A visit to Ashton Court Mansion

In a recent blog, I recounted a visit to Ashton Court and remarked that despite being a local, I'd never been inside the mansion belonging to the estate. And because this was a situation that clearly needed remedying, I looked up the Friends of Ashton Court Facebook page and discovered there was to be a tour just three weeks later, so I booked myself on it.

There's been a dwelling on the site of the mansion since Saxon times. (We know this because one's mentioned in the Domesday book.) 

The current building boasts features in a hodge-podge of architectural styles, including Gothic, Tudor, Italian Renaissance, English Renaissance, Strawberry Hill Gothic Revival, Victorian, mock Mediaeval, etc. 

The current facade has a good stab at Classicism.  

Fireplace in the Great Hall

Although it's actually in North Somerset, Bristol City Council bought the estate in 1959, when the house had already been unoccupied for some time and was starting to decay. There's never been enough money to make the necessary repairs, with the result that it's now one of very few properties in the country that are Grade I listed and also on Historic England's 'Heritage at Risk' register. (The repair bill would probably come to about £80m.)

The former Winter Gardens, now a spectacularly gloomy bar

The Music Room ... 

... with its beautiful fireplaces

Visitors are no longer permitted to go on a full, free-ranging tour of the upper floor because the ceiling is falling down in places, but if you don a hard hat, you're allowed to go up the grand Victorian staircase and have a peek.

To one side of the staircase, you can just glimpse the original stone stairs underneath.

A Tudor door

The service corridor

Another Tudor door leading into the Tudor Room

Workmen in the 1960s were instructed to remove the panelling. It was stacked against the walls and now it would be too warped to reinstate, even if the walls were in a fit state.

It's a shame to see the house in such a state. It belongs to the citizens of Bristol, and would make be a fantastic community space for the arts, something for which part of the ground floor is already being used. And since, like all the big houses around Bristol, it benefitted, at least indirectly, from an influx of tainted money, it would be a good location for a much-needed Museum of Slavery too. 

Wandering back to the top car park, I was stunned by celandines. Field of the Cloth of Gold. 

A pear tree

Sweet chestnuts

Daffodils on Dartmoor and poetry in Teignmouth

If ever a poet is worth travelling to hear read, it's Raymond Antrobus, and he was appearing in Teignmouth this last weekend, so I was able to combine my love of poetry with my admiration for Deaf culture (for Raymond is Deaf), and squeeze in a trip to my beloved Dartmoor just when the wild daffodils were blooming in the Teign valley. What good fortune.

My plan was to park at Steps bridge and walk the footpath through Cod Wood, along the right bank of the river, but for some reason it was closed off, so I walked instead through Dunsford Wood, on the opposite side. The first daffodils I spotted were all on the far bank, but it wasn't long before I encountered some Dunsford daffodils.

There was a lot of bracken in this particular spot, which meant the daffodils were spread rather more thinly than you might spread butter, which is the preferred density for daffodils, but I knew there'd be more upstream ...   

... and after passing fungi, clumps of wood anemones, and many magnificently mossy trees, we reached them. 

The bum of a bumblebee (Common Carder, I think)

A sight to butter up the spirits.

robin

Most of the primroses I so associate with Devon had gone over, but there were still a few in shadier pockets of the wood.

A pair of goosanders

On the return leg I sat on a bench for a while, to which there was a small plaque attached. Forgive me, human Ted, to whom the bench was dedicated, but the Ted I was remembering was my dog, who did, indeed, love Devon, and Dartmoor in particular. Always in my heart.

Wood anemones - yet to bloom - in the crook of a tree

The weather had turned by the time I reached Teignmouth, and it was overcast and blustery, with the high tide making a walk along the beach impossible, but it was good to be there all the same.

Meanwhile, the welcome from poetry friends in Teignmouth and the surrounding area was warm, and Raymond's reading, of poems written in English but incorporating a significant amount of British Sign Language, was enthralling. It really did seem to have a profound effect on the members of the audience, many of whom I suspect hadn't had the privilege of much exposure to Deaf culture, and I couldn't help thinking how wonderful it would be to get him to visit the deaf school where I work. Our students would love it. Maybe one day.