Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January 2018 i Discover Britain

It was anti-German feeling that inspired the birth of the House of Windsor as a royal dynasty in 1917. King George V, with a shrewd grasp of public sentiment, refuted claims that he held “an alien and uninspiring court” by rebranding the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. It was the first of many astute choices that have seen the gradual and necessary adaptation of this royal clan, enabling it to endure while many others have fallen victim to a changing world. George V was equally unafraid to separate himself from his family’s European history, should it prove burdensome; he refused to allow the beleaguered Russian Romanovs to seek refuge in England, despite Tsar Nicholas II being his cousin. One monarch met his doom, the other escaped the era’s royal bloodbath.…

While archaeologists have found Mesolithic remains in York, the city as we know it today began in AD 71 when a Roman fort was built where the rivers Foss and Ouse meet. It remained a key outpost for the empire and Constantine the Great became the only Roman emperor crowned outside Rome when he was proclaimed here in AD 306. York came of age in the medieval era, a time when many of the fantastically-named alleyways (or ‘ginnels’ in local parlance), such as Swinegate, Mad Alice Lane (now Lund Court) and The Shambles, were constructed. It was also during this period that the city’s crowning achievement, the vast York Minster, was built. Begun in 1220, it was consecrated in 1472. Half a millennium on, it is one of the most…

1 Grays Court Yorkshire If you’re looking for lasting love rather than a fleeting fling, prove your commitment at Grays Court in York – a building that has certainly stayed the distance. Dating back to 1080, this is thought to be the oldest inhabited house in Britain. The Jacobean, wood-panelled Long Gallery has hosted kings and you’ll feel like royalty when you look out of the windows onto either the historic York Minister or the hotel’s own private, rose-filled gardens in which afternoon tea is served. There are suitably romantic touches inside, with the individually designed rooms variously boasting double monsoon showers and a William IV four-poster bed, while The Bow Room restaurant caters to a select number of covers in elegant surrounds. www.grayscourtyork.com 2 Prestonfield House Edinburgh The interiors…

JANUARY If you’ve ended the year with excess, start 2018 by performing your ablutions in the freezing River Forth. The Loony Dook (1 January. www.edinburghshogmanay.com) is part of Edinburgh’s annual Hogmanay (New Year) celebrations and sees brave ‘dookers’ parade through Queensferry in fancy dress before taking a bracing dip in the waters against a backdrop of the Forth Bridge. • Wassailing is a traditional pagan ceremony performed on Twelfth Night to encourage the onset of spring and ensure a bountiful harvest. At the Old Mill Farm in West Sussex, the Apple Howling (6 January.www.crmm.org.uk) wassail sees the Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men lead a torchlight procession before a ceremony in the orchard and then it’s all back to the farm for plenty of wassail cakes and lashings of Wobblegate cider. •…

“I am very, very proud to be the first woman to fire these spectacular, hard-working engines. It’s not just a man’s role” Liz Partridge Fireman, Snowdon Mountain Railway My love of trains started with my grandparents. I grew up in the West Midlands and they used to take me and my younger brother for days out to the Severn Valley Railway in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. The engines were fascinating: all the different shapes, sizes, colours and noises, and the way they scuttled up and down the line to get to their place. The smell of steam was addictive. It was always exciting when the trains started to move, and I enjoyed listening to the ‘clickety clack’ of the wheels going along the rails. The Severn Valley line will always be my…

SMALL PRINT The Royal Collection Trust in St James’s is set to publish a never-before seen story by Vita Sackville-West. A Note of Explanation is the first printed edition of a fairy story that the author wrote in 1922. With pages measuring less than 4cm high, her original handwritten book sits alongside 200 miniatures, including titles by Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle, in the library of a dolls’ house designed for Queen Mary by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. The new edition of A Note of Explanation has far more legible 25cm-high pages and features newly commissioned illustrations by London artist Kate Baylay [above]. Despite remaining unpublished until now, Sackville-West’s story is believed to have influenced Orlando, the 1928 novel by her lover Virginia Woolf. www.royalcollection.org.uk KING’S RANSOM The…

Few streets in London can have attracted as many famous names as Cheyne Walk in Chelsea: JMW Turner, George Eliot and Sir Mick Jagger, to name a few. The street, which runs parallel to the King’s Road, and extends from the World’s End Estate to Royal Hospital Road, is composed of a wealth of tall, elegant houses, built largely in the 17th and 18th centuries. Before the construction of the Chelsea Embankment in 1874, the houses even fronted the River Thames. Idyllic. Now firmly part of west London, Chelsea was once a village on the outskirts of the city – more of a sprinkling of houses across fields. It became popular in the 16th century with royal officials and courtiers who wanted to live near Whitehall. Then the names started…

Hospitals are usually stark places: functional, unglamorous and often grave. They are not frivolous, fancy or fun. So it might be a surprise to learn that Brighton’s Royal Pavilion – the ornate palace in the heart of this energetic English seaside town, laden with minarets and turrets, dazzling with decorative features and so defiantly aesthetic – was once home to wounded soldiers. During the First World War, some 2,300 injured servicemen from the Indian Army were treated here in what was known as the Pavilion Hospital. Elaborate arrangements were made for the patients’ variety of religious and cultural needs, including different kitchens and prayer areas. Certainly, it’s not a role the palace’s creator would have predicted for it. King George IV was charming, fast-living and utterly irresponsible: in the history…

“What began as a symbol of industry and endeavour has become a badge of resilience and collective power” In 1842, a little over a decade before it would be granted official city status, the borough of Manchester adopted an official heraldic achievement. The grand design featured several animals, including an antelope and a lion, respective symbols of harmony and strength that were both derived from the arms of King Henry IV, the Duke of Lancaster. The more important featured creatures, however, were the seven worker bees on the crest – a relatively small detail that would nevertheless become a far more fitting symbol for this buzzing industrial city. Manchester had long been a hub for England’s wool trade, yet by the mid 19th century it had evolved into arguably the…

“Adlestrop inspired a poem capturing both the stillness of the village and the calm before the storm that was the First World War” Set in the peaceful countryside between Stroud and Cirencester, Bisley is known for being the home of best-selling novelist Jilly Cooper, but this sleepy village has its own tales to tell that are rather more sedate than Cooper’s racy storylines. A good place to start is the All Saints Church, parts of which date from Roman times. In the churchyard, a mysterious stone monument has foxed residents for centuries: the hexagonal pedestal is known as a poor souls’ light and was used to hold candles for masses said for the poor. It dates from the 13th century. It was originally thought to be a well cover, but…

If you visit Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s House for an Art Lover in search of an actual work of art in the traditional sense, you may struggle to find one. Aside from a few contemporary works for sale in the café downstairs, there is barely a framed painting or piece of sculpture to be found inside. Anyone with an artistic eye will be far from disappointed though. From the ornately carved piano to the subtle colour schemes, every room is a work of art in its own right; a balm for sore eyes thanks to the grace and simplicity of his designs. A Renaissance man in the mould of Frank Lloyd Wright or Barcelona’s Antoni Gaudí, Mackintosh believed that it was an architect’s responsibility to possess “an intimate knowledge of the…

It was My Fair Lady that made Covent Garden world famous, even if the 1964 film was shot in a Hollywood studio. Thanks to Audrey Hepburn, many a film lover will know that this area of central London was once a bustling market. Yet this is only one scene in the life of one of the British capital’s most cultured quarter square miles, one which historically stretched from Long Acre in the north to The Strand in the south, yet now extends much further. Over the centuries, Covent Garden has been home to monks and prostitutes (not simultaneously), the haunt of writers and artists, and the setting of riots and murders. The area, now best known for its shops, has largely returned to its market roots, but there have been…

EXPLORE NORTHUMBERLAND While it remains sparsely populated (even the county’s largest built-up area, the pretty market town of Blyth, is home to fewer than 40,000 people), Northumberland has long been an area in demand. Before the Union of the Crowns in 1603, relations between the kingdoms of England and Scotland were heated to say the least, and Northumberland’s location on the Anglo-Scottish border saw territories change hands frequently. The Wars of Scottish Independence began in March 1296, for example, with England’s brutal capture of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Despite this liminal existence, this is far from being a no man’s land. That conflicted history means the area is blessed with more than its fair share of castles, walls and ruins. And what Northumberland lacks in urban bustle, it more than makes up for…