Thursday, May 14, 2009
National Trust
Yesterday to Great Bookham Common, a chunk of woodland, rather smaller than Epsom Common, run by the National Trust. Splendid place with lots of big trees, mainly oak, but with some ash, birch (of a good size) and beech. Quite a lot of holly and hawthorne too, growing up in the crevices. Two oddities. First, the trees seemed taller than at Epsom. Maybe this was a result of the oaks being closer together - although there was one splendid park speciman, growing in a horse paddock, with a massive hemi-spherical canopy. Second, there was lots of bird song, if not many tweetings, although we did hear our first cookoo of the year. Maybe the first cookoo for some years. Anyway, all seemed very lush and green on what was a damp and dull afternoon. We shall be back!
The contiguous villages of Bookham and Fetcham had some interest. Most notably in the church St Nicolas at Bookham, the second small church that we have seen in as many weeks with more or less original Norman, or at least transitional, columns. It also had some interesting stained glass, some of it 16th Flemish which arrived in Surrey via Norwich and some of it dedicated to the memory of the Field Marshall Lord Raglan, presumably the one who, according to Wikipedia, more or less died of grief during the Crimean war. Then there was a good selection of funerary monuments, including one which included a curious bas-relief of the skirmish in the American war of Independance in which the subject of the monument, fighting on our side, died. I don't think I recall seeing a monument to such a death before. All in all a large and handsome place which felt lived in, possibly because they had the heating on for the benefit of the morning creche. We learnt, by the by, that St Nicolas is, inter alia, the patron saint of pawnbrokers and that his sign is three yellow balls. Is there a connection with the rather larger number of red balls on the Medici crest (see somewhere in October above)?
The rest of the village contained a very mixed bag of housing. Some old, some new. Some large, some small. Some suitable for the second and possibly third homes of politicians, some for those that clean them. All very nice, but without the convenience of Epsom from shopping and transport points of view.
Back home to more Alex Munthe. His autobiography being the second book which the BH and I have read at about the same time for some time. Not something that we have made a habit of. Presently BH is on the man himself and I am on Jangfeldt about the man himself, as previously here advertised. It seems that his autobiography (The House at San Michele) is not only a collection of sketches rather than an autobiography in the normal sense, but that large chunks of the man's life are left out and the chunks that are there are a promiscous mixture of fact and fiction. A. Munthe really was a very strange bird. Something of a fraud in fact; his sketches might be engaging in small doses but they are not honest, although I suppose that he may have a bit of excuse in the sense that Jangfeldt says something about the tide of naturalism being on the ebb and new forces being on the move. I suppose what he means is that people were tiring of the dreary if truthful realism of the likes of George Elliot and were looking for differant fare. The wheel of fashion had moved on., and Munthe, keen to make a few bob, had moved along with it.
The contiguous villages of Bookham and Fetcham had some interest. Most notably in the church St Nicolas at Bookham, the second small church that we have seen in as many weeks with more or less original Norman, or at least transitional, columns. It also had some interesting stained glass, some of it 16th Flemish which arrived in Surrey via Norwich and some of it dedicated to the memory of the Field Marshall Lord Raglan, presumably the one who, according to Wikipedia, more or less died of grief during the Crimean war. Then there was a good selection of funerary monuments, including one which included a curious bas-relief of the skirmish in the American war of Independance in which the subject of the monument, fighting on our side, died. I don't think I recall seeing a monument to such a death before. All in all a large and handsome place which felt lived in, possibly because they had the heating on for the benefit of the morning creche. We learnt, by the by, that St Nicolas is, inter alia, the patron saint of pawnbrokers and that his sign is three yellow balls. Is there a connection with the rather larger number of red balls on the Medici crest (see somewhere in October above)?
The rest of the village contained a very mixed bag of housing. Some old, some new. Some large, some small. Some suitable for the second and possibly third homes of politicians, some for those that clean them. All very nice, but without the convenience of Epsom from shopping and transport points of view.
Back home to more Alex Munthe. His autobiography being the second book which the BH and I have read at about the same time for some time. Not something that we have made a habit of. Presently BH is on the man himself and I am on Jangfeldt about the man himself, as previously here advertised. It seems that his autobiography (The House at San Michele) is not only a collection of sketches rather than an autobiography in the normal sense, but that large chunks of the man's life are left out and the chunks that are there are a promiscous mixture of fact and fiction. A. Munthe really was a very strange bird. Something of a fraud in fact; his sketches might be engaging in small doses but they are not honest, although I suppose that he may have a bit of excuse in the sense that Jangfeldt says something about the tide of naturalism being on the ebb and new forces being on the move. I suppose what he means is that people were tiring of the dreary if truthful realism of the likes of George Elliot and were looking for differant fare. The wheel of fashion had moved on., and Munthe, keen to make a few bob, had moved along with it.
# posted by Jim @ 3:57 AM 
