I’m Henry VIII I am, I am

If our friends and family hadn’t guessed by now, I’m a  huge fan of  Henry VIII.  I find his about face behavior and appearance  from a jovial, well liked and svelte young man to an old and crotchety  big fat fatty fascinating.  Therefore, it only made sense to visit his former palace Hampton Court while in Surrey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While Hampton Court started its days as a country showpiece for Henry VIII’s advisor Cardinal Wolsey, it came into Henry’s hands due to his rage at Wolsey for failing to gain him a divorce from his first wife.   In true Henry VIII form, he appropriated the house for himself, gifting it to his new wife Anne Boleyn.  He remodeled the palace for his young bride,  making it more grand and ostentatious than Wolsey’s former home, only to have to redo the H + A monographs throughout the palace to H+J with the beheading of his second wife and new marriage.  It became a favorite summer home of the court, who liked to escape the heat of London for the summer months and enjoy the gardens, and stocked hunting grounds at Hampton Court.  It remained a favorite retreat for the royal family until the mid 1800s.  The length of time that Hampton Court spent in the royal eye can be seen in the differing periods of architecture throughout – from the brownstone Tudor Buildings to the red and white grand palace style of the mid 1700s.

Old meets less old

The grounds themselves also show a mixture of styles, with natural looking gardens, sculpture gardens and highly structured Georgian gardens.  Since I am the daughter of Brenda Deal, I spent a large amount of time wandering through the gardens and taking photos.  In the span of the two hours we checked out the garden, I got ideas and plans for several new garden designs in my own yard (which I’m sure Kevin is thrilled about).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the coolest part of the gardens, for the wine-lover that I am, was the grape vine housed in the greenhouse.  Certified by Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest grape vine in the world.  Planted in 1768 by Capability Brown, the vine is a cutting of a Black Hamburg vine from Essex that no longer exists.

Sadly for wineauxs like myself, the grapes aren’t actually used to make booze, but instead are sold to tourists at a huge markup each fall. 

 

The palace itself housed several different exhibits, from the architectural history of the estate to Henry VIII to the Georgian life of the inhabitants. 

 

In all, Hampton Court is easily a full day trip for the garden/history enthusiast like myself.  It even held an interest for Kevin, with a maze, Henry VIII era Royal Tennis Courts and a pair of Clydesdales. 

Will the Real Pemberley Please Stand Up?

When I initially booked my trip out to see Kevin for my semester break, we went back and forth as to where we would go for a trip. Norway. No, Spain. No, Germany. The problem lay in the fact that Kevin had limited vacation time and all the places I kept coming up with to visit deserved at least a week’s visit. So, when Kevin suggested a trip to the South to visit his friends Pete and Mel and also Bath, I quickly agreed. While Bath itself is a fascinating old town full of Roman and Victorian history, its main draw for me is its association with Jane Austen. I’m not sure what it is about her, but she has the uncanny ability to draw all females in with her witty banter and dark, brooding men. This attraction, however, does not extend to the male part of our species. I knew that Kevin was sure to be unhappy about visiting places solely for the reason that they were associated with Jane Austen, so I decided to start introducing places to visit gradually in the hopes that he not notice the association. When I started researching places to visit in or around Bath that were connected to Jane Austen, the first place that appeared was a country estate called Lyme Park located just outside Manchester – the site of Pemberley for the BBC (and my personal favorite) adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley

My Pemberley

While I was excited upon seeing Lyme Park looming as we drove up in our car, the first thing I really noticed was the setting of the famous “Mr. Darcy Goes Swimming” scene. While Kevin may share Mr. Darcy’s penchant for grumpiness, he apparently doesn’t share his love of swimming as he downright refused to re-enact my favorite scene for the sake of my photographic documentation of the trip.

As I was merely interested in its connection to Pride and Prejudice and none of the interior Pemberley shots were actually filmed at Lyme park, we decided to forgo a tour of the house and instead take a stroll through the gardens.

View of the Derbyshire countryside

On the way down south to Surrey lay Pemberley #2, Chatsworth House. Considered by many to be Jane Austen’s inspiration for Pemberely, it also served as the filming location for the far inferior Keira Knightley movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Driving up to Chatsworth House, I could see exactly why many thought it the true Pemberley of Jane Austen’s day.

The house made Lyme Park look like a summer cottage and the gardens extended for acres. Much of the gardens were done by the famous gardeners Capability Brown (in the 1700s) and Joseph Paxton (in the 1800s).

One of the first heated greenhouses – built by Paxton in 1842

In addition, the grounds contained a very “Labyrinth” like maze (sadly lacking David Bowie, but containing a very strange Kevin).

Again, we decided to forgo the house tour for several reasons:

1) We still had a 3 hour drive down to Surrey and it was already 3 pm.

2) It already cost over 7 pounds a piece just to enter the gardens and we didn’t want to give any more of our money to the the Duke of Devonshire.

3) Colin Firth never set foot in the house and therefore it is inconsequential.

If I had the trip to do over again, I would have taken a few photos of the house, admired the pond that once held the dreamy Colin Firth and skipped the gardens at Lyme Park in order to head to Chatsworth House and spend several hours strolling through the gardens.