it today. It 246

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shows him, naked in a classical pose, supported by two faithful soldiers in front of his tent.

Trafalgar Square Horatio Nelson was the victor of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Nelson is Britain’s naval hero par excellence. Trafalgar Square, right in the heart of London, is named in honor of his last victory. His likeness stands atop Nelson’s Column, recently restored and now protected from the dense flocks of pigeons that used to compromise his dignity. Trafalgar Square is just the tip of the iceberg in memorials to Nelson, however. Nearly 200 streets in cities around Britain are named after the man or the battle, and there are dozens of other monuments. Trafalgar Square

The Monument to the Crimean War A shift in representation from victorious leaders to regular soldiers began with the monument to the Crimean War of the 1850s, set up in London in 1861. 247

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Making no mention of the commanders (one of whom squandered some of his bravest soldiers in the futile Charge of the Light Brigade), it shows instead three figures from the guards regiments, standing solemnly with hands clasped over their rifles and wearing their distinctive bearskin hats. The mood is solemn, suggesting the burden of duty rather than the thrill of victory. The setting is superb, in Waterloo Place (which is itself named after the duke of Wellington’s greatest victory).

Boer War Memorials The Boer War in South Africa, which began in 1899, saw Britain shocked at its inability to prevail easily, at the high casualties its forces suffered, and at the skill with which it was outmaneuvered by daring Boer cavalrymen armed with modern German weapons. Memorials to the fallen of the Boer War were usually specific to particular regiments or the men of particular cities. In London, just down the Mall from the Crimean Memorial, for example, stands the monument to the Royal Artillery, designed by Sir Aston Webb and William Colton. It was unveiled in 1910.

The World War I Cenotaph No conflict generated as many elaborate war memorials as World War I, fought between 1914 and 1918. France decided to build a cenotaph (or empty tomb) for its victory celebrations in 1919. It was a way of emphasizing how many men had been lost without trace and how many of the recovered bodies could no longer be identified.

World War I Cenotaph

The British prime minister, David Lloyd George, thought it was a good idea and persuaded Britain to follow suit. The architect commissioned to build the cenotaph, Edwin Lutyens, tried to avoid explicitly Christian symbolism because 248

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some of the war dead were Jewish or were Hindus and Muslims from the British Empire. The simple wood and plaster structure he built, placed in the center of Whitehall and surrounded by government buildings, was meant to be temporary. It proved so popular, however, that the government decided to replace the temporary cenotaph with one carved in stone. The permanent cenotaph still stands there today.

Memorials at Hyde Park Corner The single best place to see war memorials in England is Hyde Park Corner. It is dominated by the Wellington Arch and stands right across the road from the duke of Wellington’s old London residence, Apsley House. The arch was built in the 1820s to celebrate the duke’s victories over Napoleon, culminating at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Just before World War I began, it was crowned with the Quadriga, a four-horse chariot driven by a little boy overlooked by an angel. After World War I, it was joined by other memorials, of which the two most celebrated are one to the Royal Artillery and a second to the Machine Gun Corps.

Hyde Park Corner

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Another site at Hyde Park Corner is the Australian War Memorial, which was dedicated in 2003. At first glance, it looks like a jumbled array of stones, but it takes on the character of a waterfall in London’s frequent rainstorms. Engraved on its face are not the names of the Australians who died, but the names of the places they came from.

The Animals in War Memorial London’s Animals in War Memorial is on Park Lane, opened by Princess Anne in 2004. Be very careful crossing the road to get to it: This is one of the busiest roads in London. The idea of the memorial is that not just men but animals too have suffered in war. Mules, horses, dogs, camels, pigeons and even elephants are depicted in the low relief. Two mules, heavily burdened with war materials, labor toward one side of a dramatic curved wall made of Portland stone. On the other side, as if liberated, a superb bronze horse cavorts among the flowers.

Memorials in the Provinces of Britain The provinces are as full of memorials as London. The World War I memorial in Centenary Square, Birmingham, for example, is a gem. Officially titled the Hall of Memory and dedicated in 1925, it is a small domed chapel, centrally Air Forces Memorial

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located and now surrounded by much bigger buildings. It honors the memory of the 12,500 Birmingham men killed in the war and the 35,000 more who were wounded and disabled. A notable World War II memorial is the Air Forces Memorial near Egham in Surrey. A bracing 20-minute walk up the side of the Thames Valley from Runnymede brings visitors to this superb place, designed by Edward Maufe and opened by the queen in 1953. It features an open cloister enclosing wellkept lawns. On its walls are the names of the 20,000 men killed in aerial action whose remains were never recovered.

Suggested Reading Boorman, A Century of Remembrance. King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain.

Suggested Activity 1. In any British church, you should be able to find memorials to men of that parish who died in World War I, World War II, and other conflicts. Keep a record of the obscure colonial wars mentioned on these memorials, about whose existence you may have been previously unaware.

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HIKING ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND WALES

T

he best way to see Britain is on foot. Walking is the most economical of all pastimes and one of the healthiest, followed by millions of Britons and adopted by visitors from abroad who come quickly to understand the benefits. Britain is a crowded country, but there’s still a surprisingly large amount of wild land, inaccessible except to those willing to actually walk it, especially in the north of England and in Scotland and Wales. There are also options for urban walkers as well as cyclers and climbers. This lecture looks at some notable opportunities, including: „„ Public footpaths.

„„ The West Highland Way.

„„ The Lake District.

„„ The South West Coast Path.

„„ Canals and railways.

„„ Cycling and climbing.

„„ The Pennine Way.

„„ Walking in London.

Lecture 34 ■ Hiking England, Scotland, and Wales

Public Footpaths Britain is honeycombed with public footpaths, on which everyone is entitled to walk across private land. Zealous advocates for these paths make sure they are kept open and accessible, that new housing developments don’t block them, and that they are properly marked on each new generation of maps. In every rural district, you’ll see signposts that say “Public Footpath,” usually specifying the distance in miles to the next village or landmark. Farmers are required to build access points called stiles into their walls, or to make sure hikers can access the paths through gates that remain unlocked. The footpaths often lead across working farms, where you’ll encounter sheep and cattle at close range. A code of etiquette has developed, such that hikers are expected to carefully close all gates, leash their dogs when animals are in the fields, and stay on the marked footpaths.

The Lake District

Scenic areas like the Lake District are magnets to hikers. The hills there, known locally as fells, are attractive and obliging. None rises much above 3,000 feet, and all can be climbed in a few hours. Rapidly changing views from the peaks and ridges create plenty of interest, while rock piles built 253

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Lake District

by passers-by over the centuries aid even beginners with route finding, especially when mountain mist reduces visibility. Distances are small, but it’s surprisingly easy to get lost, especially in severe weather. It’s always a good idea to take precautions and to take rainproof 254

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gear. Smart hikers equip themselves with compasses and Ordnance Survey maps, and are wary of visibility-reducing mist.

Canals and Railways In the last half-century, changing patterns of land use have opened up new opportunities for hikers. One is the restoration of Britain’s canal system. Built between 1760 and 1850, canals crisscrossed the country, linking up all the major cities to facilitate economical bulk transportation. They fell into decay in the early 20th century but have been restored by two generations of enthusiastic canal boaters. Alongside each of them runs the tow path, once plied by the horses that dragged the barges, but now frequented mainly by short- and long-distance hikers. One option is Trent and Mersey Canal, which runs across south Derbyshire. A second opportunity is provided by converted railways. A rail line that used to run between Derby and Manchester, for example, is now a foot and bicycle path known as the Monsal Trail. The trail runs through a succession of craggy tunnels and over two viaducts, one at Monsal Head and the other at Miller’s Dale.

The Pennine Way For most people a hike is just a few hours out in the countryside, but Britain also possesses some long and demanding trails that demand many days’ or weeks’ commitment to be completed. The best known is the Pennine Way, which starts in Edale, Derbyshire, goes through the wild hill country of north-central England, and ends just over the Scottish border in a village named Kirk Yetholm.

The West Highland Way The most famous long-distance trail in Scotland is the West Highland Way, a spectacular 96-mile route. It begins at a stone obelisk at the northern edge of Glasgow, passes Loch Lomond, and crosses some of the most dramatic mountain and moorland scenery in the country. Then, it descends to the picturesque town of Fort William at the foot of Scotland’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. 255

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The South West Coast Path The longest of Britain’s big paths is the South West Coast Path, which follows the crenellated coastline of Somerset, Devonshire, Cornwall, and Dorset. Starting at Minehead, it takes hikers about 670 miles, much of which is either steep uphill or steep downhill, as they cross successive river valleys. Most people don’t have the time or the stamina to attempt the entire path. If you’re in the area, however, this lecture recommends the 11 miles in Cornwall from Crackington Haven to Tintagel, along high cliffs above the Atlantic breakers, and culminating in one of the legendary sites of the King Arthur tales. Wild sheep and goats graze the cliff tops, and you’ll pass Pentargon Waterfall, a dramatic 120-foot drop. Tintagel Path

Cycling and Climbing

Cycling has also been developed as a systematic touring option in contemporary Britain. There is now an elaborate National Cycle Network, taking advantage of disused railways, canal towpaths, and quiet back roads. It encompasses 14,000 miles of trails. All along Britain’s National Cycle Network, statues and sculptures adorn the paths.

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Britain also offers plenty of climbing opportunities. The sport of rock climbing began in the UK in 1886 with the first ascent of Napes Needle in the Lake District, by Walter Haskett Smith. Additionally, many of the first expeditions to Mount Everest were mounted by British climbers who had trained on the fells of the Lake District and the mountains of Scotland. George Mallory, who died on Everest in 1924 and may have reached the summit before perishing, was one of them. Mallory also pioneered a famous route in the Lake District, Pillar Rock, which he climbed solo in 1913. Mallory then went off to fight in World War I and had the good fortune to survive it. Thousands of his contemporaries died on the Western Front, and the rock climbers among them are commemorated on a bronze plaque near the summit of Great Gable in the Lake District.

Walking in London If you plan to spend most of your time in London, walking as much as possible is still advisable. The center of the city is full of great parks. In addition, the

London Eye

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banks of the River Thames on both sides have almost continuous footpaths up and downstream for several miles. In 2005, the Capital Ring was finished, providing a circular walk around the perimeter of the whole London area. It is 78 miles in total, and it is well signposted and has been broken up into 15 manageable sections. A free detailed guide is available on the internet, which gives directions, maps, and historical information about sites on the path.

Suggested Reading Aitken, The West Highland Way. Linnick, A Walker’s Alphabet. The Ultimate Trans-Pennine Trail Guide.

Suggested Activity 1. Walk to the top of the highest mountain in England (Scafell Pike, 3,209 feet); Wales (Snowdon, 3,560 feet); or Scotland (Ben Nevis, 4,413 feet), and be home before dark. While enjoying a well-earned supper, reflect on how much easier it was than climbing the highest mountain in the United States (Denali, 20,310 feet).

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BRITAIN’S SPORTING TRADITION B

ritain has a long and honorable sporting tradition. Throughout its recorded history, members of all social classes have competed in games requiring skill and athleticism. This lecture looks at some notable sports-related sites in Britain, broken down by individual sports, including: „„ Cricket. „„ Soccer (known as football in Britain). „„ Rugby. „„ Tennis. „„ Golf.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

Cricket Cricket has a long history, and it was being played in England well before 1500. An important cricket-related place is called Lord’s in St. John’s Wood, London. Thomas Lord built a cricket ground for a group of gentlemen in 1787, which became the home of the Marylebone Cricket Club, or MCC. Its members wrote out a set of rules that gradually became standard for the rest of the world and are still observed today. The pavilion at Lords burned down in 1825 but its replacement, built the next year, still stands, and is very much worth a visit. The British equivalent of Major League Baseball is the County Championship and one of the county teams, Middlesex, uses Lord’s as its home ground. On any summer day, you’re likely to find them playing a three-day match there, unless rain interferes. If you’re visiting England in the summer, try to visit a cricket match. International matches are called test matches, and the nations that play are those that formerly belonged to the British Empire, including Australia, 260

Lecture 35 ■ Britain’s Sporting Tradition

New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and the West Indies. They are five-day affairs, but it’s fun to go for just one of those days. The venues are Lord’s, another ground in London called the Oval, Trent Bridge in Nottingham, Headingley in Leeds, Old Trafford in Manchester, and Edgbaston in Birmingham. Easier to understand are Twenty20 games, confined to one afternoon, in which you can see the whole match from start to finish. Aggression and daring lead to risky play and big rewards.

Soccer (Football) If you’re visiting Britain any time between late August and early May, go to a soccer match. Remember that in Britain, the game is called football. There are about 100 professional teams, in a hierarchy of leagues, at the top of which is the Premier League, containing the 20 best teams in England and Wales. (Scotland has a league of its own.) Many of the best players in the world belong to Premier League clubs, and it’s common for a team based in London or Manchester to include players from Brazil and Argentina, Spain, Russia, Nigeria, and Italy. A demanding schedule and a long season keep them in phenomenally good condition, and the level of play is extremely high. A match consists of two uninterrupted 45-minute halves, and there are none of the tedious commercial interruptions present in American professional football. The most illustrious British team is Manchester United, which has been the British champion a record 20 times, and has won all the other honors in British and European competitions at least once. Since 1910, Manchester United has occupied a ground named Old Trafford. If you want to attend a game at Old Trafford, you’ll need to book in advance. With the elite Premier League teams, keep in mind that tickets may be pricey.

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Rugby Rugby branched off from football in the early 19th century. Two distinct branches of rugby developed in the late 19th century: rugby league, most popular in the working-class north, and rugby union with strongholds to the south and higher up the social ladder. Both versions have large loyal followings and boisterous crowds every winter weekend. If you’d like to see a rugby match, the iconic stadium is at Twickenham, in west London.

Tennis The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, at Wimbledon, is only about five miles from Twickenham. Tennis has medieval origins. The modern game is officially called lawn tennis, but its inventor, Major Walter Wingfield, called it sphairistike, which is the Greek word for playing with a ball. The Marylebone Cricket Club of Lord’s fame, already a venerable institution by the 1870s, played an important role by writing out standardized lawn tennis rules in 1875. Wimbledon had been founded in 1868, a few years before Major Wingfield’s invention. At first, it was dedicated to croquet.

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In 1877, Wimbledon held its first lawn tennis tournament, open to anyone who could pay the entry fee, and it attracted twenty-two players. The first women’s tournament was held in 1884. For the first 30 years, the reigning champion in the men’s and the women’s tournaments played only once, in the final, against whoever had battled his or her way through the elimination rounds. The club moved to its current site at the start of the 1920s, building the complex of courts that is familiar today. The king and queen opened the new facility in 1922, and that year, for the first time, the reigning champion had to start again from the beginning of the tournament. Competition was suspended during World War II, the courts were ploughed up to help alleviate severe food shortages, and center court itself suffered a direct hit from a German bomb. Its fortunes revived with the return of peace, and it has remained, up to the present, the most prestigious tennis center in the world. Even if you’re not able to attend the championship in July, there are yearround tours of the iconic facilities, including a visit to the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, which holds an unparalleled collection of tennis memorabilia.

Golf It’s difficult to pick a definite date for the beginning of golf. It developed in the medieval Netherlands out of a variety of earlier stick and ball games. The earliest set of rules known today were written in 1744 in Edinburgh, by which time a handful of men were playing in England too. This was also the date of the first recorded tournament. It was won by an Edinburgh surgeon named John Rattray. Early players made do with just one club, the shaft and head of which were all made of wood. St. Andrews, in eastern Scotland, gave rise to the tradition of playing 18 holes. In the 1700s there were 11 or possibly 12 holes, stretching in a line along the hummocky sand-hills, or links, between the sea and firm ground. Golfers played all of the holes on the way out, and then played them again on

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the way back to the clubhouse. When a few of the holes were consolidated, being considered too short, nine were left. When played twice, they made 18. St. Andrews’s Royal and Ancient Golf Club was formed in 1754 and became the ruling body of British golf. St. Andrews is a beautiful old medieval town, well worth a visit even if you’re not interested in golf. If you dream of playing the famed Old Course at St. Andrews, you can actually do it. You can also play any of the other six public courses maintained by the St. Andrews Links Trust. You need to plan ahead to get a tee time, but it can be done. Playing the Old Course is not cheap, but it is competitive with the best American courses. To anyone who loves not just the game but its traditions and heritage, it is an irreplaceable and unforgettable experience.

Suggested Reading Edworthy, Lord’s. MacKenzie, The Spirit of St. Andrews. Marshall, Old Trafford.

Suggested Activities 1. Go to a cricket match and ask the people beside you to explain the rules and the etiquette. 2. Go to an English park at 9:00 am on a Saturday morning in any British town and participate in the parkrun, an easygoing five-kilometer event.

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36

HOW TO THINK ABOUT VISITING BRITAIN

B

ritain is an ideal place to visit. With common-sense precautions, it is relatively safe, and for English speakers, it provides no language barrier aside from minor issues of dialect and idioms. This lecture provides some information to help inform you if you’re considering visiting Britain, including: „„ When to visit. „„ How to get around. „„ Histories of Britain that are helpful for background knowledge. „„ Fiction and travel writers who give a sense of Britain.

The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales

When to Visit Think carefully about when you want to visit. The obvious answer in Britain is during the summer, when you’re more likely to get good weather. Britain is a long way north of the Equator, which means that there’s a huge difference between the amount of daylight on the longest and shortest days of the year. This variation is most striking in Scotland, where the stingy winter days seem terribly brief, but where the almost endless summer days give you a sense of energy and optimism. The problem with summer is that the rest of the world is on the move, especially in the second half of July and all of August, which are the British school holiday months. If you can visit in May, June, or September, you’re likely to see the gardens blooming and get the best of everything without the burden of too much company. It’s also worth thinking about how to time your arrival at the most popular sites, where queues even to get in can be discouraging. Depending on your particular interests, you might make a point of visiting to coincide with major annual events. These include: „„ Crufts, the annual dog show, which takes place in March every year at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. „„ Royal Ascot, which is an event in the horseracing calendar and the fashion year, taking place in mid-June. „„ The British Grand Prix, which takes place in mid-July at Silverstone on the border of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

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„„ The Open Championship, a golf event that happens in July at various locations. „„ The London Marathon, which occurs in April. „„ The Chelsea Flower Show, occurring in May. „„ The Farnborough Airshow, which occurs in July. The internet can provide more information on these and other events.

How to Get Around Think carefully about how you’re going to get around. In London, the Underground metro system is by far the most effective method, especially when combined with walking. Elsewhere in Britain, it’s worth having a rental car, especially if you plan to visit rural sites like Stonehenge, Hadrian’s Wall, and the Pennine Hills, which are inaccessible by train. Driving on the left takes concentration, especially on the first couple of days.

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Histories of Britain Wherever you go in Britain, you’ll get more out of it if you know something about the place beforehand. There are many good general histories of Britain, offering you enough to get the shape of the whole story without the burden of too much detail. The lecture recommends Paul Johnson’s The Offshore 268

Lecture 36 ■ How to Think about Visiting Britain

Islanders, which you can read over the course of a week by giving it a couple of hours each evening. Robert Tombs’s book The English and Their History is another option, though it is over 1,000 pages. The author covers a lot of ground in his work. Equally gifted and lively is David Starkey, historian and BBC personality. He is a specialist in the life and work of Henry VIII and also made a popular television show on the history of the monarchy.

Fiction and Travel Writers After grounding yourself in the history, turn to some of the authors whose work gives you the feeling of British life. Ever since the American Revolution, American writers have been surprising themselves by how much they enjoy being in Britain: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne all spent time in Britain, and loved it. Henry James, the American novelist who became an English gentleman, loved to be surrounded by reminders of England’s monarchy, hierarchical institutions, and its long unbroken past. A notable Britain-related example of his work is English Hours. A gem from the 1930s is Margaret Halsey’s With Malice Toward Some, which won the National Book Award in 1938 and became a bestseller. Halsey’s comments on British fatalism, bad dress sense, and bad food are offset by praise for the dazzlingly beautiful landscape. Her writing is fresh, sharp, and free of clichés. A more recent figure is Bill Bryson, the Iowa-born journalist who has spent much of his life writing affectionately about Britain. His 1995 book Notes From a Small Island is an entertaining travelogue about his adopted country and its curious habits and customs. In 2016, Bryson wrote a follow-up, The Road to Little Dribbling, giving vent to some of his irritations about what’s wrong with

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contemporary Britain but persisting in taking pleasure in the British way of life and its many eccentricities. Simon Jenkins also deserves attention. A major figure in British journalism throughout his life, Jenkins was editor for a while of both the London Evening Standard and the London Times. Among his books are the lovely England’s Thousand Best Churches and Britain’s 100 Best Railway Stations. For a time, Jenkins was chairman of the National Trust, an important heritage organization that preserves thousands of old houses and landscapes of historical interest, many of which have been mentioned in this course.

Suggested Reading Bryson, Notes From a Small Island. James, English Hours. Johnson, The Offshore Islanders.

Suggested Activities 1. Try to solve the London Times crossword puzzle at least once. Mondays are easiest, and they get harder through the week. A high degree of familiarity with English idioms is a great advantage. 2. Watch the 1938 movie Pygmalion, based on a play by George Bernard Shaw, about the importance of social class and accented speech in English life.

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Bibliography

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Boorman, Derek. A Century of Remembrance: One Hundred Outstanding British War Memorials. Barnsley, UK: Leo Cooper, 2005. Branigan, Keith. Roman Britain: Life in an Imperial Province. London: Reader’s Digest Association, 1980. Brown, David. Anglo-Saxon England. London: Bodley Head, 1978. Bryson, Bill. Notes from a Small Island: Journey Through Britain. San Francisco, CA: Black Swan, 2015. ———. Shakespeare: The World as a Stage. London: William Collins, 2016. ———. The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island. San Francisco, CA: Black Swan, 2016. Bunyan, John. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Abbotsford, WI: ANEKO Press, 2017. Burke, John. Roman England. New York: Norton, 1984. Campbell, Katie. British Gardens in Time. London: Frances Lincoln, 2014. Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New York: Vintage, 1999. Cannadine, David, et al.  The Houses of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture. London: Merrell, 2000. Care-Evans, Angela. The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial London: British Museum, 1986. Charles, Prince of Wales. A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

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Flanders, Judith. The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London. New York: Atlantic Books, 2013. Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. New York: Random House, 1999. Fraser, Antonia. Cromwell, Our Chief of Men. London: Phoenix, 2008. Fraser, Rebecca. The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History. New York: Norton, 2006. Friday, Laurie. Wicken Fen: The Making of a Wetland Nature Reserve. London: Harley Books, 1997. Fry, Michael. Edinburgh: A History of the City. London: Pan, 2010. Gale, Matthew. Tate Modern, The Handbook. London: Tate Publishing, 2016. Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. New York: Penguin Classics, 1996. Girouard, Mark. Hardwick Hall. London: David and Charles, 1989. Goodier, Steve. Literary Walks: Lake District Walks with Links to Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter. Helsby, UK: Northern Eye Books, 2014. Hannavy, John. Britain’s Industrial Heritage. Wellington, UK: Pixz Books, 2015. Higham, Nicholas and Martin J. Ryan. The Anglo-Saxon World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013. Horton, Rosalind, and Sally Simmons. One Hundred and Eleven Places in Cambridge that You Should Not Miss. Emons Verlag GmbH, 2017. James, Henry. English Hours: A Portrait of a Country. London: Tauris Parke, 2011.

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