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Thursday 11 September 2014

Princess Caroline's bath ... abandoned for all the world to see in Greenwich Park ...

I had to pop down to Greenwich on Monday to visit an old chum. Now it has to be said: I LOVE Greenwich. I'm a north-of-the-river, west-end-of-town sort of girl, but I could forget all of my prejudices to go and live in Greenwich tomorrow. It totally rocks!

Old Naval College, Greenwich
Old Naval College, Greenwich

As it happens this week I've also been researching Princess Caroline of Brunswick, one time Princess of Wales, Queen Consort to King George IV and Ranger of Greenwich Park. You may have read my post earlier in the week about her great defender Spencer Perceval, who lived just around the corner from me in Ealing.

Caroline, born a Princess of Brunswick, came to England to marry George without ever having set eyes on him before. That was how it was often done back then. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, curmudgeonly old George couldn't stand the sight of her. He told everyone that she was a total minger, with some acute personal hygiene issues, and refused to have anything more to do with her after they'd consummated their union.

Now Caroline was, admittedly, far from being an angel, but in my book she deserves some serious respect for standing up for herself in an age when girls generally weren't encouraged to give as good as they got. A lot has been written about how the whole women's rights movement started with her. For my part I think that's a wild exaggeration. Caroline didn't dally much in the finer details of political philosophy and universal suffrage, and I suspect her refusal to capitulate had more to do with natural obstinacy and the confidence in her position that came from having been born a princess. Even a couple of centuries earlier high born women from powerful dynastic families, such as Catharine of Aragon and Anne of Cleeves, tended to fare rather better than their contemporaries of more humble birth, such as Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard.


Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Caroline was a lively girl who enjoyed huge popularity with the common people, a bit of a Queen of  Hearts if you like. Grumpy old George on the other hand was pretty much universally disliked. Both of them, however, suffered from a general difficulty in making ends meet. And in a bid to help her meet her overheads Caroline was made Ranger of Greenwich Park.


The Docklands and Canary Wharf from Greenwich Park
The Docklands and Canary Wharf from Greenwich Park

The Prince of Wales had been persuaded that Greenwich would be a salubrious environment in which to bring up their little daughter, Princess Charlotte, and had taken a lease over Montague House, which bordered the park in 1798. Caroline moved in and set about creating her own alternative court. It was by all accounts a lively, jolly sort of a place, although rumours circulated about orgies and all manner of inappropriate behaviour that allegedly took place within its grounds.

Greenwich Park
Greenwich Park

In 1807 Caroline's mum, Augusta, the Dowager Duchess of Brunswick moved in next door in what is now known as the Ranger's House. She was also the sister of George III, Caroline's father-in-law, who was also her uncle. It was all just a little bit incestuous way back then.

Augusta appears to have been a rather frosty, disapproving character with whom Caroline didn't always see eye to eye.

The Ranger's House, Greenwich Park
The Ranger's House, Greenwich Park


Now I'd like to think that mother and daughter (and even grandma) may have enjoyed some happy hours romping around in the grounds, which are truly spectacular with their splendid old trees ...

Greenwich Park
Greenwich Park

... and the little woodland creatures who live in them.

Greenwich Park

Neglected by her husband Caroline kept herself busy with a succession of ill-advised affairs and some solid home-improvements. She extended the house, building a glass conservatory. They were all the rage. And this one connected rather splendidly with the blue room, the principal entertaining room in the house. She enclosed 6 hectares (15 acres) of the park as her personal garden, and had it planted with pretty flowers for her and her little daughter to enjoy. At the risk of stating the obvious, all these things cost money, quite a lot of money in fact.

The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park
The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park

Which led her to examine all the ways in which she could make as much money as possible out of being the Ranger of Greenwich Park. She'd done rather nicely leasing a property to the Royal Naval College, and so fell upon the idea of serving notice on her other existing tenants around the park with a view to letting out their properties at inflated rents to some new naval tenants.

The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park
The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park


Amongst this group of neighbour-tenants were Sir John and Lady Douglas. The Douglases had been friends - of a sort - up until that point. When the goings on at Montague House had gotten a bit out of hand Caroline had worried that they might spread rumours about her at Court, and so she had engaged in a bit of a one-woman guerrilla campaign of her own spreading unflattering rumours about them and generally trying to discredit them.

Noses were already a little bit out of joint, but when the notice to quit arrived it was the last straw. The Douglases were now very firmly in the Prince of Wales's camp, and Lady Douglas got her own back by informing him about all the dastardly goings-on down at Montague House. She was the principal witness in the ensuing Parliamentary inquiry into the Princess's allegedly adulterous conduct, which you can read a little more about here: the Delicate Investigation.

The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park
The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park

Caroline was acquitted of the central charges, but was still largely excluded from Court at the behest of her estranged husband. She would have loved nothing more than to have returned to her native Brunswick, but Europe was at that stage in the throes of the Napoleonic Wars, Brunswick had been overrun by the French and her father had been killed in the battle of Jena-Auerstadt. 

Perhaps the very worst bit of all for Caroline was being denied access to her daugther. During the inquiry Caroline was not allowed to see the little princess at all and, after its conclusion, she was only allowed to see her once a week, and even then those visits had to be supervised by her mother. 

The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park
The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park

I imagine that she must have wandered around in the Park on many a day with a heavy heart, feeling certain that all the world was against her. 

Then in 1814 Napoleon was finally defeated. People could once again think of going to visit mainland Europe without having to worry about getting caught up in a war. And so, on 8th August, 1814, Princess Caroline boarded the frigate HMS Janson, bound for the Continent.

The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park
The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park


Of course, she had her fun ... and she was terribly indiscreet. Rumours drifted back to England of how she was cavorting around Europe with a chain of paramours ... .

In 1815 in a huge fit of pique the Prince of Wales ordered that Montague House be knocked down, razed to the ground as though by obliterating her former home he might wipe away all trace of the wife he loathed, and from whom he wished to be separated forever.

The Ranger's House and the  Rose Garden, Greenwich Park
The Ranger's House and the  Rose Garden, Greenwich Park

The house was officially surveyed and held (very conveniently for George) to be beyond repair. An auction of its parts took place from 11th to 14th September, 1815 during which the fabric of the building, its roof tiles, the bricks, the timbers, the floorboards and its various fixtures and fittings were sold off to the highest bidder. Montague House was dismantled and its parts carried away. The land and the Princess's gardens were then re-absorbed back into the Park.

And, by the time they'd finished, all that remained of the former royal residence was a pagoda-style hunting lodge (still standing today in nearby Pagoda Gardens), a wall and the princess's bath.

Over the years the princess's bath got filled in and became a flower bed, but it was excavated, back at the turn of the millennium, and can now be seen in all its (not very spectacular) glory.

Princess Caroline's bath, Greenwich Park
Princess Caroline's bath, Greenwich Park


A plaque announces that the bath and the section of wall behind it are all that remain of the Princess's old home. 

Princess Caroline's bath, Greenwich Park

It doesn't look much today, but back in Caroline's day her bath would have been the height of domestic chic. It was housed in a bath house built of light lattice and glass, separate from the main body of her residence, but accessed via a covered walkway. It was the equivalent of having a luxury jacuzzi/ swimming pool complex today. And no doubt the Princess was adept at throwing the very best pool parties of the Regency.

In 1995 they also replanted the rose garden in front of the old Ranger's house, and perhaps this is the best memorial to Caroline's time in residence. She was known to have been a keen gardener, and I have no doubt that if she could wander through those rose bushes in the sunshine, as I did on Monday, her heart would sing with delight at the simple beauty of their perfect petals bathed in the warm sunlight of a balmy September day.

The Rose Garden, Greenwich Park

All the best for now,


Bonny x

And if you'd like to see some more spectacular English gardens, why not check out:


Stowe, Buckinghamshire



Tresco Abbey, Isles of Scilly

The Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall


Osterley Park, West London

Tuesday 9 September 2014

Spencer Perceval, the assassinated British Prime Minister who lived round the corner ...

Isn't it weird how some people get defined by a single event in their lives? 

Take Spencer Perceval, for example. Now you may well ask who was he?. Or, if you do know who he was, you'll probably say oh yes, wasn't he the only British Prime Minister ever to have been assassinated in office? And that's it. That's all anyone ever seems to remember about him. These days he's little more than the answer to an obscure question in a pub quiz. 

All Saints Church, Ealing
All Saints Church, Ealing

Since moving to Ealing I've been vaguely aware of his existence. I knew he'd served as British Prime Minister (from October 1809) until his assassination in the lobby of the House of Commons (on 11th May 1812). OK, so I wouldn't have been able to give you the various dates involved - hence the parenthesis.  What I hadn't realised was that his house had been just round the corner from my own. Heck he must have driven his carriage past my front door on a regular basis. Maybe he even knew the people who lived in our rickety old house all those years ago, and popped round for an impromptu cup of Rosy Lee, or a fortifying glass of Madeira, from time to time. Ah, if only these old walls could talk ... .

This was what his place looked like way back then:


Spencer Perceval's house Elm Grove, Ealing

And this is how that same plot of land looks today:

All Saints Church, Ealing
All Saints Church, Ealing

Spencer Perceval had by all accounts been a decent sort. He'd been one of the younger sons of an Irish peer, the Earl of Egmont, and had had to make his own way in the world without receiving much in the way of hand-outs from his family. His first career had been in the law, where he'd made his mark as a King's Counsel down in Lincoln's Inn.

All Saints Church, Ealing
All Saints Church, Ealing

One of his more salacious cases had been the defence of Caroline of Brunswick, the Princess of Wales, when she was charged with having had an adulterous affair which, it was alleged, had produced an illegitimate baby.


Princess Caroline of Brunswick

The Prince of Wales, by this time, was not at all keen on remaining married to the Princess of Wales.  In point of fact he'd only ever agreed to get married to her in the first instance so that Parliament would vote him a larger married prince's allowance. And in truth there had always been three of them in the marriage ... . Is any of this starting to sound familiar to anyone out there? History has this eery way of repeating itself. You see naughty old George had had a long-standing mistress, Maria Fitzherbert, with whom he'd contracted a secret marriage which was void under the Royal Marriages Act for not having been approved by the monarch of the day (his very disapproving dad, George III, with whom he also had an unhappy relationship).

Maria Fitzherbert


 It wouldn't misrepresent the position to say that Geroge couldn't stand the sight of Caroline. And so it was with some gusto that he seized upon the rumour that his wife was enjoying the attentions of other men, and that she had conceived and given birth to a lover's child. A government inquiry was ordered, which concluded that the central allegations were false and that the baby was not Caroline's biological child, but simply a little boy whom she had adopted.  Whilst she was exonerated of the charges laid against her, Caroline's conduct was found to have been wanting in certain respects and she was denied access to her only biological child, Princess Charlotte. Perceval was retained as counsel for the Princess, and produced a 156 page letter to King George III in her defence requesting that she be allowed to return to Court and given full access to her daughter.

The Inquiry into Princess Caroline

The Parliamentary inquiry into the princess's conduct became know as the delicate investigation. Don't you just love the subtlety of Georgian euphemism? It was held in private and was all supposed to have been very hush hush, but both sides kept leaking the findings that were unhelpful to the other side. Before long the whole business was common knowledge and became rich fodder for the satirists and scandal sheets of the day.

Having been through the battle together Princess Caroline became a firm friend, and agreed to be god-mother for the Percevals' youngest child.

Spencer Perceval

Against this backdrop Perceval and his family moved to Elm Grove in Ealing in 1808. It was a sixteenth century house, which had once been home to the Bishop of Durham. I can imagine him driving around the Common and into town along the Uxbridge Road to attend to the great affairs of state, leaving his family to enjoy the wholesome country air out here in the sticks

Ealing Common

As Prime Minister he had to steer the country though a number of tricky situations such as the madness of King George III, and the appointment of his son (later George IV) as Regent.  There'd been a depression and riots with Luddites, not to mention his successful campaigns during the War of the Iberian Peninsula against Napoleon - although outright victory in that war didn't come until 1814.


All Saints Church, Ealing
All Saints Church, Ealing

And all the while, he, his wife, Jane, and their 12 children had lived just round the corner. Jane had gone through a staggering 20 pregnancies. They were by all accounts a close-knit family. Perceval was not a man given to the excess and debauchery that was otherwise the hallmark of the Regency. He drank moderately, disapproved of gambling and was of a religious, evangelical disposition.

All Saints Church, Ealing

And then, on that fateful day, he was shot through the heart by a disillusioned merchant called John Bellingham who'd been incarcerated in a Russian jail on what were widely believed to have been trumped-up charges. Bellingham felt strongly that the government had not done enough to come to his aid, and he was determined to have his revenge.

Spencer Perceval

When Perceval died he had only  £106 5s 1d to his name. For his widow and 12 children the future looked far from bright, but, within a few days of his assassination, Parliament came to the rescue and voted to settle the sum of £50,000 on his children with further annuities to his wife and eldest son, who had by this time reached his majority.

All Saints Church, Ealing
All Saints Church, Ealing

So the widow and her 12 children didn't end up in the Poor House. They lived in some modest comfort here in Ealing. When they had grown up four of his unmarried daughters, Frances, Maria, Louisa and Frederica, lived together at Elm Grove with their mother. On her death they moved to Pitshanger Manor. 

Pitshanger Manor, Ealing
Pitshanger Manor, Ealing

Another daughter Isabella, who married her cousin Spencer Horatio Walpole, lived next door in the Hall on Ealing Green.

All Saints Church, Ealing

Perceval's youngest daughter, Frederica, outlived all her siblings, dying in 1900 at the ripe old age of 95. In her will she left a bequest of £5,000 to be applied in building a church on the site of Elm Grove, her old childhood home, just around the corner from yours truly. The church was to be built  in honour of her father, and today it is formally known as All Saints Church, in a nod to the date of Perceval's birth: 1st November (All Saints' Day) 1762. 

All the best,

Bonny x
As shared on the Alphabet Project

Also check out the Drinking Fountain on South Ealing Roaderected in memory of Spencer Perceval's granddaughter, Jane Margaret Walpole. 



Or romp around the best of Regency architecture here in the Big Smoke Walking in the footsteps of John Nash part I

Saturday 6 September 2014

Fish chowder and beating the end-of-summer blues ...

At the risk of being boring - I know I've mentioned it before -  I'm really not ready to let go of summer just yet. Back beneath a leaden sky in London I'm missing the warm Catalan sun, our sandy beach and the wonderful mariscos, fresh seafood, landed off the fishing boats in our little harbour back in Sant Feliu, where I'm sure the sun is still shining and the sky is still a deep cerulean blue.

As a way of beating the end-of-summer blues I've turned to comfort food. And for me comfort food doesn't gets any more comforting than the smoky, creamy taste of a good fish chowder.  My favourite food in all the world is smoked fish. I could happily eat kippers every day of my life ...  which is probably something to do with my being Irish. And, as it happens, one of the things I miss when we're in Spain is good smoked fish. Maybe up in Galicia, where they're all really Celtic rather than Latin, they do our smoked fish thing, but in the rest of Spain you can pretty much forget it. There's the odd packet of thinly sliced, smoked salmon in the Mercadona chiller cabinets, but that's it.

So yesterday I made a great big pot of chowder, which was all steaming and ready to slurp when Emi got back from swim club. D-E-L-I-S-H! Bacon-fish soup, the young man hollered as he came through the door. I should add, by way of explanation, that we are also enthusiastic consumers of smoked streaky bacon over here at Talk-A-Lot-Towers, hence bacon-fish is a (not-so-short) shorthand for smoked fish.

Anyway I'm digressing. Shall I tell you how I make this creamy ambrosia of mine?



Ingredients (for 4 servings)

400 g of smoked white fish fillets. You can use any chunky white fish: haddock, pollock, cod, whatever you can find. Some people prefer to use un-dyed fillets as they look prettier in the creamy chowder, but I'm not fussy on that point.
3 or 4 bay leaves
200 ml milk 
300 ml of double cream (to make this feel less of an artery-clogging, cholesterol-fest I use the low-fat Elmlea double cream - I don't know how they deliver on that, and I wouldn't pour it over my strawberries, but it tastes just fine when you're cooking)
700 ml fish stock
1 teaspoonful of cumin seed
1 teaspoonful of peppercorns
2 large leeks washed and finely chopped
4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced into small cubes
2 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
200 g sweetcorn (off the cob)
Dollop of butter and olive oil for cooking

What to do: 

  1. Place the fish fillets in a large saucepan (I use a big reducing pan) with the fish stock, the bay leaves and the pepper corns and bring to a gentle simmer. Poach gently for several minutes until your fish starts to flake in the chunkiest parts of the fillet.
  2. Remove from the heat, and leave your fillets on one side. Strain the stock to remove the bay leaves and the pepper corns.
  3. Melt the butter and olive oil in a pan and sweat the finely chopped leeks with the cumin seed until they are soft but not browned. 
  4. Add the cubed potato, stir everything around and leave to sweat for another minute or two, but, as before, don't let anything brown. 
  5. Season and add the stock. Stir everything, cover with the lid and bring to a gentle simmer. Leave to cook gently until the potato is almost cooked.
  6. Add the carrot and cook for another couple of minutes.
  7. Using a fork break up the fillets of fish into flakes.
  8. Add the milk, the cream and the flaked fish to the pan. Stir gently, and heat everything through. Serve hot with crusty bread.


Mmmmm ... maybe the autumn won't be so bad after all ... .

All the best for now,

Bonny x


Thursday 4 September 2014

Stowe House Gardens

 A couple of weeks' ago, Emi and I had a big day out with my very, very dear friend Jenny who was celebrating her birthday. We decided to head out of the Big Smoke to somewhere that none of us had ever been to before. As we had Maxi-the-wonder-dog in tow, we needed a canine-friendly destination. In the end we hit upon the idea of going to Stowe House Gardens in Buckinghamshire, one time home of the Dukes of Buckingham.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

And there we took a trip back in time to the days when the sun never set on the British Empire and every wannabe aristo had to go on the Grand Tour to have their tastes and ideas refined and polished to shine in polite society. Stowe was built on a truly imperial scale, and has over the years played host to many movers and shakers who lived their lives in an imperial fashion.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

Tsar Alexander I came here for a visit in 1810. Then in 1814 the Grand Duke Michael, his brother came and had a look around. They both liked it so much that in 1818 the Grand Duke Nicholas, who later became Tsar Nicholas I came for a look-see as well.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

Can you imagine what it must have been like in those days at Stow, hosting the Imperial family of All the Russians? I imagine the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, as he became in 1820 when the title was created, went to quite some lengths to make sure that no one (or at least no one imperial) was allowed to get bored. 

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

The Duke's name, when he started out in life had been a breath-taking Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, which was a bit fancy-pants even by the standards of his day. What had happened you see was that the male heirs in the family had developed a strong penchant for marrying wealthy, titled heiresses. Each son then wanted to honour (or show off) his impeccable maternal lineage by adopting his mother's surname along with those of his father. And all those hyphens soon added up to an imperial ship-load of money in the family coffers.

Today I'd find it difficult to take someone seriously who insisted on using such a multi-hyphenated moniker, but old Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville didn't seem to reckon on encountering such cynicism as mine. In fact he himself added the -Brydges-Chandos- bit by royal warrant in 1799. Maybe it gave him something to talk about ... I say, old chap, do you know that I've got more surnames than anyone else in England ...  . Although he was commonly known as Lord Grenville's fat nephew, and Ph D, which was said to stand for phat duke and the gros Marquis, which would suggest that he may not have been the most svelte, dynamic man in England at the time.

Perhaps it was his amazing garden that did it, because the Great and the Good came in their droves to visit old Dickie Whatshisname.

Of all the follies and temples in the gardens my personal favourite is this gothic temple, reflecting my own strong preference for the irregularity and chaos of the gothic over the perfect symmetry and order of the classical. Jenny agreed. In fact it was the thing that both of us were most strongly drawn to when we first looked around the park. We spotted it in the distance and agreed that we'd have to bend our steps towards the church, but of course, silly us, it wasn't anything so prosaic and everyday as a simple church: it was a folly dressed up as a gothic temple.


Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England


Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England



Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

Isn't it amazing? We thought it would make a great venue for a stonking Halloween party. 

But anyway, back to old Dickie Whatshisname: he followed in the family tradition and hooked himself Lady Anne Brydges, a very grand heiress, as his wife. Lady Anne could trace her bloodline back to the Plantagenet Kings of England. As a consequence, when they had a son and heir, he added the surname Plantagenet to his list of monikers, even though none of his Plantagenet relations seemed to have done so since they were Kings of England.  And he was known as ... wait for it ... <drum roll> ... Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

Young Richard thingy-thingy-whathisname made quite a splash in society for two not-so-great reasons. He bagged himself the requisite grand heiress (Lady Mary Campbell - and there are strictly no prizes for guessing which extra surname his child and heir added to the ever-increasing list of family names) but then he decided that he'd made a terrible mistake and - shock, horror - he divorced her. So? No big deal, you may well say and today, by the standards of our age, I'd have to agree with you. People get divorced all the time these days and it's really not a biggie, but way back then, believe me, it was a huge biggie. No one got divorced - unless they were Henry VIII. And if you weren't Henry VIII, but were still hell-bent on being the exception to the rule, you'd need nothing less than an Act of Parliament to pull it off. And that's exactly what young Richard thingy-thingy-whatshisname did. He got himself an Act of Parliament divorce from Lady Mary in 1850. 

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

Financial difficulties may have added to his marriage problems. You see, despite having inherited riches that would have made even Croesus feel a little light in the bank-account department, young Richard thingy-thingy-whathisname was declared bankrupt in 1847 with debts totalling over £1 million. Now wait up: in today's money that would add up to well over a staggering £100 million. In addition to all the other names he'd accumulated he was known thereafter as the greatest debtor in the world. Embarrassed by all the attention from his not-so-friendly creditors he wisely took himself off to live abroad in August 1847.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

His bankruptcy prompted the most prominent English country house auction of the century when Christies set up shop in the State Dining room at Stowe and sold off all the family silver, art, fine furniture, assorted knick-knacks, over 21,000 bottles of wine and 500 bottles of spirits. The auction started on 15th August 1848 and lasted until 7th October 1848. Unfortunately it only raised £75,400, which was a drop in the ocean given how much was owed. So they also had to sell off the family's London home, a little place on the other side of Pall Mall that went by the name of Buckingham House. And some 36,000 acres of land that the family owned on their estates in Ireland, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Cornwall, Hampshire and Somerset also had to go under the hammer.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

But they did manage to hold onto Stowe and its magnificent gardens. 

The second duke died a broken man in the Great Western Hotel, Paddington in 1861 and his son, Richard Plantagenet Cambell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville inherited what was left of his estate and became the third (and last) Duke of Buckingham. Sensibly, in order to save ink, he usually operated under the name Richard Temple-Grenville. He didn't have a male heir, so the title became extinct on his death.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

By the Third Duke's time the estate had contracted dramatically and the glory days of the family were over. The grounds, which had previously been attended to by a staff of 40, were now managed by a staff of 4, and I'm guessing that those 4 gardeners lived hectic busy lives trying to keep this place in order. 

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

The gardens are amazing, truly amazing. But for me, personally, they're just a bit too grand, rather like all those surplus surnames hanging on a chain of hyphens. 

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

It's true that around every corner there is a stunning view as though the eighteenth century gardeners who laid them out had the modern-day obsession with landscape photography in mind when they went to work.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England


There's a Temple of British Worthies, designed by William Kent, which celebrates the very best that these isles have produced in terms of human achievement. On the left are the men of contemplation and learning: writers, scholars and scientists, and on the right are the men of action: monarchs, warriors and statesmen. Above them all, in the alcove at the top, is Mercury.

Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England

And here they are, the selected British worthies: 
Stowe House Gardens, Buckinghamshire, England
The worthies: top row left to right: Sir Thomas Gresham, Alexander Pope, Ignatius Jones and John Milton.
Second row from the top, left to right: William Shakespeare, John Locke,  Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Francis Bacon.
Third row from the top, left to right: King Alfred, Edward, Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth I and King William III.
Bottom row, left to right: Sir Francis Drake,  John Hampden, John Barnard and Sir Walter Raleigh.

I suppose if you were the Duke of Buckingham, wandering around your rolling acres with a different, perfect vista to look at in every direction and the very best of British Worthies for company, you might well become complacent and introverted to the point where you obsessed on names and honours rather than the changing world around you. Whatever the way of it, there's a salutary lesson there for everyone, even us lesser mortals who don't have so many rolling acres or surnames to count.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

(As shared on Friday Finds and Image-in-ing)

And if you're looking for inspiration for a day out of London how about:

or Tresco Abbey


or a quiet stroll on Dartmoor


Monday 1 September 2014

The day Mussolini bombed our village ...

Yesterday, as I was walking across the market square here in sunny Sant Feliu de Guíxols, something caught my eye. It was one of those tourist information plaques that the town council has taken to putting up around the village. Even though I'm not a tourist I always take the time to read them. It's great to find little nuggets of historical information dotted around to fire your curiosity as you go about your daily business. And this one was so sensational that it stopped me in my tracks and called me over to read all the small print.


You see it told the story of how the village had been attacked by three Italian fighter planes on 22nd January, 1938. They came out of nowhere and started dropping bombs on the market square. They blew up our lovely old town hall that had been built back in the sixteenth century.

Town Hall, Sant Feliu de Guíxols
Town Hall, Sant Feliu de Guíxols

Then they blew up the public baths, the village school and the Passeig, the sandy boulevard, where the locals go for a stroll in the cool of the early evening. Thirteen people lost their lives that day, and another forty five were seriously injured.

Our village? The Italians? It made no sense to me whatsoever. This is a quiet, peaceful little place that doesn't seem to be of any strategic importance to anyone. Why on earth would Mussolini and the Italians have ever wanted to bomb us?



I went home bemused, but curious to get to the bottom of what had taken place.

I did a little research to try and put the pieces together.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, way back in 1936, Sant Feliu, like most of Catalonia, sided with the Republic against Franco and the Nationalists. Most of the rest of the world stood by and signed a non-intervention treaty whereby they agreed that they would't get involved; they'd leave it to the Spanish to sort themselves out.



Only it wasn't quite that simple. Not everyone honoured the notion of non-intervention. In particular Franco was able to count on two very powerful allies, who supported him to the hilt. Hitler and Mussolini, the two other Fascist dictators who were making waves in Europe at that time, recognised Franco as the man in charge very early on in the conflict and started supplying him with arms to fight the Republicans.

 The only countries that seemed wiling to proved any practical assistance to the Republic, on the other hand, were Mexico and the USSR, as it then was. But the big strategic problem with their assistance lay in getting their supplies home to where the Republicans needed them. Most of the land frontiers were effectively sealed against the Republic as a result of the non-intervention treaty. The only practical route lay over the sea, which is why little places like Sant Feliu de Guíxols became strategically important. With its large sheltered harbour it wouldn't have been a bad place to land munitions for the war effort.

Boats on the beach, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Catalonia
Boats on the beach, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Catalonia

Mussolini also faced a backdoor challenge at home. There were many people within Italy who were fundamentally opposed to his regime, significant numbers of whom were happy to skip across the Western Mediterranean to help the Republicans in their struggle against Franco.  If they had returned to Italy, motivated and energised by a victory against Fascism in Spain, they could have represented a significant threat to the stability of the Fascist regime in Italy. In short Mussolini had a real interest in defeating the Republic.

The beach, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Catalonia

And that was why he sent the Aviazione Legionari with over seven hundred fighter planes to help Franco bomb the living daylights out of the Republicans. Hitler also sent the Condor Legion from Germany with almost three hundred planes - they bombed Guernica, over in the Basque country (infamous for being the first instance when carpet bombing was used against a defenceless civilian population for no strategic purpose other than to crush their morale, and famously painted by Picasso).

The harbour, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Catalonia

And so that's how my village became a strategic target and got blown up by Mussolini. I know that horrible things happened to innocent people on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, but, given where I live and who my family are, I feel a connection with the people who held on for dear life in this quiet little backwater. And it seems to me that it must have been a terrifying business.  From time to time Franco sent his heavy battlecruisers up the coast to bombard Sant Feliu and the other Republican villages along the Costa. They'd turn up in the bay and sit there strafing the town with mortars and gunfire. Over seventy people lost their lives in the course of these bombardments.

The Spanish Civil War was the first conflict in which aerial warfare played a decisive role.  The intensive bombardment of the Republican territory created a new precedent for modern warfare in which the focus of the attack moved away from the frontline towards the rearguard where the civilian population found themselves in the firing line.

Memorial plaque to the 70 citizens who died in the bombing of Sant Feliu during the Civil War
Memorial plaque to the 70 citizens who died in the bombing of Sant Feliu during the Civil War

Today, walking around in the sunshine it's hard to believe what happened here, and it's even sadder to think of all the other places in the world today, some 75 years' later, where innocent civilians still live under the threat of indiscriminate attack by aerial bombardment.

All the best,


Bonny x