A brief return to the Cotswolds, Part One

Far From.....

Lodge Park and Sherborne Estate

Three and a bit hours drive from North Norfolk and we are in a different country.  No more the quiet flatnesses of the tidal coastline, no more the black soils of the fenlands. Here the countryside rolls, tipping over edges into spring-loaded valleys, and landscapes without much evidence of settlement unfold from the uplands.  The Sherborne Estate could tell a lot of stories, from enormous wealth from the shearing of 3,000 sheep in the fifteenth century to penury in the eighteenth century as a result of misplaced bets on deer coursing.....

I am not a Cotswold virgin - I have ventured here often. I recall hearing of the death of Marilyn Monroe (August 4th, 1962) while at scout camp near Burford, in this very valley, in this very field...... Oh how we, pre-pubescent patrol members (well - some of us), wept at the loss, our bell tents creaking in lament.... Please see: https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2012/06/on-breast-of-river-of-time.html 

for much more on this (and related stories....).....

Our campsite, over sixty years ago....

Anyway, on this trip down the dead end of memory, we stop over at Minster Lovell, where St Kenelm (an eighth century Mercian Prince, murdered in the Clent Hills....) accepts us into his 12th century church (rebuilt by William, the 7th Baron Lovell, in 1450).  

And here he is (or may be) in alabaster, after he departed his armour in 1455.....

It is a remarkable spot, not least because English Heritage (unlike the National Trust) allows unlimited access and so we find families picnicking by and swimming in the Windrush, portable BBQs and stoves carefully attended (?) amidst the ruined masonry and tracery.....

There are even life-like effigies strategically placed in niches and openings in the stonework, reminding us of the scale (and actuality) of life in them there days.....

Anyways, we burn on, to Swinbrook, made much of in the associated piece linked above.  Here, at the Swan, courtesy of Debo, I have stayed in days of yore, and fond are the memories, though nothing is ever as good as the now....  

Despite the history.....

The Fettiplaces are still here.....

Their generations unspoiled by time:

As are the troubled Mitford/Mosleys......

All  quiet, on the Western front.....

And so, heat and dust notwithstanding, we make our way to Lypiatt Park, Lynn Chadwick's resting place.  But that is another story, to follow in a separate piece.....

And so, a return to Slad, famous for its links with Laurie Lee (I beg you to refer to https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2014/05/laurie-lee-26-june-1914-13-may-1997.html for much more about him and his story....) where we sample local fare and nod respectfully to his memory....

Yes, the Woolpack (coincidentally owned by Daniel Chadwick, son of Lynn, of whom more anon....) was Laurie's home from home, and sits favourably in my memories of previous (and current) visits. If only..... If only more pubs were like this. I really do believe the world would be a better place......

And then we take a walk, a little walk....

And only say.....

Yeah, well. It's all a dream. 

And so we come to the Romans, and what did they do for us? (All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Ed.)

It may surprise you, but the finest Roman mosaics in the British Isles are in the Cotswolds, at Chedworth Roman Villa, once one of the grandest country houses in Roman Britain, dating from the second century AD and inhabited for at least two hundred years. It was possibly the country retreat of a certain Roman Abramovich - or at least someone who owned at least one football club.....

These are no ordinary floor tiles.  These tesserae were not from B&Q.  Someone, or more likely, a number of skilled artists, laid this floor, and more, with the patience and expertise of a Darren Lucas (oops, forgive me, a local artisan, famed for his tiling.....Ed.)

Decipher this:

Yes.  Art, or whatever you choose to call it, is not new to the Cotswolds, nor to Britain, nor to the world.  The Romans were not the first, the only, nor the last to explore the relationship between artefact and pleasure, or creation and satisfaction, or sensitivity and well-being.  

Their plumbing may have let them down, but they paved (sic) the way to sculpture and representation, and, as we shall see in part two of this sortie back into the Cotswolds, art and landscape have a most important place in the ongoing story of this world.....

Sitting Couple on Bench, Lynn Chadwick, 1990, Lypiatt Park

*******

Do, please, look out for part two of this account, where we visit Lypiatt Park, the erstwhile home of sculptor Lynn Chadwick......

*******

For those who travel with me

xxxx