Monday, June 29, 2009
To Leatherhead and other places
The other day to Chertley Court, a stately home recently opened near Leatherhead (http://www.cherkleycourt.com/index.htm), formerly the home of Lord Beaverbrook. Well not quite a stately home as they don't do visits. The stately home bit is dedicated to corporate events and weddings, but you can visit the gardens. It seems that the place was rebuilt after a big fire not much more than 100 years ago, then more recently, went to rack and ruin, and then most recently, restored at considerable expense. The house has been painted a uniform tasteful yellow which makes it look grand enough, entirely suitable for a very parvenu and very rich newspaper baron, but rather dull. Pity they ran out of dosh when it came to pointing up some of the detail with a bit of colour. The garden was a garden designer job. Clever use made of the sloping site, clever colour scheme involving a lot of blue and yellow. Lots of interesting plants, including a lot of interesting grasses. Some nice ponds, including an excellent lilly pond in the Italian garden. A silly new grotto lined with shells and mermaids made out of shells; but entirely like old grottos we have seen elsewhere. And some cactii. But the overall effect was, to me, a bit dull and sterile. Rather like the public areas of a Holiday Inn. Perhaps it will get better as it gets older. There was also a kitchen garden of which they were very proud, a kitchen garden which meant that their weddings and their cafeteria could include beans and what have you from our own gardens. And there was, indeed, a small broad bean patch to be seen.
Oddly, the main event on the parent site (http://www.beaverbrookfoundation.org/) was a hard core dispute between one arm of the organisation and another about the ownership of some paintings. Off to the High Court and all that sort of thing. Presumably the unseemly relic of some complicated tax avoidance wheeze.
Then yesterday to Brighton. Just the right sort of boiling hot day for the seaside. Brighton Pavilion appeared to have been painted in the same colour paint as Chertley Court, again with no attempt to pick out detail in colour. Presumably the town ran out of money. But it did not look as flash as we remembered. Happened across a disabled parking slot in a side street convenient to Palace Pier. Then back and forth along the huge promenade. They must have spent a fortune on the ironmongery when it was built. Massive iron colannades and massive iron railings. These last being finished by cylindrical wooden hand rails, maybe four inches in diameter. Most unusual. The whole rather in need of a good wash and brush up. Presumably the money for that comes out of the same pot as the paint for the Pavilion. Picnic in an ancient bus shelter like construction with more ironmongery (plus a lead roof) on the middle level of the three levels of promenade. Then along to the West Breakwater, this being, for a change, a massive concrete construction. It was sheltering a regular forest of some sort of seaweed, a forest which contained lots of fish, some big. I do not recall when I last saw big fish in the sea. Then lots of fishermen on the seaward side, sporting what looked like very expensive rods. Long and tapered with the very thin ends having lots of spring.
Back along the beach, alongside Volks Railway (carrying BH and FIL) and behind a huge bank of shingle which hid the naturist beach from the promenade, although from what we had seen of it from the breakwater it was full of people with clothes on, a lot fuller than the rest of the beach. Perhaps they were rather fancy clothes.
Quite a lot of people actually swimming. We must do the same on the next visit. Made a rather small drip castle, maybe six inches tall, unremarkable and unremarked. Not the right sort of sand really. Certainly a bit naff compared with the things we made on the great expanses of shining, flat wet sand at Sables D'Olonne. Must go back there. Let alone the giant made at Salcombe one year.
Plenty of places to buy proper seaside fare: fish and chips, bacon butties and so forth. But glad, given the heat, that we had had our sensible picnic.
Picked up the car and motored gently west along the main drag. Came across the rather imposing Adelaide Crescent and Palmeira Square. Must have been quite a place in its day and looks as if the developers are trying to get it back into shape. Enclosing attractive gardens, although long term residents no doubt sad that they were not what they were in their hey-day. Then on to Portslade, the natal town of a resident of TB and the subject of the previous post.
# posted by Jim @ 11:23 PM 
