Ay, now am I in Arden

All I've ever really wanted, since I was a child, is a house with a garden that has a high wall around it and a door in the wall. Not too much to ask, you'd think. 

Oh, and windows with stone mullions, and a window seat. And crooked walls. Though the fact I've never lived, even temporarily, in a house with just one of these features makes me suspect it's almost certainly an unachievable dream, especially this late in the day. 

And now, to make matters worse, I want a moat, for which I blame Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, which I visited last weekend. Thanks, Baddes, for zapping that dream even further out of reach. 

Never mind. The real reason for my third foray to the Midlands in two months was to see Angela, friend from my undergraduate days, but having left Bristol early, I had time to visit this beautiful 15th century manor house, which I'd wanted to see ever since I first heard about it. 

As the house didn't open till 11am, I started with a wander around the gardens and grounds.

Look at this ancient vine planted outside the glasshouse but growing through the window and trained over the ceiling. 

Common Carder bumble bee

buff-tailed bumblebee on cardoon

three buff-tailed bumbles on cardoon

sheep grazing in the parkland

a rotten apple

There are several ponds of varying size, most containing quantities of duckweed, through which the ducks leave sinister black trails.

On the whole I prefer wild flowers to garden flowers, but every now and then, I fall for something spectacular, like these dahlias - I think they're called Black Narcissus. 

Inside the house, my eye was caught and caught again by the stained glass, most of which was installed by Henry Ferrers the Antiquary and dates from the 1600s.

In the kitchen there was the usual vintage kitchenalia, the usual fake comestibles and the usual priest hole (one of three). This one, the actual old garderobe shaft, leads to a narrow sewage channel, only four feet high, where in 1591, following a gathering of all the Jesuit priests and novices in the country, five remaining Jesuit priests, two novices and three Jesuit servants crouched for four hours while armed men pounded on walls above them, overturned furniture and tore off panelling in  search of them.

That they weren't discovered points to the ineptitude of the searchers - local thugs, apparently, who'd heard a rumour of the gathering and were after the reward money. 

Unbelievably, this colossal stone chimneypiece was once located upstairs, before being brought back down and installed in the Great Hall.

There's something so pleasing about ancient oak furniture and blue and white pottery

I'm not going to post photos of bedrooms with four-poster beds and artfully placed teasels so that punters don't sit on them; I'll stick with some other, more interesting rooms, such as this chapel. Before the Reformation, the Ferrers family, who gained ownership of Baddesley Clinton through marriage in 1517, worshipped in St Michael's, the mediaeval parish church close to the house - more about there later - but their loyalty to the Catholic faith meant they subsequently had to worship in private, and so they offered Mass in their domestic chapel. This version of it was recreated in the 1940s, the original chapel having previously fallen out of use and been used as a lumber room.

This is the Great Parlour, which was used as a studio in the second half of the 19th century, when the house was inhabited by 'The Quartet'. There's an interesting story attached to this group of people, namely, that in 1859 the wealthy novelist Edward Dering asked fellow-writer Lady Georgiana Chatterton for her niece, Rebecca Orpen's, hand in marriage. Lady Chatterton was hard-of-hearing and thought he was asking her to marry him, so accepted the proposal herself, despite being twenty years older than him. Edward, being too gallant to disabuse her, married her. Ten years later, they moved to Baddesley Clinton to live with Rebecca and her husband, Marmion Edward Ferrers, who owned it. Here they immersed themselves in the painting, writing, music, poetry and restoration of the house. Lady Chatterton died at the age of 70 in 1876, followed by Marmion in 1884. After a year of living together in the house with a Roman Catholic priest as chaperone, Edward finally got to marry his Rebecca, when they were 59 and 55 respectively. They had seven years together before Edward died in 1892, leaving Rebecca to live on for another 31 years.

In the library next to the studio there's a blood stain on the floor by the fireplace; allegedly, the blood of a priest murdered by Nicholas Brome, the owner of the house in the late 15th century. The story goes that he drew his sword and killed the priest in 1485  when he came home and found him 'chockinge his wife under ye chinne'. 

Except wouldn't there be more blood than that? I suggested to the NT volunteer stationed in the library that somebody was having somebody else on, and that was exactly the case: it was those naughty writers of the Quartet - 'you know what writers are like, they love a good story' - who spilled pig's blood on the floorboards for the entertainment of visitors. So while the murder really did happen, the evidence of it is fake - in fact, the part of the building housing the library wasn't even built until a century later.

Choughs featuring on a coat-of-arms

The courtyard

By now I was running a little late for my assignment with Angela, so I almost ran the several hundred yards up the lane to the Church of St Michael. The current building dates from at least 1305, but there's believed to have been a church on that site two to three centuries earlier. Until the 19th century, it was dedicated to St James.  

The painted table tomb of Sir Edward Ferrer, who died in 1535

I love the lectern with its simple etched decoration.

It's in the church that there's a final encounter with Nicholas Brome, who killed not one but two people during his life, having seen fit to avenge his father's murder by killing his assailant in 1471, 14 years before the murder of the priest. Being upper class, he got away with a fine for the first murder, and was pardoned by the Pope for the second, with the proviso that he renovated and extended the church. 

As part of his penance, he arranged to have his body buried vertically in the doorway of the church, so that people entering it would walk on his head. Hence the marker stone under the mat. 

And on to Angela in Coventry, where, after lunch at Fargo Village, we repaired to Charterhouse for ice cream by the River Sherbourne and a fine chin-wag, catching up on memories from 40 years ago and everything that's happened since we last saw each other. (Safer than a chinne-chock any day.)

Himalayan Balsam with Common Carder bumble ... 

... the bum of a tree bumblebee ...

... and the tree bumble itself 

Will be up that way again soon. 

Angels and feathers in Lichfield

Son the Elder needed to be in Wolverhampton for another roboteering event, almost two  years to the day after I'd last dropped him there. Then I'd revisited one of my favourite Arts and Crafts houses, Wightwick Manor, where, within two minutes of my arrival, I'd found (my first) jay feather; this time I headed in the opposite direction, destination Lichfield, because, as my friend Cherry, who lives in Cannock Chase, rather drily remarked, 'I hear there's a lovely cathedral'. 

And there is. A proper monolithic mediaeval Cathedral, dedicated to St Mary and St Chad. 

First, a wander around the outside ... 

... where I saw this statue of Charles II, which was set up after the Restoration ...

... an outside effigy of a man who is thought to have been an early 14th century priest ... 

... and a statue of St Chad, which dates from 2021. (More about him later.)

And this ... my dear friend Cathy's gravestone! Though as I said when I messaged her the photo, it could be worse, at least you're in the precinct of Lichfield Cathedral. 

Inside, the spaces are impressive. 

This is the nave, from which  most of the mediaeval stone vaulting had to be replaced in the 18th century with plaster painted to look like stone, as the walls were in danger of collapsing. 

The choir with its Victorian crossing screen ... 

... and Bishop's throne.

The high altar

Like most cathedrals, Lichfield suffered damage during the Reformation and especially the Civil Wars - in fact, more during that second period than any other Cathedral in the country. It's that vandalised mediaeval stuff that interests me, rather than the later Georgian and Victorian stuff ...  unless the latter has connections to the Arts and Crafts Movement. 

One major treasure lost during the Civil Wars - a treasury, in fact - was the Cathedral library, which was stripped of its books and fittings. It's now housed in a room above the Chapter House and didn't appear to be open when I was there. 

Although it lacks the atmosphere of other Chapter Houses I have known and loved - this one feels like an exhibition space - some remarkable books have made their way downstairs.

Clockwise from top left: 'The Decretals of Pope Gregory IX' (1300, 1370 & 1440); The St Chad Gospels (730 AD); 'Summa Predicantiem' by John Bromyard (died 1352), printed by Johann Amerbach

It also houses the skilfully carved Lichfield Angel, which dates from the late 7th century, and was only discovered beneath the nave in 2003. It's believed it could have been stashed there as early as 870AD, for fear of Viking raids. Which makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Also, what else has been hidden and is yet to be found?

Above the door to the Chapter House is this wall painting, which dates from the 1240s and shows the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A second large mediaeval wall painting, believed to have been painted around 1400 and depicting the Holy Trinity, can be seen in the south aisle behind the tomb of Bishop Walter Langton, who died in 1321. 

This effigy itself became separated from its chest tomb and Gothic canopy at some point, maybe when this memento mori was similarly vandalised. It formed part of the tomb of Thomas Heywode (or Heywood), the Dean of Lichfield until his death in 1492, and an 18th century engraving copied from a record of monuments made in 1640-41 shows it originally had an upper tier, presumably destroyed during the Civil Wars. 

Other tombs also attracted the wrath of the Roundheads, such as the tomb of Bishop Hugh de Pateshull, who died in 1241 ...

... and the heavily mutilated Stanley effigy, which has foxed historians for centuries. First, there's the question of identification - which Stanley is he? (Answer: We just don't know, though recent investigators have concluded he was George Stanley, High Sheriff of Staffordshire, who died in 1509)

Secondly, why is he depicted in a state of penitence, ie bare-headed and bare-chested?  There is a folk story about one 'Captain Stanley' who's said to have challenged any man to fight with him, not excepting the king, for which insolence the king commanded him to be stripped naked from the waist upwards until he repented. Upon being told he could wear clothes again, 'Captain Stanley' is said to have refused and to have gone shirtless for the rest of his days, even appearing in that state on his tomb. But who this Captain was, and how true the story is, remains unclear. 

Finally, since I said they don't interest me, here's two Georgian monuments.

The first is Samuel Johnson, famous local lad and arch-Tory in Roman garb, whom I've included because DICTIONARY. Thank you, Dr Johnson.

The second is the 1816 memorial to the Robinson sisters - aka The Sleeping Children - because it's a tragic story, and the sculpture is very well executed, even though I can't help worrying that the younger girl, Marianne, is going to get pins and needles in her left arm if her sister keeps lying on it.

And whilst I particularly dislike effigy tombs of Victorian bishops, since they don't even have the excuse of a mediaeval or early modern mindset - though come to think of it, I suppose the relatively recent practice of gluing framed photos to headstones is roughly the same thing - I've included the tomb of Bishop George Selwyn, who died in 1878, because of the involvement in its decoration of Arts and Crafts potter, William de Morgan. (That said, the panel of tiles referring to Selwyn's missionary past looks horribly paternalistic.)

Unsurprisingly, only a fraction of the Cathedral's mediaeval glass survived the Civil Wars. 

Nevertheless, it has an impressive display of 16th century Flemish glass in its Lady Chapel, which was removed from Herkenrode Abbey in Belgium prior to its dissolution during the Napoleonic Wars, sold to an English Baronet and installed in Lichfield in 1803.

The reredos in the Lady Chapel was designed by Charles E Kempe, a friend of William Morris. He also designed many of the later windows in the Cathedral, most notably the East window  .... 

... the memorial window to Bishop John Hackett (1592 - 1670), who oversaw the restoration of the Cathedral in the post-Civil Wars era ... 

... and my favourites, the Arts and Crafts windows by the stairs leading up to ... and also inside ... St Chad's Head Chapel. (Why Head Chapel? Because that's where they used to keep it, before his shrine was dismantled in 1538 on the orders of Henry VIII.)

My photos aren't very good, but look closely and you'll spot Kempe's trademark angels with peacock feathers.

The renewal of artefacts damaged or destroyed in the Cathedral during our earlier cultural revolutions continues to this day. Just last year the Shrine of St Chad was reinstated, and a relic (not his head) was returned from Birmingham's Catholic Cathedral, where it had been kept since the 1840s, following a complicated series of safe-keepings and rediscoveries over centuries. 

What I like about these enterprises in Lichfield is that where the damage has been made good, there's been no attempt to deceive. Here, in the north aisle, the middle head is a Victorian replacement, flanked on either side by defaced originals. Even in the trefoil arches, some figures are restored, others left to tell their story. 

Back outside, as I wandered around the outside of the building again, I knew I should have been concentrating on the mighty restoration efforts of George Gilbert Scott in the 19th century that filled the empty niches with statues of kings, queens and saints, the west front doors with their ornate stone- and metalwork ... 

... and the historic buildings in the cathedral close ...

... but something about the pigeon and corvid feathers I'd spotted earlier, scattered at the base of the walls, made me wonder if, tucked away in some dark corner, I might discover something even more beautiful, the feathers of an angel of death ... 

... and I did: peregrine falcon feathers, perhaps the most beautiful treasures of all.