Drinks with Carl, dodging the beef and The Bad Earl

Warned off by the AngryFrench Plastic Surgeon that we were risking culinary disappointment (or worse) anywhere else in Chipping Norton, we headed back to the Blue Boar for dinner, got our table in the back and finished off another generous dinner draining ales and ciders with a thirtyish local chap named Carl, who had more or less invited himself over to our table. He seemed pleased that we were immersing ourselves in historic sightseeing – he considered himself an avid student of history himself – and peppered us with questions about what we thought of England, and the various contortions and absurdities of the US presidential election campaign. 

He also observed that Sharon’s accent, classically Cleveland with its pancaked short a’s, sounded very “New England” to him; anyone genuinely familiar with both accents, as I am with school and family roots in New England, and step-family/frequent visits to Cleveland, knows that the two are truly quite dissimilar, but we appreciated that he at least detected some nuance in her American-English accent. He also said that she sounded, to him, exactly like Roz, from the TV series Frasier – another endearing observation that we found charmingly inaccurate. Not that it matters, the actress who played Roz, Peri Gilpin, is originally from Texas.

Carl followed us over to the Rose and Crown for a nightcap, which actually turned into three or four nightcaps at an outdoor table. Something told me, being in the UK, I really ought to sample some Scotch, so while the barmaid was pouring one of our rounds, I asked her for a recommendation for a shot of Scotch. “My great grandfather founded this distillery”, she informed me of some bottle she retrieved from behind the bar, “but the stuff is piss. Here, try this instead…” and she handed me a snifter of something ruddy and crisply aromatic. Gulped it down, and was immediately reminded why I’ve never been a Scotch drinker. Well…okay, I had some Scotch. 

We exchanged goodbyes with Carl, who wobbled off into the evening and we went up and crashed, suitably sozzled.

Probably owing to a full dinner, we both got up pretty early and felt surprisingly un-hung the next morning – good thing, as we had another serpentine route charted out. Westward this time, headed to Thornbury. Chatted for a spell in the car park with another American couple who were likewise checking and heading out. They were from Minnesota, on a three week trip that also included France, pointed that morning toward Blenheim Palace, the enormous ancestral home of Winston Churchill’s family (he is buried nearby, at a small parish church in Bladen). A popular tourist destination, Blenheim had popped up on our list of “possibles” for that day,  but we had decided to pass on it. For some reason, these palatial manor houses – the roofed and functioning ones – held and still hold little interest for us. 

We traded notes with the Minnesota couple on the driving and countryside, and also mentioned to the couple that we were from Colorado. The wife perked right up that they had a daughter living in Parker. Small world.

We navigated out of Chipping Norton, ambivalent about whether we’d ever see the place again, and headed west toward Thornbury. No castles or abbeys on route today, just a series of churches through the richly rural and agricultural Gloucestershire countryside.

One of the best, the first one we hit, was St Mary’s in Shipton, a Grade 1 listed building and another of the Churches Conservation Trust’s properties.  

The place dates to the early 13^th century and swatches of wall paintings against the restored plaster walls whisper of the church’s lengthy history. 

Plenty of 17^th century graves in the floor too…we were used to this by now, it was common among the many churches we visited. 

Along the way to the next GPS blip...rush hour!  

This, we suppose, is a fairly common site on England’s country roads, and while we got a good chuckle out of it, I was more than aware that our road companions were just about as big as the VW I was driving (or, not driving, as the case may be) and at least as temperamental. I focused on keeping my genetically programmed American road impatience keenly suppressed.

St James, Charfield, was also a treat – another of the CCT’s properties, the place likewise dates to the 13^th century and also a Grade 1 listed building, at the western reach of a desperately tiny farming village. 

Common to many of the CCT’s properties, the key to church was being held by a local resident, a nice lady across the street in a white house, who handed Sharon the key and later received it back, without ever saying a word…which Sharon found a little odd. 

The churchyard outside was dedicated to the 15 victims of the Charfield Railway  Disaster of 1928, including two children who were never identified or claimed. (It is said that they haunt the churchyard…). 

The church was virtually empty; spare, elegant, very quiet.  

Judging by the cobwebs on the front door, it didn’t look as if the place is visited very often, and from little we saw of the village, there wasn’t much other reason for your average tourist to be in Charfield. I didn’t feel particularly comfortable there.

We eventually managed to make it to Thornbury, a modest and unassuming town not far from one of England’s great seaport towns, Bristol. Thornbury (pop., about 12k) is considered one of the small-town gems of Britain - it was recently named the 4th Best Place To Live in England by the Sunday Times, credited for its "excellent schools, architecture, idiosyncratic character and beautiful countryside". And, free parking downtown. 

It is also known for the "Thornbury hoard," a collection of over 11,000 Roman-era coins found in 2004 by a local resident digging a fish pond in his backyard.

In a gush of chuck-all-financial-reason, we found Thornbury Castle during one of our internet planning sessions, gulped a bit at the ticket price, but decided to book the place anyway. It is one of the very few castles in England that is also a working hotel.

The place dates to 1511 and Edward Stafford, 3^rd  Duke of Buckingham, a nobleman with a lengthy and well-connected peerage. 

Though once in his favor, Buckingham eventually ran afoul of Henry VIII (it didn’t take much), who suspected him of treason and took a keen interest in investigating the charges, to the point where he personally interviewed a number of Buckingham’s accusers. His mind more or less made up (and based on what we can determine, Henry just didn’t like the guy and felt threatened by his wealth and extensive holdings), the King summoned Buckingham to London in April 1521. He was promptly arrested, tossed into the Tower of London, tried for treason by a jury of his peers, found guilty (Henry thought he was guilty; we presume jurors during his reign were unlikely to quarrel with Henry’s judgment on these matters…) and executed on May 17th, 1521.  

Parliament also wiped out his wealth a couple of years later through a Act of Attainder, denying any inheritance to his children (of which he had several, legitimate and otherwise), and Henry assumed ownership of Buckingham’s Thornbury property…which is now, Thornbury Castle. (Although it is worth nothing that the place really is more of a Tudor Manor House, as it lacks the necessary armament and fortification to strictly earn the title of “castle”. There are people who pay attention to this stuff.)

Buckingham was probably rubbed out on trumped up charges, hardly the first or last in the history of Henry VIII’s rule, but even one of Britain’s principal peerage chroniclers struggled to find anything nice to say about the guy.

Buckingham was certainly guilty of no crimes sufficient to justify his attainder, and his execution aroused popular sympathy; but his character does not merit much admiration. Weak and vacillating, he seems to have treated his dependents with harshness, and his vast enclosures were a constant subject of complaint.

  

One is not sure how he would have felt knowing that this particular enclosure (which, by the way, is said to house the largest bed in England, 10 feet across, in the extra-pricey Tower Suite) was fetching £300 for a single night’s lodging…and on an off-season Monday night, at that. Historically, the place was as much Henry’s as anyone else’s. Or, oddly, the Howard family’s, another aristocratic bloodline related to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both wives of Henry VIII’s;  they acquired the castle after it fell into post-Nasty Business disrepair and renovated it in the 19^th century. And the Howards know a thing or two about real estate...this is their ancestral headquarters, in Yorkshire. 

The GPS guided us carefully to the Tudor gatehouse, 

we slipped through carefully, and saw the place.

My first thought: I hope I have a clean shirt. 

The Holy Blood, Henry’s Widow and How Much It Costs to Bury Someone in Stow

An ambitious day for us broke with clear skies and sunshine. Sunday morning in Chipping Norton and we had an abbey, a castle and a handful of cemeteries on the plate. We’d had a bit to drink the night before, so we were a little gauzy around the edges. Eh…we were on vacation. Setting and keeping to an agenda, born from that ambitious tourist’s inner terror of wasting time and missing Stuff To See, felt a little bit at times like we were in a self-regulated militia…but today would be relatively easy, as we were returning to the Rose and Crown that evening.

We headed out on foot and down the street to the church – our second try to have a look at the beautiful St Mary the Virgin. A church has existed here since the seventh century, founded by a wandering Celtic evangelist named Diuma; the existing structure dates largely from the 13^th and 14^th centuries, its nave being rebuilt in the late 15^th century.

The light was harsh and brilliant that morning – both our sets of pictures of the churchyard are a tad heavy on the contrast (we always talk about retouching later on the PC and never really get around to it), 

and being Sunday, inconveniently, the locals were starting to arrive for services. It seemed a little weird (disrespectful?) to be shooting the cemetery while folks were showing up for church, so we tossed off a few quick views of the 18^th century churchyard and headed back to the hotel to get the car keys.

This was the day I had in mind to get a little lost in the Cotswolds. Largely agricultural, with a lengthy history in the wool trade, the Cotswolds now is an archipelago of small, mainly 17^th and 18^th century villages strung together by narrow county roads, dotted here and there with immense, rich-folk country estates. The history is thick around here – plague, witch trials, remains of Roman outposts –the word “charming” comes up a lot on tourist-targeted websites about the Cotswolds.  Every few miles there’d be some too-narrow-for-passing side road heading off into the lush, verdant distance with a modest signpost listing miles to the few hamlets along the way, many which probably counted nor more than a few dozen residents, if that.

Part of me wanted to chuck the itinerary and just crawl down a few of these glorified hedge-maze tracks, to see what we’d see and where we’d come out. The Inner Steves thing again, I suppose, but we really also wanted to visit Hailes Abbey and pick off some cemeteries, and when it came right down to it, we couldn’t reasonably do both. 

Our encounters with absurdly immense (at least relative to road size) agricultural equipment also seemed to peak in the Cotswolds.

Hailes Abbey, built in the mid 13^th century by Henry III’s brother and donated to the Cistercians, was famous for housing a vial of Holy Blood, a crucifixion relic donated to the abbey in 1270, and quickly became a destination for pilgrims seeking miracles, the vial providing a tidy source of income for the Abbey itself. Henry VIII’s commissioners weren’t particularly impressed with relic’s authenticity, however, declaring it a vial of duck’s blood periodically refreshed by its cleric handlers, and the abbey was eventually surrendered as part of the Dissolution in 1539. 

The Abbey grounds are spacious and only a small portion of the building fabric above ground remains – some half curtain walls and arches. 

I found the place pleasant enough, but did feel an inexplicable sense of sadness about it. We shot some pictures – being Sunday, there were quite a number of other visitors to the site – and we headed back to the car. We started to drive off, when we realized that we completely missed the church, so we turned around, parked again and crossed the lane to see Hailes Church. 

And good thing we did, as Hailes Church – older than the Abbey itself – is a humble little gem, dating 

to at least to the mid 12^th century. Tiny and spare, the walls still retain now-ghostly medieval wall paintings added in the 13^th century when the church came under the auspices of the Abbey itself. Covered in wax by the then-landowner in the early twentieth century to protect them (a very bad idea), they were rehabilitated in the early 1970’s. St Christopher and St Margaret of Antioch are among those depicted, as well as depictions of mythic fauna and hunting scenes. 

It is a palpably haunting place, and at least as satisfying as a walk through the Abbey grounds themselves.

The next stop was Sudeley Castle, best known as the residence of Henry VIII’s widow, Katherine Parr (whose name is alternately spelled with a C or a K). 

The castle itself is an impressive property, with a lengthy and complex history only several paragraphs could do ample justice to. It was also one of the few truly historic sites we visited on the entire two week trip that was basically private property, something vaguely triangulated between an immense garden, a country estate, a Tudor-history museum and a castle ruin. The parking area was huge, probably three football fields in size, and there were easily a couple of hundred of cars parked there when we arrived. 

The grounds are a popular family picnic spot, and within the property boundaries lay the gardens and the immense castle itself, some which reveals unrepaired damage (“slighted”, as common historical terminology would have it) inflicted by Cromwell’s forces toward the end of the Nasty Business in the mid 17th century. 

Much of the property is a private residence, though, owned and occupied by two families: Lord and Lady Ashcombe, and Henry and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst and their families. We had to pay the admission out of pocket – our Heritage Pass was of no help here. 

  

After skeletal and primitive abbey ruins and the humble elegance of Hailes Church, though, we found Sudeley a noisy and crowded experience, almost a Tudor theme park, with ice cream and souvenir vendors stationed around the property, kids running around and costumed volunteer guides leading tours. There is a museum in one of the main buildings and we paid the admission price and went in. No photography allowed…which was alright, as the exhibition, featuring clothing, letters and household items from Katherine’s time and thereafter, was short, a little cramped and not very compelling. There is a magnificent church on the grounds, St Mary’s Chapel, where Katherine is buried, and we had it figured for the destination’s last redeeming feature.  But a mock funeral (recreating Katherine’s own of September 1548), complete with a stream of tourist mourners, was being assembled, and the church was closed to all but the procession. We weren’t up for joining it, either. 

It may have been our single biggest destination mistake on the trip – it just wasn’t our thing. To be fair, families with kids, a relatively high tolerance for tourist kitch and a keen interest in vast garden grounds and Tudor history and architecture might find it a swell day out. Maybe on a less crowded day we would have found the zone.

In any event, we managed to kill off most of the day between Hailes and Sudeley, so we shoehorned our way back into the VW and headed back to Chipping Norton. Sharon had the town cemetery at Stow [aka, Stow-on-the-Wold] pegged for inspection, so we pointed the GPS at it and took off.

Stow is one of the larger towns in Cotswolds, the site of an especially bloody battle during the Nasty Business – we had looked at it as a possible base, can’t remember why we chose Chipping Norton instead – and a busy little place, with a few off-camber turns that I managed to have to take three or four times. We spied the church from the main intersection (historic St Edward’s, as it turns out, where they held John Entwistle’s funeral in 2002) but didn’t take the risky-looking detour to go visit. Just another mind-bogglingly historic Grade 1 church we left on the table. I had given up days before fretting about all the old churches we were missing. There are only so many hours in the day.

The city cemetery – like most municipal cemeteries in England – dates to early Victorian, but it was on the main drag and we couldn’t park at the front, so we slid down a side street and – boom – another cemetery, right outside the Baptist church, a block or two away. Bonus. The church was locked, but we walked around the churchyard and shot some pictures, then walked up to hit the town cemetery.

The covered archway to the cemetery’s entrance was an unexpected treat. Under the eaves hung a number of original signs regarding use of and expected behavior toward the burial grounds, as well as …a price list, itemized as to whether the deceased was a parishioner, whether they died in the parish, whether the survivors were erecting a headstone or memorial, etc etc. The fees and schedules were set by the Burial Board in Aug, 1856. 

Another sign promised fines and/or imprisonment for “riotous [sic] or indecent conduct” in the cemetery during burial services (5 pounds and /or two months in the slammer), and yet another governed the depth and width of graves, the thickness of the burial vaults , how much soil needed to be laid upon interred vaults before another vault could be laid atop it (yes, family plots stacked coffins – that whole ‘efficient use of limited space’ thing again), and how long graves had to be left undisturbed before they could be opened again for additional interments. 

One assumes that such explicit regulations were born out of necessity, and it’s tempting to speculate what manner of ghoulish anarchy existed before the Burial Board imposed their rules and regs.

Anyway…the cemetery was pleasant and well-kept, if not especially old, and we headed back to the car, waiting dutifully for us in a ridiculously tight parking space outside the Baptist church. When we walked up to it, I noticed that the right rear tire looked perilously low, almost flat. Sharon remembered that there was a gas station across the main drag (Fosse Way, aka the A429) from the cemetery, although not exactly directly across the road from where we were – time for a dicey little move. We actually walked back up to the intersection to scout it out.  

The service station had a pay-for-air pump, I got some change from the attendant and went out to load some air into the ailing tire. It occurred to me, of course, that not being the owner of a tiny vehicle with Tonka-sized tires, I had no idea what pressure I needed to pump to, so I went back in to ask for a tire gauge. The attendant smiled knowingly at the clueless tourist – no need, he assured me, it’ll just shut off when it hits the right air pressure.

It also occurred to me that – in the States anyway – tire usually lose significant air pressure, in short periods of time, when there’s something wrong with them. Like a leak. And leaks in America don’t usually repair themselves.