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Monday 15 September 2014

Password Vault

Last weekend my life was transformed; something miraculous happened over here at Talk-a-Lot-Towers. 
 
In the old days - i.e. before the weekend - I used to spend hours fiddling around trying to remember my passwords. And let’s face it everything needs a password these days: Facebook, Twitter, your bank, your mobile phone account, Moonpig if you want to order a birthday card … and so the list goes on.
 
My system for password control - pre-miracle - involved a muddled collection of post-its, notebooks and arcane prompts, cunningly written in such a cryptic fashion that, when I came back to them, I could never figure out what I’d been on about in the first instance. As a result I spent a lot of my time feeling mildly bad-tempered and hopelessly locked out of my own systems. 
 
Then I’d get worn down with not using the same password for everything so that my passwords became an impossible exercise in playing with a theme and remembering what the difference was from one account to another. T-e-d-i-o-u-s. I was getting tied up in so many knots. The one person that my security was defeating was the person whom it was supposed to be protecting. 
 
Anyway, I moaned to my good friend Akie - over one of his very splendid barbecue lunches - about my problems. He listened sympathetically, as a good friend would, and then suggested I try an app called pwSafe to keep all my passwords nice and secure on my computer. 
 
And bingo! Geronimo! My life was transformed by one simple app. It’s brilliant. You just record all your passwords in the vault, and then, when you click on each separate account, it takes you right through and logs you in. Marvellous! The only password I need now is the one to get me into the password vault … which is still a challenge … duh! ... but much less of a challenge than before. 

You can find it here: pwSafe
 
So far it’s been a genius solution to all my woolly-headed password problems. Thank you Akie!
 
All the best,
 
Bonny x

Saturday 13 September 2014

The River's Tale, (Prehistoric) by Rudyard Kipling














Emi's working hard on a history assignment for school. He's got to write down some interesting facts about pre-historic Britain. Then he has to illustrate his findings; his pictures must be carefully drawn with nice, neat colouring in. 

I'm wondering if he copied out Kipling's poem and drew a few of those bat-winged lizard birds and mammoth herds, with nice, neat colouring in, whether that might tick the box.

All the best for now,


Bonny x

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